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In Review: Closing Time, by Joseph Heller
Mar. 20th, 2008 08:53 amI have long been hesitant to read this book. I'd known Catch-22 had a sequel even since I read it during the summer of 2000. Heller mentioned it in the preface to the edition I had, spoiling me (Yossarian lives!) and I even knew that my beloved Chaplain Tappman was in it. But I loved Catch-22 so and was afraid of being disappointed... after all if this book lives up to the prior's standards wouldn't I have heard it acclaimed by others? I decided never to read it. My brother had other ideas though and got it for my birthday in the spring of 2005. Get over your fears, he said. Still it stayed in my "to-read" pile. In 2006 I came across another Heller novel in the used book store and picked it up. It wasn't related to either of the others and so I figured it was a good test run to see if Heller stood up outside of Catch-22 or was just a one hit wonder. The book was Good as Gold; It was very good if not up the level of greatness of Catch-22. Heller's frenzied pace of expanding and contracting spirals seemed consistent (though this book was linear). Still it had been another year and a half, when in the fall of 2007 I was trying to decide what book to read next and asked my boyfriend what to read. He said Closing Time not knowing the story of how the book had come to sit and stay on the to-read shelf (oh yes I had a shelf [or two] by this point). I picked it up at last.
So why did it take me almost 6 months to finish this book? Was it terrible? It wasn't terrible... it was just dense and hard to read quickly. Almost everyone I've talked to on the subject agrees that Catch-22 takes longer to read than it's word count or entertaining nature would lead you to expect. I think much of that is the case here too. You cannot read Heller quickly without losing the value of it. Most of us who are fast readers skim. It's a fact, and if you skim Heller you become hopelessly lost and miss everything. So I had to slow down... read a chapter or two at a time (my grandest achievement in progress was reading 100 pages one night when my boyfriend passed out early and I didn't go to bed until close to midnight).
The other reason it took so long is that there is a weird meta quality about the book. It's very now in that. It pulls you out of the story and makes you think about what exactly Heller is doing, though. When I first started Closing Time I said that it read like very good fanfiction of the original book, with (obviously) perfect characterization. As I continued reading though, I discovered that is more of a crossover or hybrid. Heller had mixed Catch-22 and his own style in with Vonnegut's style. He crosses out even to referencing reality and real authors who are part of the appropriate generation including himself and Vonnegut and spins into the fantastic in a way that keeps his pacing but when you break it down seems much more something Vonnegut would have come up with. He references. It's interesting and appropriate, and that (combined with my desire to see Chaplain Tappman finally get home once more and Yossarian scam on nurses and Milo make all the profits) made me glad I read the book. It's not the masterpiece that Catch-22 is, but it was an interesting read for me, both as story and as text.
Besides, now I finally understand how Ex-PFC Wintergreen was the most important person in their section of the military during Catch-22.
So why did it take me almost 6 months to finish this book? Was it terrible? It wasn't terrible... it was just dense and hard to read quickly. Almost everyone I've talked to on the subject agrees that Catch-22 takes longer to read than it's word count or entertaining nature would lead you to expect. I think much of that is the case here too. You cannot read Heller quickly without losing the value of it. Most of us who are fast readers skim. It's a fact, and if you skim Heller you become hopelessly lost and miss everything. So I had to slow down... read a chapter or two at a time (my grandest achievement in progress was reading 100 pages one night when my boyfriend passed out early and I didn't go to bed until close to midnight).
The other reason it took so long is that there is a weird meta quality about the book. It's very now in that. It pulls you out of the story and makes you think about what exactly Heller is doing, though. When I first started Closing Time I said that it read like very good fanfiction of the original book, with (obviously) perfect characterization. As I continued reading though, I discovered that is more of a crossover or hybrid. Heller had mixed Catch-22 and his own style in with Vonnegut's style. He crosses out even to referencing reality and real authors who are part of the appropriate generation including himself and Vonnegut and spins into the fantastic in a way that keeps his pacing but when you break it down seems much more something Vonnegut would have come up with. He references. It's interesting and appropriate, and that (combined with my desire to see Chaplain Tappman finally get home once more and Yossarian scam on nurses and Milo make all the profits) made me glad I read the book. It's not the masterpiece that Catch-22 is, but it was an interesting read for me, both as story and as text.
Besides, now I finally understand how Ex-PFC Wintergreen was the most important person in their section of the military during Catch-22.
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