Closing Time

by Joseph Heller

Closing Time

book data

638 ratings, 2.81 average rating, 46 reviews (more data...)

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published

September 15th 1995 (first published 1994) by Simon & Schuster

binding

Paperback, 464 pages

isbn

0684804506 (isbn13: 9780684804507)

description

<CENTER>A darkly comic and ambitious sequel to the American classic Catch-22.

In Closing Time, Joseph Heller returns to the characters of Catc...more

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 934)

All ratings | 5 stars (29) | 4 stars (112) | 3 stars (270) | 2 stars (163) | 1 star (64) | avg 2.81

all | this edition

Martin

Martin rated it:

07/26/07

Read in June, 2007

recommends it for: Heller fans.

The comical sarcasm and wit seems to have turned rather sour in Yossarian’s old age, something which Heller is aware of and has a female character state this. But I found it to be true, in youth and being surrounded by lots of people who wanted to kill him, the sarcasm was funny and refreshing but becomes rather tedious in old age. But then he is still immature at heart, so it’s fitting he has not changed I guess. Still chasing women of course no matter his age, which I also found rather ...more

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Nathan

Nathan rated it:

09/17/07

bookshelves: fiction

Read in July, 2007

recommends it for: Yossarian, so he could comment on what Heller did to him.

Catch-22 is probably my favorite book of all time. Some of Heller's other work, also, stands up as classic and important. Closing Time isn't really one of those novels. It's a sequel to Catch-22, and like most sequels, it was probably unnecessary. On one level, I can see what Heller was trying to do. He parallels his own aging with the aging of Yossarian and the heroes of the original. We see them now aged, some with grandchildren. The humor from the original, however, has turned a little more b...more

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Rachel

Rachel rated it:

07/20/07

You know how good Catch-22 is? How it's so timeless? This book- not so much. Kind of funny, but you've probably seen better satire on South Park.

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Dan

Dan rated it:

08/09/08

Read in June, 1997

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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2 comments

Chad

Chad rated it:

06/09/08

Read in June, 2008

While Closing Time is ostensibly the sequel to Catch-22, it is a remarkably different book in tone and style. Catch-22 was brimming with satire and absurd persons and situations. This style of writing is still present in Closing Time, particularly in those chapters about Yossarian, Chaplain Tappmann, and Milo Minderbinder, but it is significantly less noticeable there and almost completely absent from the sections of the book about Sammy Singer, Lew Rabinowitz, and their compatriots. The remaind...more While Closing Time is ostensibly the sequel to Catch-22, it is a remarkably different book in tone and style. Catch-22 was brimming with satire and absurd persons and situations. This style of writing is still present in Closing Time, particularly in those chapters about Yossarian, Chaplain Tappmann, and Milo Minderbinder, but it is significantly less noticeable there and almost completely absent from the sections of the book about Sammy Singer, Lew Rabinowitz, and their compatriots. The remainder is a fairly straightforward look at the lives these men lead and the memories they have of their youth.

The Singer and Rabinowitz story is compelling on its own but only very peripherally related to Catch-22. The stories of the returning characters are interesting, but frequently too bizarre. The bits about governmental incompetence and Yossarian’s dealings with nurse Macintosh, Minderbinder, and Gaffney are all excellent, but I am still unsure what to make of Tappman’s subplot or the great mystery of what lies beneath the Port Authority Bus Terminal. The ending makes perfect sense as a closure for both the themes of Catch-22 and Closing Time, but it leaves too much unresolved and open to interpretation for my tastes.

The best parts of the novel are flashbacks to events from Catch-22, often from a different perspective than originally described, and the Singer and Rabinowitz families’ battles against cancer. There are many references to the Ring Cycle and other Wagnerian works. I suspect that I would appreciate the novel much more if I were highly familiar with the librettos from these works, as Yossarian’s story seems to be somewhat intended as a modern retelling of Siegfried’s journey. Heller also references a man named Vonnegut who survives the Dresden bombings with Rabinowitz, in a rare literary allusion that I recognize.

