With the exception of Pota's "Literature of Despair" speech (had the conclusion been more uplifting or compelling, it would have made for a truly awesome lecture IRL), this novel was...not great. Main character was an absolute sleazeball, and his writing so poor that it was hard to imagine how he had been popular even before his decline.

Perhaps it's my own fault for having had such high expectations for what the novel would be like. Given what I'd known about Heller's life, and having only read one of his books (Catch-22, his crowning achievement and a definitive work of genius), I expected some profoundly moving story that would tug at my heartstrings and make me reflect on my mortality and the brevity and fallibility of humanity.... But nahhhh.

For the readers out there, I might save you a bit of grief if I tell you from the jump that Eugene Pota is Joseph Heller is Eugene Pota. They are one and the same. By that I mean - if you don't jive with Pota's writing style, then good luck, because the whole narrative is written in exactly the same style as his numerous failed stories.

Let it be known though that I still like Heller. One good book is all it takes to make a man, even if Pota thinks otherwise. Just felt like this novel was lazy.

Maybe if I reread it and took things less seriously, I'd enjoy it way more?

Also - this is only a small peeve, but if I had taken a shot every time someone said "Oh, shit," I would have died of alcohol poisoning.

Story about a man who's writing his last book, written by a man writing his last book.
Hmm...

This is the second Heller book I have read, the first being Something Happened which I thought was an excellent but bleak read. During its moments of bleakness, there were flitters of jokes scattered through that seemed unforced and natural.

This was my takeaway of the author: incredibly cynical, but incredibly funny.

After reading Something Happened, I believed the adage that Heller only published one good book already to be untrue, but I was sceptical about Portrait of An Artist, As An Old Man, because from the outset it seemed to be a compilation of failed book attempts packaged together, with connecting chapters between. This is exactly what the book is, but that is its charm.

These false starts do not seem disjointed because they are part of the wider story of the book. For instance, a section on the Greek Gods gets reinterpreted as a section on God's Wife, and then again as a section on Zeus' wife, which becomes part of the running motif of 'A Sexual Biography of...'.

My only criticism with this book was the overlap of the Tom Sawyer, Novelist and lecture sections, which I felt served the same purpose. I also have no background in Ancient Greece, so the name dropping of Greek Gods may have softened some of its intended impact on me.

However, the development of these stories, whether set in Ancient Greece or nineteenth-century America, seems natural because they reflect the development of Eugene Pota's (a very thinly veiled fictionalisation of Heller, himself) own thinking as he tries to write one last great book.

I believe that with this book, Pota/Heller achieves this. The pay off on the final page (even though only a paragraph) is extremely satisfying and caused me to smirk - as I imagine Heller intended.

4.75/5

This is a very clever final novel from the author. There are parts that are quite funny as he describes the difficulty of writing one last original work as an old man, a parody of his own life after having the enormous literary burden of rivalling the impact of Catch 22. Half digested ideas for stories are started and quickly discarded and somehow Heller pieces together these fragments to produce this final work. Add half a star.

Madde 22 efsane ama bu kitap tam bir edebi çöp.

'"Well, Paul, I'll confess. I'd sure like to do a book with a good chance for a movie sale."
"We don't do things for that."
"We sure do want it to happen, though."
"We don't say so." '

This meta tale about a successful author trying to write his last book chronicles a year of creative frustrations. So many books started and abandoned, promising ideas which don't extend beyond few pages, inspirations forced out of life and constant comparison with his earlier books. Oh so cheeky!

Pota - the author (later as Portait of the Author) in his 70s, is driving his wife Polly crazy when he is not writing. And worse when he starts and then stops. Told in first person, the book does a into the mind of Joseph Heller. He parodies his own books graciously passing them as Pota's books. He weaves in the biographies all the great authors who died penniless or depressed after initial success which is a compelling case.

There are parts of creative brilliance and experimentation which are vintage Heller. Like when he tries to retell Kafka's Metamorphosis set in New York whose protagonist is a wall street guy. Or when he ponders about other authors - Dostoyevsky, Gogol and Tolstoy right till Julian Barnes , John Grisham and Tom Clancy! The Tom Sawyer, as a novelist was also informative.

The other core tease of his bestseller formula book "The Sexual biography of my wife" without a story and then it's various versions till it ends up a Greek history was where I thought it could have been better. The writing process isn't easy at all.

I would probably recommend this book to every author who has seen some success and losing his/her mind with the question "Is that all I have?"

"The modern successful author is never entirely secure in his position and never totally at ease not knowing that he will be judged as good in the future as he has been in the past"

I really enjoyed this book - with all the little "start up books" Heller worked on throughout. Clever! I am going to have to reread Catch 22!

Eugene POTA (hail, James Joyce) struggles with writing and yet knows he has to write. Aging but intermittently resolute, he looks to write his last novel, but is constantly stymied by subject.
I was alternately sad and glad while reading.
I loved Tom Sawyer's tripping about the world in search of Mark Twain and others. Loved the "Literature of Despair" lecture. Wasn't so enamoured of sexual biographies of any sort although it was quite funny to think that the wife you're writing about tangentially may be writing a book, too. The conversations between Pota and his soon-to-be retired agent Paul are hilarious. Write a few chapters! Give me something to read! But Pota remains stuck between Hera and Polly and Aphrodite and Dostoevsky and Heracles and Zeus and Tom Sawyer, as well as by his compulsions to write, to be "laid down," to avoid boredom, to do again well what he did well once.
So much of the real Heller here, methinks.
Countless characters in search of an author... Or an author in search of...a book.

I read most of this for a paper I had to write. I vaguely remember liking it but not enough to finish it.

Maybe not the best intro to Joseph Heller, but it's bright, trenchant, and worth it for the wonderful Ton Sawyer sections. It's nice to read a late career book by a giant that's not steeped in pure bile. I wish the women were a bit more drawn in, but they weren't fetisihized and had inner lives beyond the Pota character. I'd totally go back and read the rest of his output.

It was a odd book to read. I believe I read Catch 22 in college lit class. Long ago. This book allowed Heller to deal with his career as a writer. My son in law described the book as semi-autobiographical. The book dealt with a fictional writer whose early books were a hit. Later books had diminished market value. So the writer searches for the one last hit. Various attempts at this is what the book displays chapter by chapter. There was the familiar satire and quirkiness of style which reminded me of Catch 22. As it turned out I sort of liked the book, but Heller's style is very different from what I like to read. I suppose it was good to have the challenge.

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