Unscrewing the navel allusion

[Mark Kohut]

It is 1958. "Candida was delighted by [Robert] Gottleib's [S & S editor] enthusiasm for the Catch--18 manuscript.[[only 75 pages]. Finally,
someone got it! "Ii thought my navel would unscrew and my ass would fall off, " she often said to describe her happiness
when negotiations went well with an editor."   She had also received a positive response from Tom Ginsberg at Viking. 
 
S & S, we know, did publish Catch-22 and Ginsberg, a decade later, Gravity's Rainbow. 
 
I think it is clear from the stuff about Candida from this bio that Pynchon woudda probably read Catch-18 while he was writing 
V. as, at least I hinted at,,\ I say proudly full of myself, when I think I found some echoes of Heller in the early parts of V....
Candida sent it, gave it, to about everybody. 
 
Catch--22 was not published until October 1961,  approximately 6--9 months before V. would have been set to be published by 
Lippincott in early 1963. (We know part of V. was published in 1961, but I do not know when V., finished, was offered to
publishers, if it was...(that is, unless CD had made a deal early with Lippincott based on a major part of it.)
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