Picture This : A Novel | Joseph Heller

Picture This : A Novel | Joseph Heller | Very funny really

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Picture This : A N...

	Picture This : A Novel Joseph Heller Simon & Schuster, 2000 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Picture this: Rembrandt is creating his famous painting of Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer. As soon as he paints an ear on Aristotle, Aristotle can hear. When he paints an eye, Aristotle can see. And what Aristotle sees and hears and remembers from the ancient past to this very moment provides the foundation for this lighthearted, freewheeling jaunt through 2,500 years of Western Civilization.

Picture This is an incisive fantasy that digs deeply into our illusions and customs. Nobody but Joseph Heller could have thought of a novel like this one. Nobody but Heller could have executed it so brilliantly.

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Maybe his best?

Would it be some kind of sacrilige to say that this is a better piece of writing than Catch-22 ? Catch-22 is a superior emotional and autobiographical work, for sure; it is his "best" because of how closely it pulls readers through the dark comedy of warfare, which Heller experienced firsthand. But Heller's particular brand of wit comes through in a different way here, and proves his mettle as a writer, and not just as someone who came back from WWII with a "story to tell." The soul of this book is a political one, but the generosity Heller shows his characters -- who just happen to be Rembrandt and Aristotle -- is wonderful. Catch-22 is immersed in the "present" in that wartime is all about surviving hour-by-hour; what's neat about Picture This is how it looks at democracy and capitalism as they have existed for centuries: Socrates was put to death for "corrupting the youth" long before the NSA turned the U.S. into a police state; likewise the Dutch found out what a mess capitalism was hundreds of years before Wall Street. The genius of this book is in that Heller never really explicitly points a finger at modern states, but just points at the trail of dead they've left over thousands of years. Heller pulls art and history through the lens of capitalism & corruption, and he's deadpan-funny while he does it. Also helping the cause: the last few lines of this book are my favorite ending to any novel, ever.

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Very funny really

Joseph Heller has been compared to Mark Twain and rightfully so. Like Twain, Heller has a sharp sense of humor and can easily point out the foibles of mankind. If you are looking for a modern novel with well developed characters and a plot- look elswhere. If you think you know anything at all about Rembrandt or life in the 17th century, then try this one on for size.
Heller's paints a picture of Rembrandt (and Aristotle) that makes them so human you can laugh out loud at them, and you will.

Everything But the Title!

Thank God Joseph Heller kept writing after Catch 22! - at least so that Picture This could get written - the ONLY drawback about this book being its TITLE!! This book is just what critics say -spellbinding. As well you get a firsthand feeling of who Rembrandt is in his time and place - which is made totally relevant to present time time and place as well as Greek time and place centuries prior - very zen! But the title is not very zen it does not do justice to this story. Heller had a story to tell and it is a mind blower that keeps on giving! But he honestly does not seem to know what to CALL this or his other works after Catch 22(which was a great title oddly enough!)

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Superb, sensitive, imaginative scholarship down the drain

PICTURE THIS is a paradox -- a mammoth delight and a monstrous disappointment. It's a startlingly imaginative work in which Heller blends three disparate times in history. Aristotle awakens as Rembrandt applies paint to canvas. When Rembrandt paints his ear, Aristotle hears. As the brush perfects the eyes, Aristotle sees. And always, Aristotle observes.

Heller portrays life in mid-17th century Amsterdam and in the 3rd century before Christ, commenting on similarities to modern living, jumping back and forth between the ages, and tracing the 300-year history of the portrait. It's quite a mix, and that's where the book fails. He just doesn't pull it off.

The book reminds me of a game of checkers played without rules. It's an uncoordinated hopscotch through centuries, filled with distractions, tangents and irrelevant side trips. It's as though he tried to combine several books into one and missed.

Heller's books (CATCH-22, GOD KNOWS, etc.) are unique. Maybe he just tried too hard to be different. The text lacks discipline, organization and the feel for language we expect from master writers. Paragraphs are disjointed, sentences are clumsy and overburdened. Too often they just plain don't make any sense.

"The great seaport city of Amsterdam was then the richest and busiest shipping center in the world. The great seaport city of Amsterdam was not a seaport but is situated a good seventy miles from the closest deepwater shipping facilities in the North Sea." That's amateurish and sloppy. And typical.

Heller's mediocre, journalistic style (reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut's) is inadequate for the job he has cut out for himself. The superb, sensitive and imaginative scholarship displayed in PICTURE THIS deserves organized, disciplined, and equally sensitive writing. It didn't get it.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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