American Book Review 100 Best First Lines from Novels

[MalignD at aol.com]

<< I agree on Picture This--the idea of it is more than the novel can 
duplicate. >>

There's also a book called Conversations With Heller, a compilation of 
interviews with him.  It's published, I think, by some small press; you can find it 
on-line.  But it's great stuff to read.  He's very funny, very bright and 
quick, and loves the back and forth of conversation.  And he has, not 
surprisingly, interesting things to say about writing.

The chapters he wrote in the book about his hospitalization, No Laughing 
Matter, (every other chapter; every other chapter by Speed Vogel) are also very 
droll.  Speed's are passable.

I think Heller right now is generally--and greatly--undervalued.  His 
situation is as if he wrote only Catch 22, as if he were Malcolm Lowry or Ralph 
Ellison or Henry Roth.