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Speed Vogel, focus of Joseph Heller novel, dies

LOS ANGELES TIMES

April 23, 2008

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Speed Vogel, who turned his friendship with novelist Joseph Heller into a best-selling memoir, "No Laughing Matter," has died of natural causes at his home in Sag Harbor. He was 90.

The 1986 memoir, co-written with Heller, tells the story of Heller's struggle in the early 1980s with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a neuromuscular disorder that causes paralysis. The book chronicles not only Heller's experiences with the disease but his unusual friendship with Vogel, a former businessman whose only prior writing experience was a college stint as a record reviewer. Vogel died April 14.

Vogel was born in 1918 in New York and attended West Virginia University and New York University. He worked as a shipbuilder during World War II before starting a textile business. He later gave up that business to indulge his interests in sculpting and music. He also worked as a herring taster, which he once described as his favorite job.

He had known Heller, best known for the 1961 novel "Catch-22," for 20 years when Heller was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre in 1982.

Vogel moved in with him to help him during his recovery. He signed the author's checks and autograph requests, fixed up Heller's apartment to make it wheelchair-accessible, even helped woo one of Heller's nurses, Valerie Humphries, whom Heller later married.

He and Heller alternated writing chapters of "No Laughing Matter," with Heller focusing on his medical ordeal and Vogel providing comic relief. New York Times reviewer William French observed Heller "could hardly invent a more improbable character in one of his novels" than Vogel, who regales readers with stories about their adventures, mainly involving gluttony and storytelling at ethnic restaurants with friends Mario Puzo, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner and Zero Mostel.

Vogel is survived by his wife, Lou Ann Walker, and five children.

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