As with his other novels, Joseph Heller experiments with chronology in Picture This. This time he uses the device of Rembrandt's painting, which resurrects Aristotle, to conjoin the fifth century B.C., the seventeenth century, and the twentieth century. Simultaneously, Heller acknowledges and mocks history as an ongoing cause and effect sequence. Perhaps the best example is the monstrously long sentence following his explanation that the legislation that Pericles enacted in 432 B.C. to prohibit Megaran ships from entering ports in the Athenian empire led to war: And it led as well to that prolonged sequence of events in which Athens suffered defeat; the empire was destroyed; the democ racy was outlawed and restored; Socrates and Asclepius were tried, found guilty, and executed; Plato wrote his philosophies and started his school; Aristotle came to Athens as a.....
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