Review: Closing Time by Joseph Heller (1994)

Heller's first novel, Catch-22 (1961), is easily one of my favorite books of all time, so the existence of a sequel was both exciting and worrisome.  Closing Time, written more than thirty years after its predecessor, features an elderly Yossarian, who has survived the war, gone on to start a family and, eventually, work as the conscience of M & M enterprises, a major conglomerate run by Milo Minderbinder and ex-Private Wintergreen.  The life of Yossarian and his companions make up about half the volume of the novel, the other half is written as a first person account of two other WWII vets, Sammy Singer and Lew Rabinowitz, working class Jews from Coney Island who moved up after the war.  Their stories are much more grounded than Yossarian's, whose life gets crazy again when Chaplain Tappman finds him. (Tappman, it turns out, has started naturally passing heavy water, a nuclear compound.) Sammy and Lew are tangentially connected to Yossarian, and to be honest, I preferred their sections to those centered on the Catch-22 characters.  The best word I can use to describe Yossarian in 1994 is 'weary.'  He's an old man now; a virile, sardonic old man, but an old man nonetheless.

This is a book about anti-climax, about Heller's generation, the young men who went to war, saw and endured great and terrible things, then came back to a country that was economically booming and with the benefit of the G.I. bill, many of whom grew up poor then made good, raised families, and were now starting to die of old age.  In Catch-22, death was cataclysmic and unexpected, in Closing Time it's a slow, inevitable wasting away.  The problem with the Yossarian segments is that they are often incomplete attempts to recapture the Yossarian of Catch-22. At one point, he paraphrases Camus to his son, saying that the only freedom we truly have is the freedom to say 'no.'  But this Yossarian isn't the kind that would refuse a medal by appearing to the pinning ceremony naked; this Yossarian says no, then does it anyway.  While I can appreciate the contrast between the Singer/Rabinowitz sections, showing how vast a gulf separates the lives of these men from the defense contractors and politicians and billionaires Yossarian deals with, it harms the Yossarian sections.  Yossarian away from the war is like Ahab away from the sea.

There are a couple other aspects of the novel that need mentioning.  The structure seemed very messy, especially compared to Catch-22, which is meticulously organized, whereas Closing Time meanders.  There's also a strange supernatural element to this novel, that I'm still not sure how I feel about.  It most reminds me of the heaven scenes in Vonnegut's Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970).

But while it has many faults, Closing Time is worth reading.  Heller is one of those authors cursed with a debut novel that was not only a masterpiece, but a commercial success.  Unlike, say, William Golding, whose first novel (The Lord of the Flies) is certainly his most famous, but went on to win a Nobel, Heller never managed to recapture the success of Catch-22.  And Yossarian in Closing Time has had to come to terms with the limits of his success, the realization that there isn't much more he can accomplish.  Yossarian frequently talks about author William Saroyan, regretting obscurity falling on the man's life and works, and it is all too easy to see in these passages Heller's struggles with his own legacy. Too often Yossarian et. al. seem like wraiths of their former selves, but, as unpleasant as it is to see our literary heroes withered, that may very well be the point.   Despite how the novel ends, this is a book about old age and the inevitable anti-climax that entails.

#99: The Cunning Man by Robertson Davies

Robertson Davies (1913-1995) is one of those names I've always heard mentioned but never got around to reading.  A prolific popular/literary writer from Canada, The Cunning Man (1994)is the last finished work of a career spanning five decades.  It takes the form of a case-book turned memoir of the elderly Doctor Jonathan Hullah, a Toronto transplant originally from the small town of Sioux Lookout, as he is spurred to recollection by a journalist doing a series on the Toronto of yesteryear.  The main event, the event that spurs the journalist's questions and is returned to again and again throughout the novel, is the death of Ninian Hobbes, the beloved Anglican priest who died in the middle of service, just after taking communion.

Hobbes's rector was Charlie Iredale, one of Dr. Hullah's two best friends growing up.  Their childhood friendship makes up a big part of the novel, as does the peculiarities of Dr. Hullah's practice, in which he typically treats the patients that other doctors just can't stand anymore. Davies uses both of these to illustrate the growth of Canadian identity and Toronto particularly.  Of seeing how Charlie's parents interacted with them, Hullah remarks "I assumed that this was the English manner of upbringing.  Maturity and individual judgement were expected and encouraged.  It was not the Canadian way.  Certainly not as I knew it." (120).  And of the cold practicality of the medical students, he notices that "The genteel tradition was on its last legs in Canada; its legs had never been particularly strong..." (140)  The issue of faith is dealt with frequently, Hullah finding his equal and opposite in Charlie, as well as lengthy discussions of art and philosophy with other characters.  Davies manages not to let this be boring, which is a very real danger when you have characters sitting around and expostulating.

The novel spans about seventy years, from the beginning of the 20th century onwards.  Hullah serves as an army doctor in WWII, mainly treating victims of friendly fire.  Always interested in the literary (Hullah frequently quotes poetry throughout the novel), he involves himself in the art community when he returns to Toronto to set up his practice, although the city isn't always interested in art.  "The imperceptive, unselfconscious city prospered under its soggy blanket of shallow middle-class morality and accepted prosperity as evidence of God's approval." (143)

I really liked The Cunning Man, although the continuity seemed a bit off, but that may be due to the form.  It's often hard to accept that Davies was writing this in the 1990s, because his diction seems to come straight from the 1920s, though it works with the character. As a pseudo-memoir, there are some avenues that should have been delved deeper into, and I think the non-chronological formation of the text (e.g. parts being written at different times) ends up getting convoluted.  But despite these issues, the novel works, the characters are complex and interesting, the story is usually captivating.

