Face of a Hero
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''Face of a Hero'' is a novel written by American writer Louis Falstein and published in 1950. Though out of print for a long time, interest in this narrative, dealing with the war experience of a
B-24 The Consolidated B-24 Liberator is an American heavy bomber, designed by Consolidated Aircraft of San Diego, California. It was known within the company as the Model 32, and some initial production aircraft were laid down as export models des ...
tail gunner in Southern Europe during the
Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
was rekindled when it was suggested that it inspired
Joseph Heller Joseph Heller (May 1, 1923 – December 12, 1999) was an American author of novels, short stories, plays, and screenplays. His best-known work is the 1961 novel ''Catch-22'', a satire on war and bureaucracy, whose title has become a synonym for ...
while writing his well-known
war novel A war novel or military fiction is a novel about war. It is a novel in which the primary action takes place on a battlefield, or in a civilian setting (or home front), where the characters are preoccupied with the preparations for, suffering the ...
''
Catch-22 ''Catch-22'' is a satirical war novel by American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953; the novel was first published in 1961. Often cited as one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century, it uses a distinctive non-ch ...
''.


Plot

The novel is told by a first-person narrator, a 36-year-old American airman of Jewish descent, Ben Isaacs, who had worked as a teacher before volunteering for the Air Force. He has been assigned to the newly formed crew of a B-24 Liberator heavy bomber, called "Flying Foxhole", as tail gunner, and sent to Mandia, an air base in Apulia, southern
Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
, in the summer of 1944. Isaacs is frightened by his first bomb run, which is against the heavily defended industrial area of
Wiener Neustadt Wiener Neustadt (; ; Central Bavarian: ''Weana Neistod'') is a city located south of Vienna, in the state of Lower Austria, in northeast Austria. It is a self-governed city and the seat of the district administration of Wiener Neustadt-Land Distr ...
in
Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
. He feels alienated from his fellow crewmembers because he is older than them, and also because he is the only Jew on the bomber. However, he manages to get accustomed to the terrifying flights over Nazi-occupied Europe, and to establish some camaraderie with the other crewmembers. The life of the American airmen is described in detail, and Falstein focuses on the relations with the "natives", that is, the Italian people of Apulia, hindered by the linguistic barrier, and the sometimes uneasy relations between airmen from different parts of the United States and different ethnic backgrounds (one of the gunners, Cosmo Fidanza, is the son of an Italian immigrant coming from Bari, the capital of the region). The novel also analyses the psychological burden put on the airmen by the repeated stress of the bomb runs, which leads to alcohol abuse and brings some of them (such as Cosmo) to the verge of breakdown.


Crew of the "Flying Foxhole"

* 1st Lt. Albert Pennington Jr aka "Big Wheel", pilot - later replaced by 2nd Lt. George "Casey Jones" Petersen * Lt. Chet Kowalski, co-pilot - replaced by Lt. Oscar Schiller * Lt. Andy Kyle, navigator * Dick Martin, bombardier * Cosmo Fidanza, ball turret gunner - replaced by Charley Couch * Ben Isaacs, tail gunner * Jack Dula (called "Dooley"), flight-engineer * Leo Trent, waist-gunner * Billy Poat, radio-gunner * Mel Ginn, nose gunner


Controversy about ''Catch-22''

In April 1998, Lewis Pollock, a London bibliophile, wrote to ''
The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, w ...
'' asking how "characters, personality traits, eccentricities, physical descriptions, personnel injuries and incidents" as depicted in ''Catch-22'' could be so similar to those present in Louis Falstein's ''Face of a Hero'' (published in the United Kingdom in 1951 as ''The Sky is a Lonely Place''), and wondering whether this could not be a case of plagiarism, inasmuch as Heller wrote the first chapter of ''Catch-22'' (1953) while he was a student at Oxford, when Falstein's novel had already been available for two years. ''
The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'' noticed that there are indeed similarities between the two books, inasmuch as "both have central characters who are using their wits to escape the aerial carnage; both are haunted by an omnipresent injured airman, invisible inside a white body cast". However, Heller declared that he had never read Falstein's novel, or heard of him, and said: "My book came out in 1961 I find it funny that nobody else has noticed any similarities, including Falstein himself, who died just last year".''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', April 27, 1998
1. "Heller introduces ''the soldier in white'' who "was encased from head to toe in plaster and gauze" in chapter one. He continues, ''He had two useless legs and two useless arms'' and had been smuggled into the ward at night. Later in his book, Falstein also has a soldier in white who ''looked entombed in the cast, like an Egyptian mummy.'' This invalid is the crew's new pilot, wounded in action. In ''Catch-22,'' the figure is as mysterious and as metaphorical as the Unknown Soldier." 2. In Falstein's book a character sleeps with five cats. In Heller's book, Hungry Joe ''dreamed that Huple's cat was sleeping on his face, suffocating him, and when he woke up, Huple's cat was sleeping on his face.'' 3. Both Falstein's Isaacs and Heller's Yossarian take extra flak jackets into combat as did many flight crews in combat. 4. A holiday party ends in gunfire in both books. 5. There is a rape scene with some similarity in both books. Both Falstein and Heller flew bomber missions in southern Italy and Corsica during the Second World War, so it is understandable that their stories might have some similarities. There are also remarkable differences in the two writers' approach to their war experience: Falstein uses a more traditional narrative style, with a linear plot and well-written prose aiming at a realistic description of events and the narrator's feelings, while Heller adopts a fragmented non-linear plotline, and a deliberately repetitive prose whose obsessive rhythm underscores the absurdity of his characters' predicament; moreover, several scenes of Heller's novel are surrealistic, while Falstein always strives to achieve verisimilitude. As a consequence of this controversy Falstein's novel was reprinted in March 1999 by Steerforth Press.


References


External links

* {{cite web , url= https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/29/books/critic-s-notebook-questioning-the-provenance-of-the-iconic-catch-22.html , series= Critic's Notebook , title= Questioning the Provenance of the Iconic 'Catch-22' , first= Mel , last= Gussow , date= Apr 29, 1998 , publisher= NY Times 1950 American novels Novels set during World War II Harcourt (publisher) books