TypeTown #37: “I don’t understand the process of imagination.”

📁 Joseph Heller, Alda Merini, Damon Runyon, and more...

May 08, 2023

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How to spend the weekend in a country overdosing on the silliness of giving an ageing man a new hat?

Embrace the daftness and silence your inner scepticism? Or quietly express your doubts and risk pariah status?

Welcome to the UK and 72 hours of social conundrums.

It’s not, in the strictest definition of the phrase, a Catch-22 situation.

But it’s not far off.

So this week’s TypeTown opener — a crash through the career of Joseph Heller, author of said literary classic — feels somewhat apt.

Born in Coney Island in 1923, he learned his craft as an advertising copywriter.

Then, aged 30, the opening line of Catch-22 arrived fully formed and with little warning.

“I don’t understand the process of imagination.”

In a frenzied effort, he produced the entire opening chapter on the same day — first in longhand, and later on his green Smith-Corona.

Then he spent months plotting out every twist, turn, and character arc. “One year later, after much planning,” he said, “I began Chapter Two.”

Inspired by his own experience of flying 60 combat missions on the Italian Front, the work is a satirical examination of war, tragedy, farce, and paradox.

It is frequently listed as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

“When I read something saying I’ve not done anything as good as Catch-22, I’m tempted to reply, ‘Who has?’”

It took another 13 years until his next novel was published. He died in 1999 with just six to his name. A seventh, Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man, was published the following year.

“I’ve only had four ideas for a novel in my life, and I’ve written all of them.”

A decade ago, the machine on which Heller wrote Catch-22 was publicly displayed at a University of South Carolina campus library. We are unsure if it is still there.

READ» Joseph Heller’s Handwritten Outline for Catch-22, One of the Great Novels of the 20th Century - Open Culture

READ» Joseph Heller, The Art of Fiction No. 51 - The Paris Review

READ» Joseph Heller’s Writing Routine: “I feel that these ideas are floating around in the air and they pick me to settle upon.” - Famous Writing Routines

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Magnificent in Milan

To Italy next, where the voice of poet and writer Alda Merini still echoes through the country’s soul.

Merini died in 2009 aged 78. Her life had not been without incident.

She endured the sudden death of her first husband, the constant battle of raising four daughters from the proceeds of her poetry, and almost two decades of being institutionalised with mental health challenges.

Twice a Nobel Prize nominee, her work combines passion and humanity; anguish and love.

“I am not a woman who can be domesticated.”

She is interred at the Cimitero Monumentale di Milano alongside some of Italy’s most prominent actors, politicians, writers, and artists.

READ» Great Italians of the Past: Alda Merini - We The Italians

READ» Overlooked No More: Alda Merini, Poet Who Wrote of Life’s Joys and Struggles - The New York Times

From one Manhattan to another

Finally, check out the hat on this fella.

A walking fashion cliche of the early 20th century, meet journalist and short story writer Damon Runyon.

Born in Manhattan, Kansas in 1880, he made his name in newspapers before turning his hand to fiction and lighting up the prohibition era with a cast of colourful characters and fast-paced plots almost exclusively told in the present tense.

Like many writers, he accompanied his early work with an equally devout commitment to booze.

Two of his stories, The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown and Blood Pressure, formed the basis of Guys and Dolls.

In 1946, he succumbed to throat cancer. But he left his mark - quite literally. His ashes were scattered from a plane over New York’s Broadway.

Exit, stage right.

READ» Behind the Byline: Damon Runyon, More Than a Sportswriter - Library of Congress

READ» I wish more people would read ... Damon Runyon's short stories - The Guardian