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Portrait of an Artist As an Old Man

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This novel is about the only reasonable way that Joseph Heller could have closed the book on his tumultuous and probably very frustrating career. Being cursed with the blessing of having his very first book, Catch-22, hailed as a literary masterpiece still read by high school juniors everywhere, there was no real way to eclipse his initial offering. When you start at the top, the only place to go is down, and with each successive book, this became painfully apparent. Even his decades later sequel, Closing Time, fell very flat and very far short of Catch-22.
So I was very surprised and very pleased when his final book, Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man, turned out to be vibrant and refreshing and about as good as it gets. It is a frank and honest thinly veiled autobiography about the joys and terrors of being a writer of some acclaim who seems to have run out of steam. The false starts and stops of what this book could have been make the novel even more enticing. Resistant to the idea given by his editor of writing about the process of writing, Eugene Pota is trying to end his career with a grand magnum opus on par with Tom Sawyer or The Odyssey or even a scandalous book about his wife's sex life. And aren't we lucky that he ditched all of those ideas and brought us this rare treat instead. An original work about a writer trying to figure out what to write about.
It is short, it is original and it is a very good read. Bravo on such a courageous choice to close the book on a career that started out with one of the best novels written in the English (or any other) language.

Writer's block happens.

Joseph Heller apparently knew it well. Before his 1999 death, the famed author of "Catch-22" put his frustrations into fiction, resulting in 2000's "A Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man," recently released in paperback format.

The story is ingenious, and perhaps eeriely autobiographical. Aging author Eugene Pota (how clever is Heller? Pota = P.O.T.A., or Portrait Of The Artist) is struggling to write his next novel. We, as readers, get to see his latest attempts in action.

They range from a modern day re-telling of Tom Sawyer, a story told from the viewpoint of a gene, a re-telling of a mythological story, another re-telling of a biblical story, and so on. Pota gets a few pages written, but ultimately rejects each one for a variety of reasons (too much research required, it's been done to death, ludicrous concept).

Oh sure, there's the appealing notion of penning a sex book. People will coo and wink naughtily at parties, especially when you reveal your title: "A Sexual Biography of My Wife." (Your wife, in this case Eugene's wife Polly, on the other hand, is none too thrilled.) But when the title is all you've got, well...

Here Heller presents a scarily realistic view of the horrors of writer's block, and proves he has perhaps the only sure-fire method of alleviating it: Write about your writer's block.

In the midst of doing exactly that, Heller presents a three-dimensional figure in Pota. The book lives up to its title, as Eugene feels his age and struggles to capture a glimmer of what he once had. ("Catch-22," anyone?) "Portrait" is very much a story of an artist struggling to keep a grip on his craft, as it is the only thing he has left. It also provides an appealing look into the artist's creative process, and hints as to what was running through Heller's mind while penning his other works, like "Something Happened," "God Knows" and "Picture This."

Also deserving of praise is the way Heller captures the characters of Pota and Polly. Eugene is a man struggling to keep busy and recapture his former glory, which also includes looking in on a couple ex-lovers and old flames, of which there are many. While not quite as three-dimensional as her husband, we see little glimpses of Polly's motivation. And one wonders how the Heller marriage fared in his waning years; if the Potas are as autobiographical as the rest of the novel seems to be, theirs was a marriage that had sunken into mutual distaste and even a hint of hatred brought upon by old age. It's disturbing to behold.

It's a relatively short work, one that doesn't even come close to approaching the magnitude of "Catch-22." Which is exactly Heller's point, and makes "Portrait" all the more breathtaking. This a cautionary tale, both envy-inspiring and frightening to aspiring writers (I tremble as I type this), and a work that could have, in all honesty, probably been written by any struggling poet with a title but no song.

But Heller is the one who wrote it, and he can rest easy in the knowledge that anyone else who dares attempt such a tale will merely be following in his giant footsteps.

Although Heller's trademark irony, self-effacing sarcasm and appreciation of the absurd are rife throughout the novel, "Portrait" is a radical departure from his previous work. A biographical account of a writer penning what he hopes will be his final masterpiece, the protagonist (obviously Heller himself) fears the inevitable descent into mediocrity. The book, unfortunately, is indeed solidly mediocre in both prose and plot, but is imbued with a certain sadness and poignancy. Fans of "Catch 22" should not expect a sequel in any form, but diehard Heller fans will nonetheless appreciate his literary swan song, which throws this private author into sharper relief than any of his other novels.

