There was no catch because no one wanted out. The late Joseph Heller has been in the news today. The auction of letters he wrote to an American academic in the ‘70s has revealed that he “enjoyed” the war, which may come as a surprise to those who thought Yossarian, the US Army Air Force bombardier who served in Italy, was a proxy for Heller, the US Army Air Force bombardier who served in Italy.
This story raises an old contention: that characters can be engendered simply in a writer’s mind’s eye and are not necessarily derived from either the quick or the dead. This was a major bugbear of Evelyn Waugh and Anthony Powell, who both contested the facile belief that every character has one ultimate source in reality. Heller, perhaps, was another dissenter. Then again, he might have just been joking. It wouldn’t have been the first time.
The other major literary news of the day is that the Office of Fair Trading has accepted Amazon’s bid for the online bookseller, The Book Depository.
The merger was proposed in July and was immediately referred to the OFT after various third parties representing other booksellers and publishers complained that the deal would further strengthen the industry’s dominant player. The OFT has today rejected those arguments. Its report says that the Book Depository’s market share (2 – 4 per cent) is too small to affect competition in the UK.
Industry representatives of Amazon’s competitors are privately shocked by the OFT’s decision, and they describe themselves as “deeply unhappy”. It remains to be seen whether they will take action in British and European courts to stop or limit the merger.
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