Picture This

Thanks to a totally unexpected debut post by our newest member Brian, I have the honor of making the 500th Back-Blogged logging. And to me, it only seems fitting that the privilege belong to no author other than Joseph Heller. I'm sure I've made it clear in blog entries past that one of my many smaller goals on the way to the ultimate goal of an empty and spotless backlog is to read Heller's seven novels, months apart, in publication order. Unfortunately, I've also made it clear that I've enjoyed each work less than the previous one. Picture This was both the hardest to find Heller novel and also the most poorly reviewed; I was looking forward to reading it, but really only so as to move along in my Heller catalogue. So imagine my great and pleasant surprise when, just thirty or forty pages into Picture This, I had finally found the long lost Heller wit I hadn't seen since first reading Catch-22 nine years ago. It's tough to summarize Picture This; the novel is really more commentary than story, and is told in a completely nonlinear fashion. Also, to try to describe it would not do it any justice whatsoever. But I'll try nonetheless. So, Rembrandt sits down in 17th century Holland and begins painting one of his most famous paintings, Aristotle Contemplating a Bust of Homer. The Aristotle in the painting becomes self aware (though he remains inanimate at all times - this isn't Harry Potter) and is culture-shocked at 17th century Holland (having just come from 4th century BC Greece). Eventually the painting ends up in 20th century New York in a museum. Now, very little of the novel, if any, is actually told from the perspective of Aristotle. Instead, an omnipresent narrator keeps jumping back and forth through space and time to do nothing more than describe these three eras, detailing major people and events that contributed to the history of Western civilization. And for the entirety of the 350-page book, Heller is ripping into everyone and everything all along the way. He's showing, without explicitly saying, that nothing ever changes. Men have always thirsted for blood, money, and power. People have always been cruel and unkind. No government has ever been able to avoid making rash and horrible decisions. All empires crumble and fade. The bullet point list of Heller's recurring morals and themes goes on and on. He's as cynical as I've ever seen him, but in an almost impossibly calm and collected manner. And it works. It works so well. With all due respect to Lewis Black, sometimes it's more efficient to merely mention something ridiculous than it is to scream about it. For instance, consider this one-sentence paragraph that ended a chapter regarding Rembrandt's ever-increasing popularity but ever-decreasing financial situation: "By the time he had died, Rembrandt could not afford a Rembrandt." Bam. So much said with so few words. Yes, Heller's back, and he's back big. Now in his sixties, he's almost thirty years older and wiser than he was when he wrote Catch-22 and it really does show. I still think Catch-22 is the better book, but Picture This is probably better-written and has a far more professionally monitored tone. The book isn't even irony-laden. It's more about lamenting than lampooning. I can understand why some people criticized Heller for being too sobering and deadpan this time around, but I absolutely loved it. In fact, numerous times while reading Picture This, I couldn't help but draw comparisons to The Boomer Bible, a favorite of mine (and Sween's!) that spends its first several-hundred pages mocking world history from the dawn of mankind to the present day. But whereas Boomer Bible is structured and monotonous, Picture This haphazardly bounces around between the ages drawing parallels only when necessary. I won't say that one works better than the other, as both are extremely effective at what they do and neither made me feel very good about humanity's outlook in general, but I will say that Heller just seems to have a way with words that few other authors possess. There's one part of the book in which Heller describes the trial of Socrates that wreaked havoc on my social injustice bone. I mean, the guy can flat out write. I've got just two more Heller books to go, and if patterns hold I should be done with Closing Time by March or so and Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man sometime in June or July. But after this gem, I'm not sure if I can wait that long before returning to the Heller portion of my backlog.