I find a lovely strangeness in the way that we stubble or perhaps i should say I do in regard to the stumbling method I find books. Which without a thought out selection they are exactly fitted in with ideas that are afloat on your imagination plane of the time. A book that i suppose could be said you were meant to read. I had this occur before with a book called the double which i had double copies off but each was by a different Author .
It was not the Authors name that drew my want to picture this , it was the cover . To I this was going to be a book about a painting and i cannot deny that is what it was as they say it did as it said on the tin ” Picture this” and that i suppose is the whole essence of any novel not only a reference to the picture but for the reader to have their mind picture the writers story.
Rembrandt - Aristotle contemplating the bust of Homer
The Above is as seen my any art lover or perhaps just a tourist ticking the list of paintings that you must see are viewing. Now to I this is the first time that i myself have actually viewed a painting that in my mind i have pictured not only throughout the book cover but also through the description ( how at times when i searched for mentioned items only to think that it was a default in my eye, but in a way perhaps it was.)
This is what my mind was readily with the correct information to allow myself to picture not only its heritage but its influence also and the contradictory ideas faced with the comparison of the ethos of the painted Aristotle with what to i was a self portrait of Rembrandt within the picture. The book for I verbally told me the factual information regarding self portraits of the Artist and made no mention of my recall of his actual presence in the painting but due to that initial aesthetic imprint for I he was as real as if he had been . Yet all long i was not even looking at Rembrandt’s painting but another and that fits in exactly with the message that Heller conveys in his method of confusing you to the issue of what really is , the story of the painting is as valid regarding whatever painting is really being viewed and it is at a core thought of Aristotle’s thought that is continually referred to in the lack of value in money . The value was never in art but in the history. It could be of course that this is entirely a way of explaining how a stupid error on my part first not to check the book illustrators name was not due to I but to the genius of the authors use of a trick on me ..but those who had seen the painting it would not have had the effect , for them the effect would be have noted at the beginning and Heller does let the reader in on the the notion of imitation as reality from the offset . However in a way i feel the book has a harder effect in revealing this near the end in which he does ..but what if i never had checked the back ?
I assumed that the cover was an integral message within the book , yet when i came to search for the cover that adorned my edition , i found it was to no avail that despite a very in depth search i found only bland covers. Therefore i took the route of taking a picture but it must be forgiven the quality . It is shown however how i could be mistaken for assuming that the painting on the cover was the painting at that the matter of the book , but as the cliche says ” never judge a book by its cover” is apt in this experience.
My Edition of Joseph Hellers' Picture This ( Illustrated by George Sharp )
