Heller, without pink tights

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

Ken cites:
"Tom LeClair wrote an interesting book on the subject of giant
modernist/postmodernist works (he refers to them as "system
novels"). Wish I could remember the name. Among Pynchon, DeLillo,
Coover, Gaddis, and McElroy, he also cites Ursula LeGuin's Always Coming Home
and Joseph Heller's Something Happened (which I think is a very
underrated book; probably the best work on American business and
an American businessman since the days of Dreiser, Lewis, and
Dos Passos)."

I'd also recommend Heller's PICTURE PERFECT, which is a unique work, as far as
I can see--less a novel than an extended meditative essay on art, fame,
commercialism, and the cultural usages of the same, centering on Rembrandt's
painting ARISTOTLE CONTEMPLATING THE BUST OF HOMER, which leads to reflections
on Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Rembrandt, and a bunch of other stuff.
Not as mechanically constructed as CATCH-22 or as wrapped in obsession as
SOMETHING HAPPENED, but  well worth a look.

Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)