Something Happened

"One of the saddest books ever written," Kurt Vonnegut opined about 'Something Happened': "A black humor book from which the humor has been surgically removed." It is a masterpiece that is off the radar of the masterpieces lists of American literature, in my opinion. This work seems to have been overlooked by many, perhaps due to its unique and somewhat dark nature. The story might be filled with complex characters and a plot that delves deep into the human psyche, exploring themes of despair, disillusionment, and the absurdity of life. Despite the lack of humor that Vonnegut mentioned, it could still possess a certain charm and power that吸引 readers who are willing to look beyond the surface. It is a hidden gem that awaits discovery by those who are seeking something different and thought-provoking in their literary pursuits.

The storyline presented here immediately brings to mind a fascinating anecdote about Joseph Heller, who is widely renowned for his modern classic, Catch-22.

One evening, Heller found himself at a lively cocktail party in Connecticut. Amid the crowd, someone singled out a hedge fund manager and made the observation that, "He makes more in a year than you ever made for writing Catch-22."

Heller, with his characteristic wit and wisdom, responded, "Yeah, but I have something he'll never have."

His curious host promptly inquired, "Really? What's that?"

And Heller's simple yet profound answer was, "Enough."

This story not only showcases Heller's unique perspective on wealth and success but also highlights the deeper values that he held dear. It serves as a reminder that true fulfillment in life may not necessarily be measured by financial gain alone.

Moreover, it adds an interesting layer to our understanding of Heller's own life and the possible inspirations that might have influenced his writing.

Perhaps this experience of comparing himself to the hedge fund manager made him reflect on the nature of human desires and the pursuit of more.

In conclusion, this anecdote about Joseph Heller is not only entertaining but also thought-provoking, making us question our own priorities and what we truly consider to be enough in life.

\n  \n

I have a universe in my head.

Families huddle there in secret, sheltered places. Civilizations reside. The laws of physics hold it together. The laws of chemistry keep it going. I have nothing to do with it. No one governs it.

Foxy emissaries glide from alleys to archways on immoral, mysterious missions. No one’s in charge. I am infiltrated and besieged, the unprotected target of sneaky attacks from within. ………smirking faces go about their nasty deeds and pleasures surreptitiously without confiding in me. It gives me pain. Victims weep. No one dies. There is noiseless wailing.

I was oddly reminded of the character Alec Baldwin played on the sitcom Friends while reading this book. Because of the stark dissimilarity, but also somehow the strange similarity his character shared with Bob Slocum, our anxious, the unendingly nervous protagonist here. Alec Baldwin’s character had this schmaltzy penchant for unrealistic, needless ‘positivity’. The personification of human saccharine, ever inclined to put a positive spin on every single thing. ‘He called the Long Island Express Way a Concrete Miracle’. He’s like ‘Santa Claus on Prozac, at Disneyland,…..getting laid’. You get my drift. He is overly enthusiastic.

While he is representing one end of unrealistic positivity, Bob Slocum, our hero here, is representing the other. The noxious debilitating end where everything revolves around the words ‘seem’, ‘feel’. ‘afraid’ and is barren for anything remotely positive. Both are in terrible need of tranquilizers. Both aren’t familiar with pragmatism. Both need to take a deep breath and just let things be, without putting a label on anything and everything.

No doubt this is a brilliant, confounding piece of work, and a difficult book to pull off. Heller’s use of language is genuinely inspiring and exceptionally strong. He is intelligent. He's playful with the language. But how much of this you can take, the repetitiousness I mean, is the deciding factor as to how much you’ll like this novel. It's incessant insecurity and bitterness and repulsiveness page after page after page.

I was thinking this could possibly be the most thinly plotted novel I have read, and then I was reminded of The Road by McCarthy. Over time, I will be able to look back at books like this, which is exuberantly artistic in the use of language, but with very little going on, with some hint of reverence for the unfathomable use of the language and at its ‘moments’, filling me with melancholy, which is profound and not patronizing, yet too repetitious and unhappening. If you can look past the monotony, which I’m convinced was the point Heller was trying to make? There's a story of loss and longing here.

Half way through this I kept thinking if Holden from The Catcher In the Rye grew up and had kids, this'd be him. But that's not accurate in someway, for Holden was brave to search for something of meaning in his life during his teenage years. Bob Slocum isn't brave. He's meek and can be easily eased into uneasiness. He lacks sternness. He is amorphous. The repetitions of modern urban life and the invisible malignant innards of urbanity and the ‘prosperity’ that arises from peace and harmony is evident here. You know the drill. Regular paychecks, vacations, materialistic longings well-met, yet bottomless yearnings. Very first-worldly but mostly an expose of restlessnesss that arises from restfulness.

