SOURCE: McLaughlin, Robert L. Review of Portrait of the Artist, as an Old Man, by Joseph Heller. Review of Contemporary Fiction 20, no. 3 (fall 2000): 144-45.

In the following review, McLaughlin considers Portrait of the Artist, as an Old Man a bittersweet and satisfying final work.

Joseph Heller's posthumous Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man is a more fitting and satisfying final work than either his ill-considered Catch-22 sequel, Closing Time, or his been-there-done-that memoir, Now and Then. Seemingly autobiographical, the novel focuses on Eugene Pota, an aging writer who has never been able to match the success of his first big novel and who is desperately trying to find an idea for a final masterpiece. This situation allows for meditations on the effects of old age, a dissection of writer's block, an examination of the despair that has historically beset writers near the ends of their lives...