No Laughing Matter (Corgi books) - Softcover

Joseph Heller is the distinguished author of CATCH-22 and other classic novels. Speed Vogel is a retired textile manufacturer, sometime artist and herring taster. Together, they have written an inspiring account of a calamitous illness - Guillain-Barre syndrome - suffered by Joe. And while Joe fought for his life, Speed moved into Joe's apartment, thenceforth to act as his messenger, servant and general factotum. He not only wrote but signed Joe's cheques, wined and dined (at Joe's expense) his favourite nurses and warded off the tantrums of his paralysed buddy.Joe's friends rallied around: Mel Brooks, arch-hypochondriac of the Western world; Mario Puzo, the most reluctant hospital visitor of all time, and Dustin Hoffman, who twice came through with strokes of imagination that helped to make Joe's time in hospital a little easier.But it was Speed Vogel who played the major part in helping Joe Heller, writer and buddyextraordinaire, through his greatest crisis, and it is their combined efforts which have produced a story that is as wacky, terrifying and great-hearted as any fiction Joseph Heller ever wrote.