As might be expected by its lesser critical acclaim, Closing Time is not nearly as good of a work as Catch-22, which was truly a masterpiece. It is, however, a fairly interesting novel, and recommended for anyone who has enjoyed Heller’s other work....less

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David

David rated it:

11/30/08

Again, the rating system fails us. I decided to post a review for this after seeing I'd given it an arbitrary 3-stars, when in fact I recall being profoundly moved by this book. Isn't profound movement worth 5 stars? Whatever.

A lot of people have read Catch-22, which is deserving of most all the praise it gets. This is, spiritually and literally, the sequel to that book, which is a little weird, not the least because it was published more than 3 decades after. Appropriate to this lap...more Again, the rating system fails us. I decided to post a review for this after seeing I'd given it an arbitrary 3-stars, when in fact I recall being profoundly moved by this book. Isn't profound movement worth 5 stars? Whatever.

A lot of people have read Catch-22, which is deserving of most all the praise it gets. This is, spiritually and literally, the sequel to that book, which is a little weird, not the least because it was published more than 3 decades after. Appropriate to this lapse in time, Closing Time is about Heller's generation grown old and tired, and with a cynicism that if not greater, is certainly more refined.

Heller is often & rightfully paired with Vonnegut as one of the masterful and distinctly American voices to emerge in the wake of World War II. A word on Vonnegut, because Heller & Vonnegut really are a Yin & Yang of the same subject, in many ways: as funny as Vonnegut's books are, it is often missed that there is a profound and real sadness to his work. Not a sadness with its edge dulled by humor & pathos (though of course those things are woven throughout Vonnegut's work), but just -- sadness. Not humor with sadness -- humor and then sadness. Like Heller's darkly comic moments, you laugh and then you remember why you're laughing, and you stop.

Vonnegut was always probably the more popular writer in no small part because of his talent for brevity, whereas his friend Heller was always more sprawling & digressive in his work. Closing Time is more victim to this than most of Heller's work, a sprawling and sometimes sloppy novel about old age, death, death, old age, the corruption of government and the absurd natures of those who run it, and death.

I'm writing this many years after reading Closing Time, so my memory of the details are foggy. Possibly my opinion of the book at the time was clouded by what it is like for the very young to read of the trials of the very old -- when you're hovering on either side of 20 you don't want to believe that the body breaks down and all your friends will die. Reading this was tantamount to science fiction -- and yet when I read Catch-22 it was my favorite book, and seeing an author revisit his masterwork, his first work, decades after its publication was a profound experience.

Closing Time is a stage for Heller's trenchant cynicism towards the government & the military -- on display in his excellent novel Picture This as much as in Catch-22 -- and paints with marvelous acerbity a portrait of the progression of clowns and lunatics who shape the fate of millions. I've always felt that the film "Doctor Strangelove" was a better adaptation of Catch-22 than the film version of Catch-22 was, and the dark humor of that film does permeate the background of Closing Time (one of the characters, a government contractor of sorts, is even named Harold Strangelove). Appropriately, the main characters of Closing Time (even the returned Milo Minderbinder, ever the entrepreneur) seem to have little real control over the machinery of government.

How America treats its elderly is an implicit subject of this book, in the same way as how the soldier is used by a military bureaucracy was a subject of Catch-22. So, it seems almost appropriate that this book should be considered slight or mediocre or an insufficient project by the genius who produced its beloved predecessor. The characters of Catch-22, human as they were, were larger than life, heroes from an American myth (which of course, as with Vonnegut's work, was no myth) who's darkly human experiences stood for something larger -- commentary on the changing face of a nation & the world as it entered the atomic age. To see those characters rendered old, dying, and above everything -- sad -- is humbling and, to be honest, unnerving.

And yet: In an edition of Catch-22 brought out simultaneously with this book, Heller wrote: "Sooner or later, I must concede, Yossarian, now seventy, will have to pass away, too. But it won't be by my hand." That quote stayed with me. Part of Yossarian -- in many ways a modern day Quixote (only with Cynicism instead of Chivalry) -- no doubt died when Heller did, in 1999. But as the title indicates, Yossarian's "exit" from this life was less like death than the sad statement at a bar's closing -- 'you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.'