Just the stats:

Published: 1994
Nationality: Canadian
469 Pages (Penguin Trade Paperback Edition)
Other Appearances on ML list: Davies' Fifth Business is #40 on the readers' choice list.

1994: The Chamber by John Grisham

The Author:

John Grisham (1955-    ) was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the son of a construction worker. At the age of twelve, his family moved to Southaven, Mississippi.  He graduated with a B.S. from Mississippi State University in 1979.  He passed the Mississippi Bar exam in 1981, and received his J.D. from the University of Mississippi.  In 1981, he married Renee Jones, with whom he had two children.  

Grisham began a successful law practice in 1981, starting in criminal law, and moving to more lucrative civil law.  In 1984, he was elected to the Mississippi State House of Representatives, a position he held in addition to running his law practice.  A case he witnessed while in the state legislature led him to write his first novel, A Time to Kill (1989).  He had trouble finding an agent and publisher.  He eventually found both, and a limited run of 5,000 copies was printed of his first novel.  In 1990, Grisham resigned from his position on state legislature and retired his practice.  In 1991, Doubleday published his second novel, The Firm.  It was a massive commercial success, as were his third and fourth novels, The Pelican Brief (1992) and The Client (1993).  His fourth book, The Chamber (1994) is the first of eleven novels to become the number one annual bestselling novel in the U.S.

Since 1989, Grisham has published a total of 28 novels, four children's books, and a work of non-fiction.  His family splits its time between homes in Oxford, Mississippi, Charlottesville, Virginia, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  Grisham also serves as a board member on the Innocence Project.

The Book:

Length: 486 pages
Subject/Genre: Death Penalty Litigation/Legal Thriller

The Chamber begins in 1967 in rural Mississippi.  Sam Cayhall, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, assists in the bombing of a Jewish lawyer's office as part of the KKK's bombing campaign against civil rights activists. The bomb is set by another man, Rollie Wedge, and is put on a timer.  The bomb detonates later that morning, killing the lawyer's twin children, and crippling the lawyer.  Cayhall is caught by the police.  He is tried, but the jury is stacked in his favor and is deadlocked.  The same happens in a retrial.  Fourteen years pass, attitudes change, and a new D.A., looking to make a name for himself, brings Cayhall back on trial.  With testimony from the former imperial wizard of the KKK, Cayhall is convicted and given the death penalty.

In Chicago, young lawyer Adam Hall works for the major firm Kravitz & Bane, which had been representing Cayhall through his appeals as part of their pro bono program.  Hall admits that, after his father's suicide when Hall was seventeen, he learned that he was Sam Cayhall's grandson.  Hall goes on to say that he is against the death penalty in principle, and wants to represent his grandfather.  This he does, and heads out to Mississippi, connecting with his family's dark past and the legal vagaries of death penalty litigation.  

Grisham's novel strikes me as the equivalent of a strong episode of a tv courtroom drama.  There's a lot of investigation and legal maneuvering, and a lot of tension over whether or not Cayhall will be executed. The characters come up against a lot of serious, morally troublesome issues, not the least of which is the death penalty itself.  However, these issues are not dealt with to any depth.  While I don't expect a fifty page treatise debating the morality of capital punishment, the pro arguments are basically 'it's justice/it gives closure' and the con arguments are just 'killing is wrong/it doesn't help anyone.'  None of these points are argued beyond them being mentioned in conversation, and what could be a deep exploration of an incredibly contentious moral dilemma isn't really dealt with at all.  Grisham acknowledges that there is such a dilemma, his characters take one side or the other, but all he really does is have people ask if it's really good or bad (I mean, he literally has them ask, a lot).  It's easy for this novel to seem a lot deeper than it is, because it brings up serious topics, but it doesn't really have anything interesting to say about them.


The novel was adapted to film in 1996.  The Chamber starred Gene Hackman as Sam Cayhall, Faye Dunaway as Lee Cayhall, and Chris O'Donnell as Adam Hall.

The film was a critical catastrophe, with even Grisham himself describing it as "a train wreck."  It did, however, receive one award nomination: Faye Dunaway for worst supporting actress at the 1997 Razzies.


Make no mistake, though, the novel was entertaining.  It's like a good episode of Law & Order.  If you want something entertaining to read that will kill time, The Chamber is a good choice.

Bestsellers of 1994:

1. The Chamber by John Grisham

2. Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy

3. The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield

4. The Gift by Danielle Steel

5. Insomnia by Stephen King

6. Politically Correct Bedtime Stories by James Finn Garner

7. Wings by Danielle Steel

8. Accident by Danielle Steel

9. Disclosure by Michael Crichton

10. Remember Me by Marry Higgins Clark

Also Published in 1994:

Closing Time by Joseph Heller

Gun, with Occasional Music by Jonathan Lethem

Sources:

Grisham, John. The Chamber. New York: Doubleday, 1994. Print.

"John Grisham." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2014. Literature Resource 
     Center. Web.