In a novel as darkly comic and audaciously ambitious as was Catch-22, Joseph Heller has dared to write the sequel to his American classic, using many of Catch-22's characters, now older if not wiser, to deftly satirize the realities and the myths of America in the half century since they fought World War II. In 1961, Joseph Heller's remarkable first novel made its way immediately into the American psyche and came to symbolize the absurdity of war and of life. Catch-22 was recognized overnight as a classic and has sold nearly ten million copies in the United States alone. It remains perhaps the funniest - and the most serious - novel ever written about war, "an apocalyptic masterpiece, " in the words of one reviewer. Now, thirty-three years later, Joseph Heller has written the sequel. You don't have to have read Catch-22 (But then, who on earth hasn't?) to enjoy Closing Time, which is a fully independent companion work, a comic masterpiece in its own right, in which Heller spears the inflated balloons of our national consciousness - the absurdity of our politics, the decline of society and our great cities, the greed and hypocrisy of our business and culture - with the same ferocious humor that he used against the conventional view of warfare. His characters are those of Catch-22, 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, this time in uneasy peace and old age, fighting, not the Germans this time, but The End. Closing Time is outrageously funny and totally serious, and as brilliant and successful as Catch-22itself, a fun-house mirror that captures, at once grotesquely and accurately, the truth about ourselves.
Robert Pinsky, "The Washington Post"
Manic, knockdown verbal comedy.
"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."
Robert Pinsky
"The Washington Post"
A lively, brilliant and influential writer's look back at the 20th-century American culture he has seen.
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.
Carlin Romano
"The Philadelphia Inquirer"
Score one for Joseph Heller..."Closing Time" is Heller's best novel since "Good as Gold."
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.
Robert Pinsky, The Washington Post Manic, knockdown verbal comedy.
The New York Times Contains a richness of tone and of human feeling...Powerful and disturbing.
Robert Pinsky The Washington Post A lively, brilliant and influential writer's look back at the 20th-century American culture he has seen.
