Closing Time

Closing Time is a 1994 novel by Joseph Heller as a sequel to the popular Catch-22. It takes place in New York City in the 1990s, and revisits some characters of the original, including Yossarian, Milo Minderbinder and Chaplain Tappman. The book has two stories that are interwoven throughout – that of Yossarian in the last stages of his life, and that of Sammy Singer and Lew Rabinowitz, two men from Coney Island who also fought in World War II (th... more

Closing Time is a 1994 novel by Joseph Heller as a sequel to the popular Catch-22. It takes place in New York City in the 1990s, and revisits some characters of the original, including Yossarian, Milo Minderbinder and Chaplain Tappman. The book has two stories that are interwoven throughout – that of Yossarian in the last stages of his life, and that of Sammy Singer and Lew Rabinowitz, two men from Coney Island who also fought in World War II (the Sammy Singer character makes a brief appearance in Catch-22 as the tailgunner aboard Yossarian's bomber who kept waking up and fainting when he saw Yossarian trying to attend to the wounds of Snowden). One notable inconsistency in the book is that although Yossarian was 28 in Catch-22, which took place in 1944, in Closing Time, Yossarian is 68, and the time of Catch-22 is referred to as "50 years ago". There is a man mentioned by Lew named Vonnegut, whom he met while in Dresden. This is a reference to Kurt Vonnegut's experiences in the... less