The main character, like anyone who finds the present joyless, is shackled to his childhood, nostalgic for the past despite being fairly not uncomplaining about it. He has mommy issues. He has daddy issues. He concocts conflict within his mind and tussles with his boss, daughter, and his wife. He befouls his future through abject overthinking. He is strangely drawn to his boy more than anyone. His fondness is immoderate.

All in all, Heller’s artistry is the shimmy shine here. His ambition to explore the malignancy of peace, after exploring the malignancy of war in Catch-22. And a convincing one at that. I mean, that in itself warrants exhorting. I hope you give this one a go. Not faultless, but an effort of immense vitality, where the subject matter is the exact opposite.

Something Happens

Contrary to what many might think, there is indeed something that occurs in this novel, specifically in the last two pages. One could even contend that two events take place, one being good and the other bad. However, aside from spoiler concerns, it's not overly crucial to know precisely what they are. What holds more significance is what transpired before the narrator, marketing executive Bob Slocum, commences his story.

This something or these things happened to him and his children, yet he remains unaware of their nature. It holds meaning for us as readers because it's possible that it has happened or will happen to us. By following Slocum's narrative, we might discover the truth, not only for his benefit but also for ours. If we do find out, perhaps we can take some action.

Slocum's story is structured as a tale encompassing work, parental, marital, and extramarital relationships. He presents it in the form of an interior monologue, frequently interspersed with a Socratic dialogue (containing parental theses in parentheses).

In the absence of someone to converse with, the monologue often resembles a verbatim account of Slocum's discussion with an analyst. It could even be seen as an attempt at self-analysis, a therapeutic endeavor.

Slocum's description of the dialogues with his son can be used to describe Heller's novel as a whole:

  “The lines fly crisply in rhythmic questions and answers, and we both enjoy them.”

The Condition of Slocum

Slocum sums up his condition as follows:

  “I’ve got bad feet. I’ve got a jawbone that’s deteriorating and someday soon I’m going to have to have all my teeth pulled. It will hurt. I’ve got an unhappy wife to support and two unhappy children to take care of. (I’ve got that other child with irremediable brain damage who is neither happy nor unhappy, and I don’t know what will happen to him after we’re dead.) I’ve got eight unhappy people working for me who have problems and unhappy dependents of their own. I’ve got anxiety; I suppress hysteria. I’ve got politics on my mind, summer race riots, drugs, violence, and teen-age sex. There are perverts and deviates everywhere who might corrupt or strangle any one of my children. I’ve got crime in my streets. I’ve got old age to face. My boy, though only nine, is already worried because he does not know what he wants to be when he grows up. My [15 year old] daughter tells lies. I’ve got the decline of American civilisation and the guilt and ineptitude of the whole government of the United States to carry around on these poor shoulders of mine. And I find I am being groomed for a better job. And I find - God help me - that I want it.”

It might seem like Trump-era America, but in fact, it's 1974.


"That Abominable Cafard"

Slocum believes he suffers from some form of depression or melancholia:

  “Oh, that abominable cafard. I was over thirty years old before I even knew what to call that permeating, uninvited sorrow dwelling inside me somewhere like an elusive burglar that will not be cornered and exorcised.”

"Vain as a Peacock"

Slocum presents a different image to his work colleagues (he doesn't mention any friends outside of work):

  “He was that nice-looking, polite boy with a good sense of humour, wasn’t he?”

“Generally, I am a happy, pleasant, humorous drunk…”

“Virginia told me often I was handsome, cute, sexy, and smart…”

“I am vain as a peacock.”

At home, he attempts to maintain a “facade of paternal good humour.”

Still, Slocum reveals, “I often wonder what my own true nature is.” He doubts his own authenticity, as well as his wife's:

  “What happened to us? Something did. I was a boy once, and she was a girl, and we were both new. Now we are man and woman, and nothing feels new any longer; everything feels old.”

Growing Up

He has grown up. But what does that signify? How is he different from what he once was?