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Ariel

Ariel rated it:

03/20/08

bookshelves: 2008, american-literature

Read in March, 2008

I have long been hesitant to read this book. I'd known Catch-22 had a sequel even since I read it during the summer of 2000. Heller mentioned it in the preface to the edition I had, spoiling me (Yossarian lives!) and I even knew that my beloved Chaplain Tappman was in it. But I loved Catch-22 so and was afraid of being disappointed... after all if this book lives up to the prior's standards wouldn't I have heard it acclaimed by others? I decided never to read it. My brother had other ideas t...more I have long been hesitant to read this book. I'd known Catch-22 had a sequel even since I read it during the summer of 2000. Heller mentioned it in the preface to the edition I had, spoiling me (Yossarian lives!) and I even knew that my beloved Chaplain Tappman was in it. But I loved Catch-22 so and was afraid of being disappointed... after all if this book lives up to the prior's standards wouldn't I have heard it acclaimed by others? I decided never to read it. My brother had other ideas though and got it for my birthday in the spring of 2005. Get over your fears, he said. Still it stayed in my "to-read" pile. In 2006 I came across another Heller novel in the used book store and picked it up. It wasn't related to either of the others and so I figured it was a good test run to see if Heller stood up outside of Catch-22 or was just a one hit wonder. The book was Good as Gold; It was very good if not up the level of greatness of Catch-22. Heller's frenzied pace of expanding and contracting spirals seemed consistent (though this book was linear). Still it had been another year and a half, when in the fall of 2007 I was trying to decide what book to read next and asked my boyfriend what to read. He said Closing Time not knowing the story of how the book had come to sit and stay on the to-read shelf (oh yes I had a shelf [or two] by this point). I picked it up at last.

So why did it take me almost 6 months to finish this book? Was it terrible? It wasn't terrible... it was just dense and hard to read quickly. Almost everyone I've talked to on the subject agrees that Catch-22 takes longer to read than it's word count or entertaining nature would lead you to expect. I think much of that is the case here too. You cannot read Heller quickly without losing the value of it. Most of us who are fast readers skim. It's a fact, and if you skim Heller you become hopelessly lost and miss everything. So I had to slow down... read a chapter or two at a time (my grandest achievement in progress was reading 100 pages one night when my boyfriend passed out early and I didn't go to bed until close to midnight).

The other reason it took so long is that there is a weird meta quality about the book. It's very now in that. It pulls you out of the story and makes you think about what exactly Heller is doing, though. When I first started Closing Time I said that it read like very good fanfiction of the original book, with (obviously) perfect characterization. As I continued reading though, I discovered that is more of a crossover or hybrid. Heller had mixed Catch-22 and his own style in with Vonnegut's style. He crosses out even to referencing reality and real authors who are part of the appropriate generation including himself and Vonnegut and spins into the fantastic in a way that keeps his pacing but when you break it down seems much more something Vonnegut would have come up with. He references. It's interesting and appropriate, and that (combined with my desire to see Chaplain Tappman finally get home once more and Yossarian scam on nurses and Milo make all the profits) made me glad I read the book.

Besides, now I finally understand how Ex-PFC Wintergreen was the most important person in their section of the military during Catch-22....less

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Melissa

Melissa rated it:

09/14/08

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in September, 2008

I loved catch-22, just loved it. But closing time was a bit difficult to read. It didn't really feel like a sequel. i suppose Mr. Heller changed as a writer and as a person between writing the two books. There were many times that i had that "ah,so" moment reading this, moments when his narrative skipped the time track and lurched onto a different rail. That wasn't the least bit disconcerting when i read catch-22 but somehow it didn't work as well for closing time.
still a decent...more

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Zac

Zac rated it:

01/29/08

A good book with the exception of the chapters on Lew and Sammy, which start out ok but soon become long, tedious, and ham handed. Lews chapter include nothing but:

I'm tough, people do what I want. I'm not the smartest, but damn I do what I want. I'm really tough. I scew all the girls I want, even when I'm with Claire, she doesn't know, cause I don't want her to, because people do what I want, because I'm tough. I don't hide anything, not even with Nazi's, because I'm tough. I'll bre...more

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Brian

Brian rated it:

05/28/08

Read in April, 2008

Closing Time has moments that are reminiscent of the biting, ridiculously hilarious satire of Catch 22, but it also suffers from slow pacing and a somewhat scattered narrative. Overall, the characters are compelling, but the situations don't always resonate, and Heller fails to make the connection to readers of a younger generation than the characters. In Catch 22 the insanity of war is clear even to those who have never seen a battle, but Closing Time doesn't accomplish the same now that ...more

