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PICTURE THIS

Name: PICTURE THIS
Author: Joseph Heller
ISBN: 0684868199

A NOVEL

by Joseph Heller ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 2, 1988

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You could say, being charitable, that Heller has now firmly moved his work in a new direction: postmodernist, syncretic, contrapuntal. You could as well say, not being charitable, that his new book is the worst kind of disingenuous botch, a sad comedown indeed from the author of Catch 22 and Something Happened: an imagination-less, inflated, one-dimensional, and oh-so-cheap routine of historical juxtaposition and smart-alecky asides. The premise is spun from Rembrandt's painting (now in the Metropolitan of New York) of Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer. This leads Heller into a series of cut-aways to ancient Greece, to 17th-century Amsterdam, and to contemporary New York—a wearying clutch of historical facts all given the gloss of Ripley-ish can-you-believe-it? coincidence and astoundingly naive liberal consternation. There is no story here—do not search—only a run of ping-ponging piths, the fruits of Heller's historical readings. That Rembrandt was a money-eager, poor-bastard genius; that Plato was a facist; that lovely Aristotle must be writhing in his ethics to be up there on the Met's walls, all $2,300,000 worth of him; that Greek history shows remarkable parallels to recent American stupidities and casual barbarities (I.F. Stone territory). You keep waiting for Heller, as he did in God Knows, at least to stuff some jokes into the mouths of the dead—but he's too busy with the jaundiced set of this painting of himself ("Rembrandt would not afford a Rembrandt") to bother actually to novelize a little. Charity would venture that Heller might be walking in the steps of someone like Guy Davenport (who pulls off this kind of history-pastiche with grace and tang and never such painful earnestness—or such length). The uncharitable would say that Heller, with this novel-length screed against wealth, has produced instead a swollen between-boards equivalent of a Paul Harvey broadcast. Just terrible—and even a little boorish.

Pub Date: Sept. 2, 1988

ISBN: 0684868199

Page Count: 358

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1988

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
CATCH AS CATCH CAN
by Joseph Heller & edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli & Park Bucker

- BOOK REVIEW
PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST, AS AN OLD MAN
by Joseph Heller

- BOOK REVIEW
NOW AND THEN
by Joseph Heller

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IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

by Genki Kawamura ; translated by Eric Selland ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 12, 2019

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

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A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.

The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.

Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.

Pub Date: March 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Flatiron Books

Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.