Talk:Picture This (novel)

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[edit] Copyvio?

At Amazon.com

From Publishers Weekly

In a radical departure, Heller has concocted a clever, strange piece of experimental historical fiction. As the novel begins, slovenly, debt-ridden Rembrandt van Rijn is painting his now-famous Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer. Suddenly, we are whisked from 17th century Holland to ancient Greece, where an exiled, weary Aristotle clairvoyantly watches Rembrandt doing his portrait. Not much has changed, the philosopher concludes as he gazes down the centuries at our dawning modern era of greed, wars and capitalism run amok. Written in a flat, reportorial style, omniscient in viewpoint, the narrative confusingly and annoyingly jumpcuts in time and spacebetween and within epochs. The chapters on Athens, where Plato pontificates while Socrates berates the belligerent youth Alcibiades, are occasionally wickedly funny. Best read in short takes, this startling parable about the degeneration of art into commodity and the survival of human values in a materialistic world demands total suspension of disbelief. For willing readers, it casts an undeniable spell. First serial to Playboy; BOMC featured alternate.

Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

— Miguel 13:37, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What the book is all about

Re MAJOR THEMES. The article gets it exactly right. This book is all about the peak and downfall of Athens, about the Delian League, the Persian and Peleponnesian wars, the beacon of democracy that destroys its own greatest advances. This is what Heller wrote the book for. He makes it abundantly clear in chapter 34 with the trial of Asclepius. Of one thing we can be sure: Heller would have loved Wikipedia, and especially this article. What a pity that he didn't live to see it.--BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 08:28, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Re HELLER'S THEME. Now let us turn to what Joseph Heller thought was the theme of his book. Two quotes will make this clear.
This is how the book opens: Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer thought often of Socrates while Rembrandt dressed him with paint...
And this is how it closes: The Rembrandt painting of Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer may not be by Rembrandt...The bust of Homer that Aristotle is shown contemplating is not of Homer. The man is not Aristotle.
There you have it. Does this belong in the article? Of course not. A Wikipedia article about a book is not the place to present the POV of its author. Especially not, if it is so confused and confusing as Mr Heller's.--BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 08:30, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Re DEMOCRACY. A key point. Unfortunately, Heller did not yet have Wikipedia to instruct him that his book was all about a beacon of democracy destroying his own advances. And so his POV led him to believe that it was, on the contrary, all about the fact that in Athens there never was a free democracy, and that the chances that we would ever get to see one anywhere in the world were extremely small.--BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 17:56, 29 September 2006 (UTC)