Rating: 
Summary: An Older Heller - Hilarious as Ever
Review: Closing Time, the sequel to Catch 22, was a great book. The only other Heller I have ever read is Catch-22. Closing Time is just as funny. Yossarian is in his 60s and is still as vain, virile and crazy about women. Of course, Milo is in it too, just as stupid, enterprising and successful as ever. Heller continues to satirize machoism, bringing characters from his boyhood Coney Island days into the mix. He hilariously sets up a grand, gaudy wedding at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, caricaturing American materialism. Similarly, the owner of Coney Island symbolizes commercialism's ruling the country. People go up and down, round and round, ending up no further than they ever had been, having emptied their pockets at the amusement park.
An older 1990's Heller is surprisingly up with the times. His take on New York City is absolutely hilarious. He lampoons everything from NYC's scarcity of restrooms to 13 year-old male prostitutes in his hilarious, strangely affecting way. Of course a sequel could never match Catch-22, given all its originality, hilarity and relevance. However, in a few ways Closing Time is even better. Heller is not just limited to criticizing the army or war or upper-echelon elitism. Here he has an entire 1990's Clinton America to stomp on. Weaponed with such an excessive society, Closing Time lacks the monotony that Catch-22 was sometimes criticized for. Also, societal issues are less immediately traumatic like those of war. So, Closing Time carries a more relaxed tone than the often biting tone of Catch-22.
Rating: 
Summary: Not really a sequal
Review: Every other review of this book, either good or bad, starts this way, so I feel that there's no reason mine should be any different....I'm a huge fan of "Catch-22".Let's face it, if "Closing Time" lived up to the original novel, people would start their reviews with "I was a hug fan of 'Closing Time.'" That they don't, even if they are saying something positive about it, says something very bad about the book. There is no question that Joseph Heller was coasting on his reputation when he wrote this. My personal belief is that this is why this novel is billed as a sequal to "Catch-22" when it really has little to do with it. This being said, "Closing Time" is really a very good book. It is surreal, and unsettling, and, at times, quite funny. Clearly Heller was concerned about his health when he wrote it (in one of the most clever surrealist touches, one of the characters even refers to Heller's health problems). That makes the book a little gloomy, maudlin, and yes, at times heavy handed as well. Nevertheless, Heller proves that he can still create strong, realistic characters, and that he is still the master of vicious social satire. If you read it as a sequal to "Catch-22" you will be disappointed. If you read it as a new and original work, though, you will be pleasently surprised.
Rating:
Summary: JOE THE AMAZING!!!
Review: He did it again. Catch-22 was a riot of laughter. Who would have ever thought that a sequal would come out that was just as good. I read Closing Time more than I read Catch-22. How could anybody give anything less than five stars on this one?!
Rating: 
Summary: Closing Time is a difficult to read let-down of a novel.
Review: I had mixed expectations as to the quality of a sequal to the fabulous book "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller. After I read "Closing Time" by Heller, my suspicions were confirmed. "Closing Time" tries to capture the irony and punch of "Catch-22", but fails as a novel written too long after the "first part." "Closing Time" rambles on and lacks any sort of direction. Sure, "Closing Time" has Heller's funny redundant sentences and roundabout conversations, but wasn't that in "Catch-22?" It is not apparent at times who is speaking in the book, and it is never apparent why the reader would care about Yossarian and his peers' older life when clearly Yossarian and his fellow veterans "made their point" in Catch-22. I believe Heller should have left well enough alone.
Rating:
Summary: The Greatest Novel Ever Written
Review: I know there should have been no sequal to Catch-22. But I am glad that there was. Closing Time is easily the greatest novel I have ever read, and that puts it on a good track to being the best novel ever. If you cannot read this book without getting out of your mind that this is written with a different structure and style than Catch-22, then please beware--this will be an ordeal. It was for me up untill I opened the cover, read the first lines, and I became once again hynotized by Mr. Heller. This book is going to blow your mind if you open up to it. Everything Mr. Heller goes after, as he did War in the earlier novel, he strikes a deft blow to. If you want the greatest satire of the degredation of Society, Culture, and Man-Kind, then please, please, buy this novel.
Rating:
Summary: Please Don't Waste Time or Money on This
Review: I loved Catch-22, but I should have known better than to hold high expectations for Closing Time when i found it on sale for a few dollars. I plowed my way through most of this just to see how it ended, reading it was a painful experience, however, so I just ended up flipping to the last 2 pages. Heller seems to be trying too hard to mimic the style of Catch-22 and the result was as if he had strewn the work with exclamation marks, bold font, and bawdy pictures. There was nothing refreshing, entertaining, or rewarding in this book. Just utter redundancy and rehashing. For the sake of full disclosure, I love Kurt Vonnegut's stuff as well and it took me 6 or 7 novels but I did notice a bit of the same effect. Please, stay away from this, read or reread Catch-22 and don't let your opinion of Heller suffer the way mine has.
Rating: 
Summary: Whimpers down
Review: I loved the way it started off. Revisiting the old characters from Catch-22. Led me to believe that it really could be sequeled.
