It's closing time for American civilization, according to Joseph Heller in Closing Time. America is plagued by moral squalor, best exemplified by the New York Port Authority Bus Terminal with its assortment of pickpockets, prostitutes, transvestites, and the homeless. There, the air reeks with "smoke and unwashed bodies and their waste . . ." There, rapes, stabbings, and drug overdoses are the norm. Indeed, the rape of a one-legged woman is just part of a daily routine.

All the while wealthy dilettantes, blind to the human misery surrounding them, attend their elitist ACACAMMA meetings and try to outdo each other in their planning of monstrously exorbitant social events. Heller's "assault on nouvelle society," as Thomas Edwards terms it in his review, culminates in the Minderbender/Maxon wedding, the "Wedding of the Close of the Century," held in the New York bus terminal, but with actors substituting for the homeless...