  “That [boy] was somebody else, not me - I insist on that; it exists in my memory but that’s all; like a children’s story; it is way outside the concrete experience of the person I am now and was then; it never happened - I do insist on that - not to me; I know I did not spend so much of my time doing that; so there must have been a second person who grew up alongside me (or inside me) and filled in for me on occasions to experience things of which I did not wish to become a part…”

On the other hand, there is a part of Slocum that is still a (naughty) little boy (he describes his own son as a “swaggering princeling”, a term that might equally apply to the father):

  “I am enjoying my fit exquisitely. I am still a little boy. I am a deserted little boy I know who will never grow older and never change, who goes away and then comes back. He is badly bruised and very lonely. He is thin. He makes me sad whenever I remember him. He is still alive, yet out of my control. This is as much as he ever became. He never goes far and always comes back. I can’t help him. Between us now there is a cavernous void. He is always nearby.”

Growing Away

Equally (and conversely), “something happened to both my children that I cannot explain and cannot undo...”:

  “And yet, there must have been a break somewhere, an end and a starting point, a critical interval in [my daughter’s] development of some breadth and duration that I cannot remember and did not notice (just as there must certainly have been a similar start of metamorphosis somewhere back in my own past that I took no notice of then and cannot remember now)...(Whatever happened to it, that baby she was? Where did it go? Where is it now? And how did it get there? Such beings, such things, just don’t happen one day and stop happening the next. Do they? What happened to the lovely little me that once was? I remember certain things about him well and know he used to be.)...”

He speaks of his daughter and himself in the same terms:

  “The mother and father are dead, and the little boy is missing; I don’t know where he came from; I don’t know where I went; I don’t know all that’s happened to me since. I miss him. I’d love to know where he’s been. Where in her lifetime (and in mine too, of course) was that legendary happy childhood I used to hear so much about (those carefree days of joy and sunshine, ha, ha, that birthright)?”

"Nullifying a Whole Culture"

To the extent that Slocum is representative of his generation, “I cannot nullify a whole culture, an environment, an epoch, a past (especially when it’s my own past and environment as well as [my daughter’s], and I myself am such a large part of hers).”

Slocum speculates, “I know I must have done some horribly damaging things to her when she was little, but I can’t remember what those things were or when I did them.”


"All My Fault"

Paradoxically, he states, “I can’t believe it was all my fault.”

A clue to Slocum's plight lies in the fact that he believes his 80-year-old mother said to him, on her deathbed, that “You’re no good. You’re just no good.”

Yet, it's not clear whether this is merely his defective imagination or memory:

  “Those were the last words I think I heard her speak to me.”

“What’s the Matter? What’s Wrong?”

If it's true, then it's possible that Slocum's discontent stems from an insecurity and lack of self-esteem triggered by his mother's comment. He was reliant on her positive opinion of him, and she withdrew it on her deathbed. He became or remained a child lacking his parents' approval. This locks Slocum into a semi-perpetual childhood:

  “I know at last what I want to be when I grow up. When I grow up I want to be a little boy.”

In effect, he wants to be nine, like his son, whose gym teacher remarks that it's “time to start learning some responsibility and discipline.”


Cause and Effect

The novel is propelled by an obsessive preoccupation with cause and effect (and thus fault, guilt, blame, and shame).

Slocum has attempted to address these issues (particularly regarding Derek, his retarded son) both professionally and in his own mind:

  “By now, my wife and I have had our fill - are sick and glutted to the teeth - of psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, neurosurgeons, speech therapists, psychiatric social workers, and any of all the others we’ve been to that I may have left out, with their inability to help and their lofty, patronising platitudes that we are not to blame, ought not to let ourselves feel guilty, and have nothing to be ashamed of.”

Immature Sexist

Slocum reveals an aspect of immaturity (and humor - throughout the emotional labyrinth of this long novel, there is a consistent, if irreverent, good humor, which is often overlooked by readers) when he comments on women's liberation:

  “I wish these women’s-lib people would hurry up and liberate themselves and make themselves better companions for sexists like me. And for each other.”

"Getting His Affairs in Order"

In the end, Slocum decides to take control of his affairs. He endeavors to “get his affairs in order...Systematically, I am putting my affairs in order...I have taken charge of my responsibilities... Everyone seems pleased with the way I’ve taken command.”

It's almost as if Slocum believes that personal and family relationships can be managed in the same way that the company's sales managers operate:

  “They thrive on explicit guidance toward clear objectives. (This may be one reason golf appeals to them.) For the most part, they are cheerful, confident, and gregarious when they are not irritable, anxious, and depressed.”
  

While this passage appears early in the novel, it does suggest that the same rules don't necessarily apply to both situations. Or at least, not these rules.


