books:

	Something Happened Joseph Heller Simon & Schuster, 1997 - 576 pages average customer review:based on 71 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Something Happened is Joseph Heller's wonderfully inventive and controversial second novel satirizing business life and American culture. The story is told as if the reader was overhearing the patter of Bob Slocum's brain -- recording what is going on at the office, as well as his fantasies and memories that complete the story of his life. The result is a novel as original and memorable as his Catch-22.

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Chilling, funny investigation into the rotting underside of the human psyche

Joseph Heller's "Something Happened" is more than just a brilliant stylistic exercise, or a period piece portraying the social mores of the 1970s. It is nothing less than a deep and insightful novelized investigation into the human psyche, with a distinct Neo-Freudian bent.

A short synopsis with no spoilers: Bob Slocum is a middle-aged middle-management executive who's worked for his company for decades. He hates his job, dislikes his family, engages in extramarital affairs, longs for a past he knows is a fiction, and worries about his sanity.

Littered throughout "Something Happened" are textbook-perfect depictions of human phobia and neuroses. Bob Slocum feels that the things around him lack meaning, and his life itself is bereft as well. He is too intelligent to not recognize that the symbols of his society are arbitrary, but too weak to rebel against them and to inject meaning into his own life.

The book is told from a first-person monologue perspective, and is so deft and pitch-perfect that it feels like nothing less than inhabiting the character's mind. It is difficult not to empathize with the protagonist, and to feel your world view slowly but surely morph into his. This is a book that stays with you, and is difficult to shake when you're finished.

A wonderful non-fiction companion piece for this book is "The Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker. In this book, Becker discusses the singular existential problems of humanity from a psychological perspective: we are creatures with symbolic-analytic brains capable of thinking with vast complexity; but that brain is tethered to a sweating, defecating meat-sack which decays and dies. We are part angel and part animal - and unlike the lower animals, we know we're going to die. This pervasive fear and foreboding of death plays itself out in all our myriad fetishes, fears, prejudices, and societal exercises.

This is not a book for everyone. Its perspective is unremittingly bleak, and the first-person stream of consciousness narrative is not for those who like action-packed Dan Brown-type escapades (not that there's anything wrong with that). If you are a reader who enjoys black humor and psychological complexity, you may well be mesmerized. I could not put this book down, myself.

Highly recommended. Not for the faint of heart of the short of attention span.

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Your Patience Will Be Rewarded

Sometimes, this book is a pain. It does not have a strong, linear plot. It uses lots of parenthetical thoughts (some of them pages long). You may find it hard to read on occasion.

And yet, it is a joy. Something Happened superbly captures affluent suburban America of the sixties and the corporate culture that made it possible. Many of the features Heller describes inside main character Bob Slocum's company still ring true today. Many an honest male reader will recognize elements of the often unlikable Slocum in himself.

I'm glad that I hung in there with Something Happened. Give this book a chance and you may be, too.

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Hard work but very much worth it

People have compared this book to _Catcher in the Rye_, and I think that's fair not only because the main character seems to be in the process of falling of the cliff of Holden's fantasy, but also because when people try to talk about this book they end up describing themselves.

This book is a lot of work to read. I spent three months on it and enjoyed every minute. I actually delayed finishing it out of mingled reluctance to let it go and worry about what the ending would be.

It feels very Freudian. It's repetitive and long, so you should be prepared for that. Also, if you dislike books without a traditional plot arc, you may not get anything out of it. The message of it -- the feeling you get when you look at yourself with horror and wonder, "why am I like this??" can be found elsewhere ("American Beauty" for example). However, I give this book the highest possible recommendation. What it does, it does better than any movie or book I've ever seen. If you can read it, you should. You can't believe how rich our culture is within the apparent cultural vacuum of professional and social success.

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worth the read

Heller's novel is indeed a bit plodding compared to some of his other work. but the central story line is an important one. We see inside the mind of the man caught up in corporate America, with his completely unsatisfying family life and purposeless competition at work. Instead of "something happened," I might have titled this book "What the hell happened?" The theme of unrealized expectations rings through prominently, leaving the reader realizing that the protagonist of the story probably can't wait to just be done with it all, with death as the only real way out.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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