Like many novels in our postmodern world, Heller's final work is interesting and engaging, but also very caught up with sex. His reflections and humour are still as good as ever, and especially profound are his insights into what it means to grow old and the pressure on aging writers to produce a(nother) masterpiece. The novel runs the intellectual gamut from the Illiad to Tom Sawyer, plus offers a compendium of other works that I intend to pursue. Overall, a worthwhile find in the mode of contemporary, male-authored literature ala Updike and Roth.

This isn't Heller's best or even second best work and I didn't get the feeling it was expected to be by the author. It's also a much different work than anything he's done before. The most interesting aspect of Portrait is its introduction into the mind of the author looking for a subject for his next novel. Heller produces some vignette items that are very clever in themselves, but which lack the potential for development into a larger work -- thus presenting his dilemma with something like, but not exactly, writer's block. By doing this with plots from American literature and literary biography, Biblical figures and Homeric characters and other Greek mythology, he gives a pleasant, if not profound, work that is excellent for summer beach reading. On a deeper level, Heller seems (at least) to share some of the reflections of his last couple of years in an autobiographical sense. Portrait is well worth a trial, if only as light to moderate entertainment.

It's somehow unsurprising that "Portrait of an Artist As An Old Man" was Joseph Heller's final novel. It feels like a final novel, both autobiographical and a musing about the art of writing. People who haven't tried to write probably won't appreciate this odd little novel as much as those who have.

Eugene Pota is a well-known author who produced an immensely successful modern classic many years ago. Though his books since then have been critical and monetary successes, all of them have been compared to that first book. Now, in his mid-seventies, Eugene reflects on the changing literary world and wants to write a mega-success, a fantastic book that will be loved and appreciated and possibly made into a movie. That's a pretty tall order.

So he begins writing various books, such as the Biblical parody "God's Wife," a book about Greek legends from the goddess Hera's point of view, a parody of "Tom Sawyer," and a novel about a husband viewing his wife's "transgressions." All of them don't quite work out...

Exactly how much of this book is autobiographical isn't clear -- between the witty final line and the stuff about Coney Island and "God Knows," it's clear that much of Pota is actually Heller. One thing that Heller did in this book (besides homage himself) is reflect on the authors who have gone before him. There are lots of references to Henry James, Mark Twain, Jack London, and plenty of others; at the same time, he mulls over the tragic qualities of their lives. (The aborted "Tom Sawyer" parody includes Tom going around looking for them)

This book, technically, is not about writer's block; rather it's about the frustration of feeling required to top yourself, and of a basic lack of inspiration. Not being able to write in the middle of a book is bad enough. But it's even worse when you have trouble just figuring out what you want to start out with. Eugene's dogged attempts to do the impossible -- to top himself -- are pleasant to read about.

His writing is funny and insightful, but occasionally becomes a bit self-indulgent. And I wasn't sure what to make about the passages about Polly, Pota's wife. Meaning, I wasn't sure if she was based on his actual last wife and whether he was frustrated with her.

Some witty dialogue, amusing false starts and some genuinely poignant soul-baring fill this book. It's a shame the "Old Man" passed away before it was even published.

Joseph Heller was indecisive about what his final great work should be. He explored many different avenues, but still found himself indecisive. Through the character Eugene Pota, "Pota" being an acronym for Portrait of an Artist, Heller explores the journey to his final novel. While this is not as critically acclaimed as some of Heller's others works, it is one of the best books I have read this year.

Many of the great authors found their lives ending in loneliness and tragedy. Knowing this, Pota sought to end his career with one last great novel. Ideally this book would be so successful that he could explore a movie option. Along the way to this new novel, he pays homage to many tragic authors such as Mark Twain, Franz Kafka, Jack London, and many others. With the biting humor of Joseph Heller, Pota begins writing a literary idea in the book only to rip it to shreds a few pages later. The book is written with sections that alternate between the life of Eugene Pota and Heller's real-life efforts to settle on a novel to write.

