Closing Time

By: Joseph Heller

Narrated by: Elliott Gould

Length: 4 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

Thirty-three years and over ten million copies later...the classic story continues. Yossarian returns - older, if not wiser -- to face a new foe.

An instant classic when published in 1961, Joseph Heller's Catch-22 still ranks among the funniest - and most serious - novels ever written about war. Now Heller has dared to write the sequel to his 10-million copy best seller, using many of Catch-22's characters to deftly satirize the realities and the myths of America in the half century since they fought World War II.

In Closing Time, a comic masterpiece in its own right, 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. Back again are characters familiar from Catch-22, including Yossarian and Milo Minderbinder, the chaplain, and little Sammy Singer, as they come to the end of their lives and the end of the century - all linked, this time, in uneasy peace and old age...fighting not the Germans, but The End.

Outrageously funny and totally serious, and as brilliant and successful as Catch-22 itself, Closing Time is a fun-house mirror that captures, at once grotesquely and accurately, the truth about ourselves.

©1995 Joseph Heller (P)2004 Simon & Schuster

ABRIDGED!!

I struggled all the way through this, because the breaks in the story were just so awkward. And then I looked at the Kindle edition and discovered that what I had just listened to was abridged!!! No wonder it felt so awkward! I'm extremely unhappy that this wasn't made clear at the outset.

Very suspenseful with maturity

I like when the Catch-22 reconcile while going through real-world dilemma situations as well as facing atomic weapons!

Terrible Narrator

The story is excellent-- it captures the spirit of Catch-22 and is quite humorous. However, the narrator for this audio book is horrendously monotone and terribly boring. Simon & Schuster could have done much better.

Hi I use to read and listen simultaneously,the lin

the lines are retained the audible. would you please concider it and explain why?I

Abridged and poor narrator

Abridged and poor narrator ruin it for me. I want a real version please

This is abridged!!

What?! How can you sell an abridged novel without labeling it abridged? I basically just wanted four hours of my life, because I’ll never know if the actual book is any good. This certainly isn’t. And Elliott Gould does a terrible job! I could hardly stand to listen to him. And now I see I didn’t have to — because it’s abridged! This is not a book you can abridge (if such a thing exists)! We don’t read Heller for the plot! No wonder it was so oddly horrible. Seriously, do we get a refund on this scam?