Heller's last novel

[Doug Millison]

from PW Daily, 14 Dec 99:

Heller's Last Work to Appear Next Year

Booksellers haven't heard the last from Catch-22 author Joseph Heller, who
died this past Sunday at the age of 76.

S&S plans to go ahead with a fall 2000 publication of what turns out to be
his last novel, Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man.

Ironically--in what may be a kind of Catch-22--the novel is about an author
who has had a success with a book early in his life and is now struggling
to write an important "last" book.

Only two months ago, as part of its 75th anniversary commemoration, S&S
published a new hardcover edition of Catch-22, Heller's masterful World War
II satire that was first published in 1961.

Heller's death seems to have already spurred renewed interest in that book.
The 1996 Scribner paperback reprint edition is surging in sales. Since
Sunday, for example, the sales ranking of Catch-22 on Amazon.com jumped
from below #1500 to #131 at press time.--Judy Quinn

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