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Jonna

Jonna rated it:

01/29/08

bookshelves: mostrecentreads

Read in January, 2007

I was dissapointed in this after enjoying Catch-22 so much. Maybe I just didn't "get" what Heller was trying to do here, but I had so much hope for Yossarian at the end of Catch-22 and he just didn't live up to my expectations for him as a character in this sequel. Plus, the other characters Heller focused on in this book (like Milo) just didn't seem anything but predictable and flat. The work just seemed to lack the wit of Catch-22, and the manic tone, rather than seamlessly moving th...more

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John-Michael

John-Michael rated it:

02/19/08

What do you do when the first book you ever wrote was a runaway success, and every book you ever write after that point is forgettable? Heller's life must have been a little slice of hell, creating the brilliant Catch-22, riding that cloud, but never being able to achieve that glory again in his very long writing career. Closing Time is about aging, and a slow slide into failure, and, though I can't remember it, it was probably about hope too, because I couldn't imagine Heller not having that ...more

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Natalie

Natalie rated it:

09/26/07

bookshelves: to-read

I read Catch 22 in high school just to know what the hell my government teacher kept talking about, she used the phrase almost every day and later I asked her if she liked the book, she said, 'She hadn't read it'.
Then when I heard there was a sequel called CLOSING TIME- same as a song that I loved- I had to go out and buy it. It sat on my bookshelf all through college- I started to read it once- but then got the assignment to read Catch 22 again and I lost all interest.

D...more

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Josh

Josh rated it:

03/28/08

Read in March, 2008

I loved Catch-22 and wanted to read this, the sequel, and was sorely disappointed. It relies entirely on the delightful characters and hilarity in Catch-22 for its best moments -- either through those same characters reminiscing about old times or through flashbacks -- and offers little new. The characters and plot feel forced as Heller attempts to recreate the pseudo-reality of Catch 22, only in the new setting of New York's moneyed elite rather than WWII soldiers.

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Current

Current rated it:

09/11/08

Read in September, 2008

Sequel to Catch 22.

As the title implies, this is an old person's tale, the close of the day, end of the life, when the bar stops serving drinks and puts the stools up on the tables. Although nostalgic, the story does manage to build some of the energy, humor, and absurdity that Catch 22 captured. In particular, the wedding pre-video is an excellent twist.

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Jay

Jay rated it:

02/21/08

bookshelves: unfinished-for-years

Read in February, 2008

sequel to one of my three favorite books of all time bored the piss out of my in the first three chapters. all i want to know is how yossarian got back to america and heller is busy introducing new characters with their own boring plot arcs. who fucking cares about that shit? tell me about yossarian, milo and the fucking chaplain!

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Whitney

Whitney rated it:

(review of isbn 0671746049)

07/23/07

Read in January, 2003

Catch-22 is one of my favorite books, so I read this hoping that some of the wit would be there. Next to Catch-22, it's a 1 star, but it's just not a fair comparison. I recall some of the clever wit that made Catch-22 so good. It's worth reading if just to get to see some great characters again.

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Tucker

Tucker rated it:

(review of isbn 0743239806)

04/06/07

A poor attempt to follow on Catch 22...this just struck me as writing for profit versus having a message or point to convey. Maybe I'm too harsh (I know, I know, easy for someone with no writing skill to throw stones) but being such a fan of Catch-22, this was a disappointment.

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Dmitri

Dmitri rated it:

05/08/08

bookshelves: blew-my-socks-off

Read in January, 1996

recommends it for: anyone that loved Catch-22

This is the much neglects and very belated sequel to Catch-22. While Heller's prediction of his and Kurt Vonnguts eventual death are perhaps not surprising, his almost eerie prediction of the Bush presidency---in the book he is known as "the Little Prick,"----is.

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Taylor

Taylor rated it:

05/28/08

Read in February, 2008

I really loved the book Catch-22, and I have to say, I was a bit dissapointed while reading Closing Time. I found this book's plot to be very hard to follow, and I was let down that not many of Catch-22's characters were revisted.

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