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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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