Closing Time

When I was fourteen years old, I read Catch-22. I can't remember who or where I'd gotten the recommendation from, or if it was somehow a total blind whim. But I loved it. I've re-read it two or three times (something I rarely do with old books) since then, and I still love it. It is without question my favorite book. And back when I was fourteen, I bought its sequel, Closing Time, and had very high expectations. The sequel simply didn't deliver on any account and I abandoned it after about 100 of its 464 pages. Now, let's fast forward eight years to the present day. I've been reading through Joseph Heller's novels in order of publication. Every few months, you can find one on this very blog, starting back in October of 2009 with Heller's second book, Something Happened. That book, too, was very, very different from Catch-22. But at twenty-one years of age and not fourteen, I could at least appreciate the book in spite of such differences. And as I read more and more of Heller's books I got a bigger and better picture of the evolution of Heller as an author. Naturally, I also did my fair share of research on the man's life beyond what he offered up in his books. So when it came time for me to attempt Heller's sixth novel - this novel - for a second time, I had some very different expectations than I did eight years ago. Not tempered expectations, per se, but a new outlook on what the book could and would be about and how it would be written. And frankly, the whole thing was kind of a mess. It didn't start out that way. It actually started out very slowly. Yossarian, the protagonist of Catch-22, is seventy years old and very much heading into the home stretch of his life. So, too, are all of his friends and peers (including several other recurring characters from Catch-22, which was set during World War II). And so is the twentieth century, and along with it, the golden age of America. It's "closing time," so to speak. I read a lot of reviews before, whilst, and after reading Closing Time, and the best phrase I can remember, in comparing it to Catch-22, went something like, "Catch-22 was a frantic young man's novel about how to stay alive; Closing Time is a calm old man's novel about how to die." I can't remember the reviewer's name, but in a nutshell, he nailed it. Heller divides the book neatly between Yossarian and two other World War II veterans. There are shades of Heller in all three. That in and of itself isn't strange; many authors base several of their characters on different components of themselves. But while Yossarian is Heller's superego and all of his story is narrated in the third person, the chapters in which either of the other two men - Lew and Sammy - are the protagonist are told in the first person. And stranger still, there is a reference made midway through the book to a "Joey Heller" who Sammy remembers going to war with. We're not just dealing with different versions of Heller, but with different layers of him within his own novel. It was never really confusing, so to speak, but it seemed fairly unlike anything Heller had written up to that point (1994) and I can't say it added much to the story. But it didn't detract, either. Anyway, the Sammy and Lew characters spend most of their time speaking nostalgically about their childhood on Coney Island and their timeless war stories and memories. And they do so without any added humor or wit; this is simply Heller reflecting on his past through a very, very thin fourth wall. The doublespeak and irony that sprang from every page of Catch-22 are entirely absent from these passages about days gone by both good and bad. But the Yossarian side of the story - and namely, the parts of it in which Yossarian interacts with fellow Catch-22 veteran Milo - still contains plenty of the dry humor lacking elsewhere. But again, that's only for half of the novel. It's really as if these are two separate novels; one a fun and creative "Where are they now?" take on a few Catch-22 characters, the other a nonfictional memoir of Heller's own life. I don't get it, and neither do most of the people who wrote the reviews I read. And in the final fifty pages or so, an already-strange narrative method becomes jarred completely loose by several ridiculous and over-the-top moments that felt far more Vonnegut than Heller. (Actually, Heller even wrote "Kurt Vonnegut" himself into the narrative, albeit briefly and without any real consequence.) A man becomes a highly-sought WMD when it is discovered that his urine contains radioactive isotopes; we briefly visit hell and find FDR and JFK; two characters who died in Catch-22 fly their plane through the sky, conversing with one another, completely aware that they are ghosts; and the president begins a nuclear holocaust when he mistakes reality for one of his favorite video games. It's all just so utterly bizarre. Catch-22 was full of bizarre moments, but none of them involved supernatural phenomena or a Dr. Strangelove-style apocalypse. (Heller wrote in a character named "Dr. Strangelove" as well.) There's very little to love here, and yet, I want to love this book. I really do. I don't love it, and most critics didn't love it (reactions "ranged" from slightly negative to slightly positive), but something about it makes me want to love it. Perhaps (well, more than likely) it's my respect for Heller himself. Maybe he knew what he was doing. Maybe he had a ton of ideas for more novels, but recognized that he wouldn't have time to finish writing multiple books; he died just five years after this book's publication and it's very clear that death was on his mind as he wrote what was then supposed to be his final work. ("This is my summing-up," Heller stated in an interview prior to the book's release.) So maybe Heller just said, "fuck it," and threw together his Catch-22 follow-up, his memoirs, and his military-industrial satire together without much care for how well the pieces fit together. Probably not, but still - maybe. That theory is the best I can conjure up to defend Heller's "summing-up," though. Closing Time wasn't a bad book. But the whole was far lesser than the sum of its parts. Whatever. I'm glad to have read it and I think I can appreciate it at least for what it is. I'll start Heller's final novel (a short one, relatively speaking) as soon as tomorrow. But for now, it's bed time. Now, go read Catch-22. Really, just do it. It'll change your life.