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The more I read of Heller the more I come to feel that the popular wisdom, which says that he only wrote one good book, Catch 22, is incorrect. Portrait is an excellent book with as chaotic a narrative as one might hope for from Heller. The story of an old author who desperately wants to write a book that will achieve real critical and popular success to match or top his first great book, is obviously based on Heller's real experience. Intensely personal in tone, the story is told through the old man's conversations with his friends and his wife, and through his attempts to start one new idea after another before giving up on each in disgust. The narrator provides yet another level for the book, occasionally discussing the characters with the reader, and demonstrating clearly his power over the characters, dismissing whole aspects of their lives and personalities, or explaining how they are like so, but if he chose they could become like something else.