Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man (2000)

In a front-page obituary, "The New York Times" described Joseph Heller as "the darkly surreal novelist who spoke to a generation." Heller, whose famous bestseller "Catch-22" brought him universal acclaim as a literary icon, finished his final novel just before his death in 1999. "Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man" is a poignant and fascinating foray into the mind of an artist as he examines his life, seeking a source of inspiration for his last book. Imagine an author -- primarily a novelist -- who has become a legend...no, more than that -- an icon! In his own lifetime, all because of the first novel he wrote, many years before. Imagine that the novelist -- his name here is Eugene Pota -- realizes that the days are dwindling and he needs to come up with one more novel. But what should he write about? There's a kind of futility to his search for a subject, of course, because, like so many noted novelists before him, all of Pota's output since that first landmark novel has been scrutinized and dissected and poked at -- and found wanting. That first novel, the one that launched him, the one that made him into the cultura