PICTURE THIS
Joseph Heller
G. P. Putnam's Sons
336 pp., $19.95
Like each of Joseph Heller's previous four novels, Picture This takes the form of a rambling, repetitious narrative whose purpose, stated broadly, is to convince us of the ubiquity of evil, the futility of virtuous action, and the ultimate corruption of all systems of social organization. Oh, yes--and to make us laugh. Heller has been variously effective at achieving these ends. His wonderfully energetic first book, Catch-22 (1961), though not without its flaws, is a genuine classic of the absurd, adroitly capturing the frustrations of military bureaucracy as experienced by John Yosarian, and American bombardier in World War II. Something Happened (1974) comprises a morbidly absorbing confessional monologue by an anxious husband, father, and organization man named Bob Slocum; though as well-written and darkly cynical as Catch-22, it exchanges its predecessor's energy for somberness, its anarchy for anomie, and offers a protagonist whose paranoia is unconvincing, unjustified, and inadequately explored. Yet it is in many ways an impressive book, and arguably qualifies as something of a tour de force in that it is a remarkably sustained recit of capacious proportions.
After Something Happened, something happened to Heller's writing: he lowered his standards. Having taken seven years to write his first novel and twelve to complete his second he came out with Good as Gold five years after Something Happened, and with God Knows five years after that. Vulgar, wordy, and breezily colloquial, these two books were obviously written faster and with less care than their predecessors. Like Catch-22, they are outrageous, but their outrageousness is of the crudest sort; like Catch-22, they are satirical, but the precise, delicately balanced satire of Heller's first novel largely gives way, in these books, to heavy sarcasm aimed at relatively easy targets.
Good as Gold introduces us to Bruce Gold, a Jewish intellectual who teaches English at Columbia University and who spends most of the novel (a) lusting amorally after a powerful White House job for which he's being considered, and (b) rereading his clippings on Henry Kissinger, a man he despises for his supposed amorality and lust for power. A major problem here is that Heller never addresses, let alone acknowledges, this blatant contradiction at the center of Gold's character; it's hard to know whether one is meant to sympathize with Gold or to despise him. Actually, one doesn't do either because Gold is too undeveloped to provoke either affection or antipathy: Generally, he comes across as little more than a combined authorial pawn and mouthpiece. Yes, the book is funny, but the humor (unlike that in Catch-22) is facile and unresonant: Heller's melange of snappy putdowns, broadly parodic characterizations, and naughty one-liners reminds one of television sitcoms more than anything else; his habit of throwing jokes in every direction--this is most assuredly not how effective satire is written-causes the book to fail utterly as a serious indictment of the Washington power structure.
Even less worthwhile is God Knows. As many critics have remarked, this novel--which comprised a desultory monologue by an aged King David--amounts to little more than an Old Testament comedy routine. But it's not very funny at all, unless one is capable of being amused, at
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