Closing Time

Name: Closing Time
Brand: Simon & Schuster Audio
Availability: InStock
Author: Joseph Heller
ISBN: 9780743542845

Author: Joseph Heller

Narrator: Elliott Gould

Abridged: 4 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Published: 11/01/1994

Categories: Fiction, Military Fiction, Satire, Literary Fiction

Synopsis

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

Joseph Heller revisits the unforgettable characters of Catch-22, now facing the twilight of their lives and the end of the century. The generation that fought in World War II—Yossarian, Milo Minderbinder, the chaplain, along with newcomers little Sammy Singer and giant Lew—are bound together in uneasy peace and old age, fighting not the Germans this time, but the inevitability of The End. Closing Time deftly satirizes the realities and the myths of postwar America with the same ferocious humor as his masterpiece, Catch-22, exploring the absurdity of our politics, the decline of our society and great cities, and the greed and hypocrisy at the heart of our business and culture.

Outrageously funny yet deadly serious, and as brilliant as Catch-22 itself, Closing Time is a fun-house mirror reflecting, at once grotesquely and accurately, who we truly are.

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