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.

Thoughts on the Slaughterhouse-Five Film Adaptation

            Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is one of my favorite books.  A testament to the futility of man’s will in the midst of war, of the lack of volition and agency that envelops mankind when put in an incomprehensible situation, all told in a voice that yoyos between heartbreakingly sincere and sarcastically hilarious.  Published in 1969, Slaughterhouse-Five is a modern classic, ranked 18^th on Modern Library’s list of the 100 best twentieth century novels.  In 1972, the world received a film adaptation directed by George Roy Hill (The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) and starring the then unknown (and now obscure) Michael Sacks as Billy Pilgrim.

            The first thing that popped into my mind upon hearing of the adaptation is, “How do you film this book?”  The second question is, “Should it even be attempted?”  There have, of course, been films that are as good as, or better than, their literary source material (e.g. The Wizard of Oz, Jaws, The Godfather, The Shining, The Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump, etc.), but very rarely are the books these are based on masterpieces (notable exceptions being Apocalypse Now, based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and A Clockwork Orange, based on the novel of the same name by Anthony Burgess). 

            I don’t subscribe to the belief that a film version can retroactively ruin a book, nor do I believe that a film version will result in less people reading a book (quite the opposite, in fact).  My point of view is: Make the best film you can.

            The fact is, Slaughterhouse-five was a good movie.  I wouldn’t say it’s a masterpiece, but then again, most films aren’t.  The basic story and premise is the same as in the book, though the famous first chapter is, understandably, dropped.  The Tralfamadorians don’t appear onscreen, because they are only visible in the fourth dimension (an explanation coherent with the book’s take on the Tralfamdorians).  There were many such little changes that really didn’t affect the quality one way or another (e.g., instead of being lost with two scouts and Roland Weary, he’s lost with Weary and Paul Lazzaro).  There were two places where the movie improved on the book.

The Tralfamadorian Zoo

          One thing the film improved on was Billy’s relationship with poor old Edgar Derby.  I’d say their friendship is better realized in the film than the book.  The second is Billy’s obsession with Montana Wildhack.  In the book, we learn that Billy found a blue film with her in it, but that’s seemingly the limit of his non-Tralfamadorian relationship to her.  In the film version, it’s a little closer to obsession and just tinged with creepiness.    

            I rarely ever find major fault with a small change in a movie adaptation.  The only cases where I do is when it completely recontextualizes or leads to a limited reinterpretation of much of the story and/or its characters.  In the case of Slaughterhouse-five, this change comes when the plane carrying Billy, his father-in-law, and a bunch of other optometrists is about to take off.  In the film version, Billy tries to stop the plane from leaving by warning everyone that it’s going to crash.  They don’t listen to him, and it does. 

            While the events in the rest of the story may not be altered, the interpretation of them must be.  Because Billy Pilgrim tried to use his knowledge of the future, we know something that is true in the film but (in my opinion) not true in the book: Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.

            Perhaps I should elaborate.  I think the best supported interpretation of the novel is that Billy Pilgrim has not actually come unstuck in time.  From the first page of chapter two (i.e. the first page of the story, chapter one being used to introduce the rest of the novel):  

            Billy Pilgrim has gone to sleep a widower and awakened on his wedding day.  He has
            walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941.  He has gone back
            through that door to find himself in 1963.  He has seen his birth and death many times, he
            says, and pays random visits to all the events in between.  

            He says.

If an author devotes an entire paragraph on the first page of the story to just two words, you better believe those two words are important.  The fact is, the narrator after chapter one is not the same narrator.  This is an alternate Vonnegut (Alternegutt?) who served with the fictional Billy Pilgrim and is simply telling us what Pilgrim has been claiming.  This is not third person omniscient, nor even first person omniscient.  This is first person limited. 

            It’s worth noting that Billy didn’t start talking about the Tralfamadorians until after the plane crash that resulted in his coma.

            Every time something science-fictiony happens, the narrator describes it in terms of how similar it is to a Kilgore Trout novel.  While Billy was recuperating from a nervous breakdown, he became a fan of Kilgore Trout.  So, what you have is a man who has been through hell, had seen his only friend in the war executed, and later had a nervous breakdown, during the recovery from the lattermost of these misfortunes, becomes a fan of a science-fiction writer and starts to go through events similar to the man’s novels.
 

            My point is that there’s ample evidence to support a PTSD interpretation, as opposed to a time traveling.  In the film version, we have to accept the time traveling, because Billy proved that he did have future knowledge and was therefore not just having a flashback. 

            But overall, I enjoyed the movie.  It had its flaws, but so does everything else. It seemed that the filmmaker had a lot of respect for the source material, without letting himself be shackled by it, which is great.  If you like the book, I’d recommend the film.