Closing Time, Joseph Heller
Closing Time, Joseph Heller
List: $17.99 | Sale: $12.59
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Closing Time

Author: Joseph Heller

Narrator: Elliott Gould

Abridged: 4 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 11/01/1994


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 Joseph Heller

Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn in 1923. In 1961, he published Catch-22, which became a bestseller and, in 1970, a film. He went on to write such novels as Good as Gold, God Knows, Picture This, Closing Time, and Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man. Heller died in 1999.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Tom on August 22, 2021

Catch-22 is my favorite novel of all time, and I approached its sequel with trepidation. Did I dare peek into the future of those beloved characters? Could I disturb the frantic stasis of that perfect ending? Would it upend the understanding I had come to if I checked in on them again? But life stand......more

Goodreads review by Nathan on September 17, 2007

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......more

Goodreads review by Simon on May 22, 2012

Originally published on my blog here in October 1999. Almost thirty five years after finally finding a publisher for Catch-22, Heller wrote a sequel. Through this period, every book he has produced has suffered from comparison with his first novel. He has never managed to combine the elements of farc......more

Goodreads review by Martin on July 26, 2007

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 b......more

Goodreads review by Sara on November 27, 2012

Took me a long time to get through... nowhere near the humor and lightness of Catch-22. I almost feel bad, as though my poor rating is a reflection on the wonderful characters of Catch-22 that held so much life for me, and then let me down... they felt so real, even in this novel where I felt they h......more