Greenpoint image taken from William Sherman’s site. New York is a city of transplants. A good third of the population — I’m guessing — makes a holiday pilgrimage home every year. So, come late December, the streets get quiet. The subways clear out. You can always find a table, or three, at the local bar. Inevitably fifteen other people . . .
Critics have wrongly cast Joseph Heller as a one-hit wonder. Catch-22 is his greatest novel, no question. But God Knows, told from the perspective of the Biblical King David, is also brilliant. And now, thanks to the Paris Review, there’s “Hagar & Ishmael,” an excerpt from an unfinished novel discovered earlier this year. It’s a wise and scathing piece of . . .