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marcellemf's review against another edition
funny
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
anywiebs's review
5.0
This book is just perfect! Heller's writing is so awesome and spot on all through the book. He has this special way of describing his characters, just already showing you not to take them too serious because they do have some flaws, despite what he sais.
Also I really enjoyed when he made you aware of the fact, that you're reading a book and that he is the master of the things happening in it.
His main character is an elderly writer who wants to finish his career and life with one big masterpiece.
So you follow his ideas, outlines and first drafts until he gives up on them. It is just so enlightening to see the workings of the writer and find your own struggles (as a writer) in there.
I just loved this book!
Also I really enjoyed when he made you aware of the fact, that you're reading a book and that he is the master of the things happening in it.
His main character is an elderly writer who wants to finish his career and life with one big masterpiece.
So you follow his ideas, outlines and first drafts until he gives up on them. It is just so enlightening to see the workings of the writer and find your own struggles (as a writer) in there.
I just loved this book!
jossarian4's review against another edition
4.0
What a way to send off your own career: a book joking about your own career. Heller, I owe a lot to you. I wish you were still around for me to tell you how much your books meant to me and my undergraduate career, moving me forward into my graduate career. I can't thank you at all, but if I could, I wouldn't be able to thank you enough. It's been a pleasure reading all of your work.
smcleish's review
4.0
Originally published on my blog here in June 2001.
Heller's final novel, published posthumously, is about an American author in his seventies, struggling to get started on what he expects to be his final novel. He wants to create something by which he will be remembered, rather than something which will be compared disparagingly to his famous first novel, as all his subsequent fiction has been. (As he says, though, you can only burst triumphantly onto the scene once.)
Like the novel to which it makes clear reference, [b:A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man|7588|A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man|James Joyce|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309376772s/7588.jpg|3298883], there are obviously many autobiographical elements to Heller's tale of Eugene Pota (POTA - Portrait Of The Artist). It is perhaps not intended to be such a general depiction of the nature of the artist (note the title changing "the" to "an"). After all, people in old age are more individual than children and teenagers, simply because they have had more time for their experiences to differentiate them.
The inevitable thing that the reader does is to compare Heller's last novel with his earlier work, precisely what Eugene Pota complains about. It seems to me to be gentler than the earlier novels that I have read, much more resigned to the world even than [b:Closing Time|223737|Closing Time The Sequel to Catch-22|Joseph Heller|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348205609s/223737.jpg|1834779]. It is humourous, particularly in the false starts Pota makes toward his final novel, and it is full of ironic references to Heller (at one point Pota complains that he is stuck in a [b:Catch-22|168668|Catch-22|Joseph Heller|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333954100s/168668.jpg|814330], for example). It reads rather like a [a:John Barth|8113|John Barth|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1222685060p2/8113.jpg] novel rather than a Joseph Heller one, and it is certainly much more self-consciously literary in character (which is of course because it is about writing a novel and is part of the joke).
I like Portrait of an Artist, As an Old Man. It may lack the fire of Catch-22, the sense that what you're reading is one of the great novels, but it is clever and enjoyable, gentle, funny and accepting old age with dignity and wry sadness. It is probably Heller's most original novel, with (as always) the exception of his first.
Heller's final novel, published posthumously, is about an American author in his seventies, struggling to get started on what he expects to be his final novel. He wants to create something by which he will be remembered, rather than something which will be compared disparagingly to his famous first novel, as all his subsequent fiction has been. (As he says, though, you can only burst triumphantly onto the scene once.)
Like the novel to which it makes clear reference, [b:A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man|7588|A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man|James Joyce|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309376772s/7588.jpg|3298883], there are obviously many autobiographical elements to Heller's tale of Eugene Pota (POTA - Portrait Of The Artist). It is perhaps not intended to be such a general depiction of the nature of the artist (note the title changing "the" to "an"). After all, people in old age are more individual than children and teenagers, simply because they have had more time for their experiences to differentiate them.
The inevitable thing that the reader does is to compare Heller's last novel with his earlier work, precisely what Eugene Pota complains about. It seems to me to be gentler than the earlier novels that I have read, much more resigned to the world even than [b:Closing Time|223737|Closing Time The Sequel to Catch-22|Joseph Heller|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348205609s/223737.jpg|1834779]. It is humourous, particularly in the false starts Pota makes toward his final novel, and it is full of ironic references to Heller (at one point Pota complains that he is stuck in a [b:Catch-22|168668|Catch-22|Joseph Heller|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333954100s/168668.jpg|814330], for example). It reads rather like a [a:John Barth|8113|John Barth|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1222685060p2/8113.jpg] novel rather than a Joseph Heller one, and it is certainly much more self-consciously literary in character (which is of course because it is about writing a novel and is part of the joke).
I like Portrait of an Artist, As an Old Man. It may lack the fire of Catch-22, the sense that what you're reading is one of the great novels, but it is clever and enjoyable, gentle, funny and accepting old age with dignity and wry sadness. It is probably Heller's most original novel, with (as always) the exception of his first.
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