Then it squealed. Meandering meaninglessly, to fill a large volume
Rating:
Summary: A Good Argument for the Abolition of All Sequels
Review: I read Joseph Heller's CATCH-22 on a rainy day, with nothing to do but gaze at the novels my father had collected over the years. Plunging in to avert crushing boredom, I discovered what all readers before me have, the absolute brilliance of it. CATCH-22 is one of the finest war novels I have read, surpassing even M*A*S*H* and THE SHORT-TIMERS in its audacious mix of humour, horror, and insanity. I also was overwhelmed by the fact that this was Heller's first novel. When I completed it, I rushed to a second-hand bookstore to buy CLOSING TIME. I had become such an instant fan of Heller's work, that it never crossed my mind that some things are better left alone. Why, oh why, did Heller pen CLOSING TIME? CATCH-22 did not need a continuation. It was lightning in a bottle, a once-in-a-lifetime event that could never be repeated. But Heller, late in his career, decided, for better or for worse, that Yossarian and Milo Minderbinder had lives worth examining yet again. The plot begins with Yossarian (whom I desperately wanted to meet after finishing CATCH-22) in a hospital, now older, still bitter, but unfortunately, not funny. As the labyrinth storyline progresses, Yossarian bumps up against a plethora of eccentric characters, both old friends and new enemies. There's the Chaplain (who can produce heavy water from his bowels), a president addicted to videogames, a bizarre wedding coordinator with dreams of the ideal society wedding within a decrepit bus station, and Milo, the schemer extrordinaire, now trying to sell invisible bombers to clueless generals. All this, plus a subplot in an underground playworld that may or may not be Hell. Why doesn't this work? Part of the problem, I believe, is that CATCH-22 had a genuinely insane setting in which to place its insane characters. The comparison of war with mental imbalance may not be new, but CATCH-22 made it fresh and invigorating. CLOSING TIME finds Heller without such a setting, frantically trying to create insanity where there was none before. It's not enough to simply show nutty people; they need a context in which they can flourish. CLOSING TIME doesn't provide them with one. Is it fair to keep comparing CLOSING TIME to CATCH-22? Probably not, but Heller invites the comparison. Reading CLOSING TIME is akin to attending your high school reunion. You meet all the people you once knew and loved, but despite your being glad to see them, you leave in a sonewhat depressed state. You've grown up, but they haven't. They were fun in school, but in the real world, you can't wait for them to leave you alone.
Rating:
Summary: A Worthy Sequel
Review: I suppose the title of this review is a bit hyperbolic... nothing could be worthy of Catch-22, one of the greatest novels ever written. However, people disappointed that it's not as good are mising a brilliant novel, one of the best since Catch-22 became a hit. The writing style will instantly remind you of Catch-22, particularly when Milo Minderbinder, his son M2, and Wintergreen are in the spotlight and the classic surreal humor Milo brought to the first book reappears in full force. Sammy Singer, best known in Catch-22 for fainting every time he saw Yossarian working with the dying Howard Snowden, becomes one of the major characters of Closing Time, as does his friend Lew Rabinowitz; both make only minor appearences in the main story, but their side story proves as enjoyable as the plot itself. Also important to the main storyline is Jerry "Senor" Gaffney, whose all-seeing detective agency is really just a cover for his Real Estate business (that's where the money is.) Having read Catch-22 and Closing Time back to back, I don't see Catch-22 with the same rose-colored glasses some might; while Closing Time certainly falls short of its predecessor's genius and social importance, it is nearly as entertaining a novel.
Rating:
Summary: A tired attempt to rekindle fame by a tired old man
Review: Imagine: you're the toast of the literary world at 38 after publishing your first novel. Your name is mentioned in the same breath with Salinger and Gisberg, later Kesey and Pynchon. It's THE book, man. It's title even becomes part of the vernacular. And then... your subsequent novels start to stink. As in putrid. Egg & sulpher. So, in one last dazzling attempt, you write a sequal to THE book that's still selling, your first, the one that caught on like none of the others, guaranteed to rekindle fame. But it sucks. Like all the others since. What do you do? Answer: What the hell. Publish. And give it a title that suggests The End, which this book is in so many ways. "Closing Time" tries to take off in two direction simulaneously, resulting in two limping halves that seem like drafts netted together by some perspiring editor desperate to get the word count up by deadline. The one half: a lame, Saturday-morning cartoon rendition of THE book. Not unlike most sequals. The other half: first person narrative drivel that goes nowhere. As indulgent as John & Yoko's early jams. Result? Like Richardson's third and fourth volumes of "Pamela", it's there, part of the literary landscape, but it's all token and no cigar. Soon to be forgotten, except for the dull echo. The best moments ape Pynchon, not Heller. The best characters recall THE book, not this one (especially Yossarian). And the plot: interesting, but nothing a new talent couldn't have handled better. And so the two halves split right down the seams. Which leaves...? A few more royalty checks for a guy who should have taken Salinger's cue: Retire.
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