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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780684804507
ISBN number: 0684804506
Label: Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 464
Printing Date: September 15, 1995
Publishing house: Simon & Schuster
Sale Popularity Level: 241827
Studio: Simon & Schuster
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
A darkly comic and ambitious sequel to the American classic Catch-22.
In Closing Time, Joseph Heller returns to the characters of Catch-22, now coming to the end of their lives and the century, as is the entire generation that fought in World War II: Yossarian and Milo Minderbinder, the chaplain, and such newcomers as little Sammy Singer and giant Lew, all linked, in an uneasy peace and old age, fighting not the Germans this time, but The End. Closing Time deftly satirizes the realities and the myths of America in the half century since WWII: the absurdity of our politics, the decline of our society and our great cities, the greed and hypocrisy of our business and culture -- with the same ferocious humour as Catch-22.
Closing Time is outrageously funny and totally serious, and as brilliant and successful as Catch-22 itself, a fun-house mirror that captures, at once grotesquely and accurately, the truth about ourselves.
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Rated by buyers 
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I just finished this book. Damn. What a mess. I think the title for my review says it all. Probably, one of the worst books I have ever read.
Rated by buyers -
This unfortunate and unnecessary sequel to the immortal "Catch-22" actually includes some very good material. These are the interludes about Sammy Singer and Lew Rabinowitz, good friends and contemporaries of Yossarian, who look back with nostalgia on their Brooklyn childhoods and with bemused horror on their WWII experiences in riveting first-person narratives. I would have been happy to read a book centered on these two, and perhaps at one time author Joseph Heller intended to write just that, since these sections have very little to do with the main portion of the novel--stylistically, thematically, or narratively.
The novel is mostly concerned with the surreal circumstances surrounding Yossarian's final days. It just didn't hold together for me. It read as a hodgepodge of nutty characters and absurd circumstances that didn't pull together to make a point other than that the military is bad and that the children of the "greatest generation" are pallid imitations of their elders. Heller wants to skewer the military-industrial complex, but he does so by presenting such outrageous, ridiculous circumstances that it is difficult to believe he had any deep understanding of it or much desire to acquire such an understanding.
Rated by buyers -
Since I was so captivated and amazed by Catch-22, I decided to get Closing Time in order to see what else Heller would do with the characters.
On the whole, this book was a huge disappointment. It had hardly any of the edgy, cynical and insightful comedy that was so prevalent in Catch-22. About the only theme of which to speak is the one concerning how all of this generation of vets grew up to be successful, cynical family men. Rather than being disillusioned about the military, they became disillusioned with politics and society. After thinking about it for a few moments, that does seem like a natural progression for the characters, especially Yossarian, but Heller does not do as good a job capturing this feeling as he did with the disillusionment that characterizes this book's predecessor.
At the beginning of the story there were a few exchanges of dialog that made me chuckle, but as I progressed throughout the book I saw nothing new and grew increasingly bored with the story. As another reviewer noted, the strange purgatory/hell location with famous dead rich people and a Coney Island amusement park that sinks into the earth was a bit confusing. It came together a little at the end, but I was still disappointed.
Rated by buyers -
Heller's masterpiece "Catch-22" ends in a stupendous crescendo with Yossarian running furiously toward freedom and the unknown, destined to become a legend.
He should have stayed there.
In "Closing Time" we flash forward to a time where Heller offers a version of Yossarian as a grouchy old liberal who improbably became a supremely wealthy corporate executive. Of course he's still sex-obsessed, and coming from an septuagenarian character, it's more lecherous than funny. Even the back-and-forth banter for which "Catch-22" was famous is recycled here, but this time to tiresome effect. It's as if Yossarian is talking to himself. Or rather, Heller is talking to himself, because after about 1 page of dialogue, I found myself skipping forward to get back to the plot.
The Yossarian of "Closing Time" is no longer engaged in a life-and-death struggle. It's just a slow march toward the end of a life that, in the context of post-WWII, makes little logical sense. Instead of railing against the stupidity of war and its masters, Yossarian is left with nursing (and complaining endlessly about) the socio-economic wounds of the Reagan era. That Heller turned Yossarian into a cliched sounding board does the rest of the novel a disservice.
Because the second part, involving new characters Sammy singer (who actually had a cameo in "Catch-22" and Lew Rabinowitz has more of a genuine, beautiful feel. Here Heller waxes lyrical on their personal lives, clearly one can sense the echoes in his own life. These parts of the book were enjoyable to read and I wished that Heller's loving homage to his generation and his Coney Island haunts was the real core of the book.
Just like the world described to us in "Catch-22", Yossarian doesn't belong in the one in "Closing Time", either. It would have been better if 50+ years ago Heller simply let him vanish off the coast of Pianosa and into myth...
Rated by buyers 
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I am a big Heller fan who has read most of his work and enjoyed almost every minute of it, but Closing Time was just a painful read.
The book is basically nothing more than a sub-par Catch-22. Heller attempts to catch some of the old magic, but Yossarian as a disappointed geriatric made me want to cry. I would much rather have kept Yossarian sitting naked in a tree inside of my imagination rather than ever see him as a feeble old man. I compare seeing him as a vulnerable old man to the feeling I had when, as a kid, I figured out my dad couldn't beat up everyone else's dad. I didn't want to see my dad as a mortal man nor did I want to see my favorite literary character as a mortal either.
Other than the disappointment of seeing my favorite characters as old timers, the book tries to read like its predecessor but falls very short. The humour is the same but the jokes have become as old and tired as the characters. Catch-22 had me rolling on the floor one minute and then crying a few minutes later, but this book had a few smirks and no tear jerkers. The conversation about where the water went (if you read the book you know what I am talking about) was a brief, shining moment among many lusterless ones.
I would advise anybody who is as big a fan of Catch-22 as I am not to even read this book, even if you get a free copy. I wish I hadn't. The image you want in your mind is Orr paddling away to freedom and Yossarian flying off into the sunset on his trail, but if you read this book that image will be gone forever.
Review from a huge fan of Catch-22 telling other fans do not read this book for your own good.
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