Robert Pinsky, The Washington Post Manic, knockdown verbal comedy.
Closing Time
The Sequel to Catch-22
Description
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.
Reviews
Christopher Buckley, The New Yorker 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.
The New York Times Contains a richness of tone and of human feeling...Powerful and disturbing.
The Philadelphia Inquirer Score one for Joseph Heller...Closing Time is Heller's best novel since Good as Gold.