Well-read individuals will enjoy this book tremendously. Those that have enjoyed Heller's humor in his other works will certainly embrace his more obscure final work. This book is a wonderful little gem.

The final book in the career of Joseph Heller is a fine tale. The protagonists plight is having to live up to past glory. Eugene Pota is trying in his twilight years to write a novel that will appeal to the masses and "be a Hollywood movie". Pota's career began with great acclaim and success, but he subsequent novels have fallen into the category of good or "not one of his best". As he flips back an forth from writing this novel to complaining about not being able to write it and just living you can get lost in the action. The book so closely parallels what one would believe to be Hellers own career. Catch-22 to ... well, everything else, books that may have been best sellers, but no one remembers now, unless you are a fan of Heller. These closes parallels tend haze parts of the novel, however it all comes together on the last page, it makes you wonder if this was a narration of what Heller himself went through to write this, his last novel. I found the book to be fast paced, comical and memorable. A fine way to spend an evening or two. Thanx for your time, T

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST, AS AN OLD MAN (there seems to be some confusion over the title as the hardback reads AN ARTIST, while the paperback and the narrative goes with THE ARTIST) is one of the most fragmented and disjointed books that I've ever read. Given that this was a volume based upon a writer struggling in the clutches of the dreaded Writer's Block, this disorganization failed to surprise me. I enjoyed the book far more than I thought I would given the amount of reviews that emphasized the mental frustrations. And while a significant number of pages are dedicated to aborted novels, they don't totally dominate the entirety. Yes, on the surface, the book is a flimsy narrative stringing together numerous and seemingly random ideas. On the other hand, as with most of Heller's writings, there is method to this madness and I found the complete story to be quite rewarding.

The fictional life of the narrator is threaded inside the various stories that he begins and abandons during the course of the book. Presumably, Joseph Heller was doing something similar in putting aspects of his own life inside this book, and it's difficult to tell where one can draw the line between fiction and reality. This was a hallmark of some of Heller's previous works, so fans of his wit will no doubt enjoy the elusive qualities of the fiction as much as I did. It's amusing to catch references inside the fragmented stories to others in the collection, as well as allusions to the life of the narrator and to the work and life of Heller himself. I found myself having to mentally pause while absorbing the book to figure out if a detail that I had just read was something out of the fictional author's life, the actual author's life, or something that was completely new. I found it amusing to try to keep all of the various facts together.

Although overall the story moved very quickly, I felt that there were a few portions that dragged. The majority of the fractional stories are interesting, but there are a few that stick out as being tedious, unworkable and flat. It's occasionally hit and miss, though one suspects that this is the point of including them all. Some story seeds seem to have potential while others are a waste of time, and it's up to the author to sort the gems from the trash. Unfortunately, while this may give one an insight into the mind of a writer, it doesn't always yield material that one would want to sit down and read about.

While being a far cry from Heller's more dense novels, PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS AN OLD MAN does exactly what it sets out to do. It's the bittersweet, final novel from someone who always had something interesting to say, even if he didn't always know what to say next. One can easily picture Joseph Heller as the cranky, cantankerous old writer looking for one final great masterpiece. While this book isn't the brilliant work of genius that the fictional writer was aspiring to, it is an interesting look at the search for inspiration.

Joseph Heller wrote one great book, Catch-22. Nothing else in his long career ever came close to capturing the absurd tragedy and comedy of the modern world as that book did, but they were interesting and readable nevertheless. Alas, the same cannot be said for Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man. This "novel", which deals with an aging author struggling to find a new subject to write about, fails on almost every front. It isn't funny or insightful. It doesn't really tell a story. It presents, instead, a series of false starts to novels that the author then gives up on as being no good. And for good reason - they ARE no good. The frustration the author feels seems real enough. The reader, unfortunately, experiences the same frustration and it is never resolved. Frustration is a good plot device if the story then resolves the issues that caused the frustration. That doesn't happen here. There are some touching scenes in the book, but they aren't really integrated into the whole. Indeed, there doesn't seem to be any sense of this series of bits and pieces being a "whole" anything. Supposidly Heller "finished" this book just before his death. If that is true it doesn't come across in the reading. It seems incomplete and fragmentary, and a sad exit for a great writer.