He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.

Heller’s line is a sardonic inversion of the American “self-made man” myth. Instead of celebrating self-reliance as the cause of prosperity, it credits the subject with total ownership of failure: he “owes” his lack of success to nobody but himself. The joke hinges on the language of merit and debt—success is often framed as earned, while failure is blamed on circumstances or other people. Heller compresses a critique of self-congratulation and excuse-making into a single epigram, suggesting that radical individualism can just as easily produce isolation, mediocrity, or self-sabotage as it can produce triumph.