In the Atlantic, novelist Katherine Marsh lamented the lack of stories being read to America’s elementary students. In the New York Times, Pamela Paul responded to Heller by blaming the Common Core for killing high schoolers’ desire to read. Nathan Heller’s much-circulated New Yorker article “ The End of the English Major” examined the slow death of fiction and poetry in colleges and universities. Perhaps the best thing Heller has written since Catch 22 (though I have an affection for God Knows, because I like the idea behind it), Closing Time is not quite its equal.Several writers have recently called attention to the decline of literature in American schools. The tragic is not so tragic - the death or nearness to death of a seventy year old is difficult to make so affecting as that of the same character at twenty - and the comic is not so comic - this is the lack of energy again. But, after finishing it, I was not convinced that it was up to Catch 22's standard. You are too gripped to distance yourself from the book, even just far enough to consider its quality. Then Heller suddenly pulls out the rug from under your feet, and its then a rollercoaster ride to the end. One result of this is that you read three quarters of the book feeling that it is not as good as Catch 22. There is less energy in Closing Time it does not grab you in the same way that Catch 22 does. 'This is how the world is, and nothing we can do will change it' is a viewpoint more appropriate for the seventy year old. The anger of Catch 22 is replaced with resignation. There is a different emphasis, too, in the attitude towards official stupidity and duplicity. Few novels have all the main characters in their sixties and seventies adolescence is probably the most common age for a protagonist. Using these characters from the past makes Closing Time an unusual novel in at least one respect. This is a fear which it is easier for most readers today to identify with, I suspect.

Sudden death from illness replaces sudden death from warfare as the driving force in the background. Back in the States fifty years later, they are terrified of dying of cancer. In Pianosa, the characters were terrified of being killed in the war. Many elements from Catch 22 are present, transformed, in Closing Time. He has never managed to combine the elements of farce and tragedy so well as was made possible by his theme of helplessness in the face of official stupidity.

Through this period, every book he has produced has suffered from comparison with his first novel. Almost thirty five years after finally finding a publisher for Catch 22, Heller wrote a sequel.

Closing time heller