Synopses & Reviews
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 humor 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.
Review
"[A] brilliant book....Heller is savage as ever, and particularly in his brutal portrait of the decline of New York City mournful." John Mort, Booklist
Review
"The satirizing of American contemporary life has been done so frequently...since the 1961 Catch-22...that Heller is in effect competing with himself, and failing....In the end, despite flashes of the old wit and fire, this is a tired, dispirited and dispiriting novel." Publishers Weekly
Review
"In an act of absurdity worthy of Catch- 22, Heller has written a sequel to a novel that needed no sequel....The only connection to the original is that in a few places Heller sets up similar situations and dialogue to show that capitalism and the military mindset are still the same....Be content with the original and pretend the sequel never happened." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"A summing up by one of the last of the great writers of the Second World War generation...we can celebrate Catch-22's anniversary by welcoming Yossarian, Sammy, Milo, Lew, Wintergreen, and Chaplain Tappman even as we take leave of them." Christopher Buckley, The New Yorker
Review
"A lively, brilliant and influential writer's look back at the 20th-century American culture he has seen." Robert Pinsky, The Washington Post
Review
"Contains a richness of tone and of human feeling....Powerful and disturbing." William Pritchard, The New York Times
Review
"This fine novel shows the comic imagination of a national treasure at work." Leslie Brody, Elle
Review
"Manic, knockdown, verbal comedy." Robert Pinsky, The Washington Post
Review
"As hilarious as its predecessor." Rex Bateson, Journal-Constitution
Review
"Score one for Joseph Heller....Closing Time is Heller's best novel since Good as Gold." Carlin Romano, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Review
"This work attempts the same sort of giddy black humor that made its predecessor a classic, but the underlying mood is somber, almost elegiac. A profoundly disturbing novel, if not quite up to the standard of Catch-22..." Library Journal
Synopsis
More than three decades after Catch-22 captured the conscience and imagination of a generation, Joseph Heller has written the sequel to one of the most important novels of the twentieth century. Closing Time revisits Yossarian, Milo Minderbinder, Chaplain Tappman and others the characters who made Catch-22 unforgettable, now older, if not wiser, facing not only the end of a century, but the approaching close of their lives.
Synopsis
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 humor 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.
About the Author
Joseph Heller, whose novel Catch-22 has sold more than 10 million copies, is the author of five other bestselling books.