Closing Time by Joseph Heller

Yet another trip into Joseph Heller's inane, Wayside-School-for-adults world. I don't know why I bother. This was the sequel to Catch-22, and precisely like it in many respects, from the mistrust and dislike of authority, to the contradictory dialogue and sentence structure, to the excessive sexual content, and the absence of purpose for existence.

I just plodded through this, alternately bored, shocked, or disgusted. I would have quit halfway through, but I am not a quitter. That's right. The story picks up with the main characters from the first book and follows them through many improbable and largely pointless events. Once again, authority is incompetent to the point of imbecility, but this time it is the president who is lambasted. The syntax is in line with Heller's previous style. There is so much discussion of sex it is unbelievable. Nihilism and atheism are the religions du jour, with the entire world ending at the conclusion of the book.

Heller just seems like a disillusioned old man. He wrote himself and Kurt Vonnegut into the story at times, and they both have that tragic post-modern neo-Darwinist outlook. Sad, sad, sad.