Hunting The Famous - Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller. Picture courtesy St Catherine's College Oxford.

Living in London in the early 1980s, he quickly worked out that offering interviews of the famous to Australian newspapers and magazines was a sure route to publication - and therefore money.

Would you like an interview with Joseph Heller, author of Catch 22, went down a treat with the now defunct then historic news magazine The Bulletin, which back in the early part of the 20th century had published famous Australian authors, including that most lyrical of Australia's poet-alcoholics, Henry Lawson:

"For the Southern Land is the Poet’s Home, and over the world’s wide roam,
There was never till now a binjied bard that lived in a poet’s home, old man;
For the poet’s home was a hell on earth, and I want you to understand,
That it isn’t exactly a paradise down here in the Southern Land,
Old chap,
Down here in the Southern Land."

Once they hit the stratosphere of multi-million dollar sales, world-wide fame and flanks of public relations "experts" - otherwise known as hacks - most living legends become unavailable to all except the most prestigious newspapers and magazines.

Except when they're flogging product.

And they all passed through London to do just that.

Australia, like most countries, likes to think of itself as the centre of the earth, as a world leader - with the phrase "this is the best country on earth" often repeated.

In fact Australia is a vast and sparsely populated country on the edge of infinity, some of the harshest deserts on the planet for a centre and the threatening southern ocean spread out beneath.

The only time it ever feels like the centre of anything is at odd places in the ancient spiritual heart, where the rocks and the sand turn pastel and the sky becomes a swirling bowl above the yellow desert melons. And the landscape, millions of years old, is so powerful the Aboriginal stories of the Dreamtime become real.

For its peoples to become separated from this country, to be imprisoned within four walls, is a heart breaking loss. 

But for those with European ancestry, a sense of loneliness pervades the Australian consciousness.

And for very good reason.

An outcrop of western civilisation; Australia has no real neighbours.

And most of the world knows very little about it. Except for the fact that there are kangaroos there.

"Jin-Joey!" as the locals in Thailand, where he was presently living, would say, delighted that they could demonstrate their rarely extensive knowledge of his country of origin.

Back in the London of the 1980s, he soon worked out that plead as he might for an interview with one of his heroes, British author Doris Lessing, she wasn't going to make herself available just like that to some enterprising young journalist from a remote island on the other side of the world unless she had a book to sell. She was off writing a novel somewhere in the north, Scotland, if his memory served correctly, and always gracious, transmitted her good will without obliging. His preparedness to travel was dismissed.

Australians weren't great readers. The ability to act like a moron was keystone of survival in a country where chameleon like abilities were essential. Any sign of intellect was regarded with suspicion amongst much of the populace. Topping the class, as he had done consistently throughout his school years, was a death knell to popularity. As a consequence of this entrenched anti-intellectual climate, the Australian market for books was limited. But if you were selling a new book and were in interview mode, it was easy enough to slot in an aspirant from nowhere's ville.

As he was doing many of the interviews for the Friday review section of Australia's well regarded Financial Review, the best selling national finance paper in the country and known at the time for its rigorous style of journalism, he soon worked out the trick words to get the public relations person onside.

His standard line was: "It's for the Financial Review, the Australian equivalent of the Financial Times."

The Financial Times, then published distinctively on pale pink newsprint, was one of England's most prestigious newspapers and an organ any PR flack would like their subject to be showcased in. The readers were guaranteed to have enough money to buy a mere book.

He sometimes heard the almost invariably young women repeating his phraseology word for word as they explained to the bewildered author who had just conducted an interview with more familiar organs such as The London Times Review of Books or The Guardian exactly who he was.

Despite having crossed the first bridge and joined the queue of journalists lining up to interview whatever living legend was in town that week, there were other obstacles to overcome. 

He soon worked out why he was being slotted in at 9am to interview people like Anthony Burgess. 

He was low down the pecking order and in a busy day of scheduled interviews the morning spots were just about the least prestigious spot possible.

In those days, going through another phase of drinking and partying in the London clubs half the night, he wasn't always at his best at 9am. But then neither were the authors.

So when it came to Joseph Heller he reacted with mock horror when the public relations woman tried to slot him in at the allotted hour.

"Who wants to be interviewed at 9am in the morning?" he snapped back. "Not me. Don't be ridiculous."

"But he's got interviews slotted for every hour of the day," the PR woman protested. "There's nothing I can do."

He held his ground.

And thus it was that he came to have lunch with Joesph Heller, the author of Catch 22, one of the most famous novels of the twentieth century.

Joseph never repeated the success of the book whose title entered the English language as meaning a double trap.

In fact many of his books were rather long and rather dull.

But Heller in person was charm itself.

He arrived at the trendy little French restaurant near Covent Garden nominated by the public relations professional - it got their backs up if you called them girls - ahead of time and sat a little uncomfortably amongst the starched white linen tablecloths, the restaurant yet to fill with the lunchtime crowd.

Nothing to be frightened of.

Interviewing one of the 20th centuries most famous authors was just another strange event in an already crowded life.

Finally, a little later than the appointed hour, the PR woman with Joseph Heller in toe arrived, and he rose from the table to greet them.

They were full of the news that they had just passed an employment agency called Catch 22,

Which of course provoked the obvious question of what it was like to have written a novel whose title had literally entered the English language, the expression now being accepted into modern dictionaries.