SOUNDTRACK:


Linda Ronstadt - “You’re No Good”


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=haZPPBJ...


The Dream Syndicate - “John Coltrane Stereo Blues”


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ScO27Fc...


Kings of Leon - “Joe’s Head” (from “Youth and Young Manhood”)


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xk79gcP...


Bill Cosby - “To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With”


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqSd3Hh...

One=Star because I hate Bob Slocum.

He is such an annoying character. I just can't stand him. His actions and words always make me angry.

I don't know why others seem to like him. Maybe they have a different perspective. But for me, he is a pain in the neck.

There. I feel better. Take that, Middle America!

Maybe my one-star review will make others think twice about liking Bob Slocum. Or maybe it won't make a difference at all. But at least I got my feelings out.

I'll continue to express my opinions, no matter what. Because that's what I believe in.

And if anyone wants to argue with me about Bob Slocum, I'm ready. Bring it on!

I know at last what I want to be when I grow up. When I grow up I want to be a little boy.

Firstly, it must be noted that the title of this novel is rather misleading. In fact, almost nothing occurs until the final two pages, and my copy was over 550 pages long.

To be honest, the only character in this novel is Bob Slocum, a forty-something executive of an unnamed corporation. Although he shares details about his family and colleagues, we only get his perspective. His family has the traits that Slocum has assigned to them, while he fears his colleagues and they fear him. Everyone seems to be suffering in some way.

He often remarks, "I frequently feel I'm being taken advantage of merely because I'm asked to do the work I'm paid to do."

Most of the novel is presented in the form of first-person narratives, mainly about the narrator. However, despite being a successful and wealthy executive with an attractive wife, three children, a nice house, and as many mistresses as he desires, he is still unhappy and feels that something is lacking in his life. According to the blurb, this is "an expose of the horrors of prosperity and peace," but I found Slocum to be a whining, self-pitying misogynist, and a very unappealing character. He repeatedly dwells on key moments from his past, especially his teenage flirtations with a former colleague named Virginia, which I personally found dull and tiresome.

In fact, tedium best describes my view of this book. While Slocum does have a somewhat hypnotic voice, I found myself struggling to stay awake and turn the next page. In particular, I disliked the author's excessive use of brackets, some of which contained over a page of text, causing me to sometimes forget what had come before and have to reread. In contrast, the dialogue, when it appeared, I found quite concise and amusing. I did manage to finish the book, but to be honest, I cannot recommend it to others.

There will be no spoilers in this review.

However, I will state that if you have ever read this entire book and engage in a conversation with someone else who has also read it in its entirety, both of you might gain from posing questions to each other regarding it. I am unsure whether one of the key events within it actually occurred or not. I am certain that Heller desires us to have a definite understanding of what transpired in this particular instance.

This novel was published in 1974 and was very well received. Kurt Vonnegut penned a brilliant essay about the book on the front page of THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW. Not only was the review positive, but it was also one of Vonnegut's finest pieces of writing. The review has always remained with me, and in the subsequent decades, I have read and re-read the first forty or so pages of SOMETHING HAPPENED, always intending to take on the entire book at some point. I was fourteen in 1974. Almost fifty years later, having now read the novel from start to finish, I can assert that it has influenced my thinking throughout all this time.

As any cursory glance will reveal to the reader, this book traverses the same ground that most major mid-century American authors explored: A corporate executive endures a miserable home life. John Updike, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Philip Roth, and John O'Hara, all of whom patterned their ulcerated fat-cats after Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt, delved into this territory with sardonic glee. Joseph Heller, on the other hand, set aside his famous humor and crafted a Wagnerian saga of the post-World War Two businessman. There are a few moments of merriment here, but unlike Heller's much-earlier and infinitely more popular CATCH-22, or his slightly later and rather obscure GOOD AS GOLD, this novel is bleak throughout. This is not to say that it does not depict moments of joy. An exhilarating passage about the narrator play-fighting with his son is almost heroic in its love for life. But it is like those moments in Dostoevsky's NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND where the wretched hero catches a fleeting glimpse of a purposeful existence; it is part of a Hellscape.

If Joseph Heller has a literary model here, it is probably Eugene O'Neill. Just as with O'Neill, the audience or reader must be prepared for clinical descriptions of despair. Heller, like O'Neill, demonstrates a great sense of pacing. SOMETHING HAPPENED is a monumental treatment of the harrowing of the soul.

A criminally underrated classic, SOMETHING HAPPENED is truly one of the most remarkable and believable first-person narratives featuring an unlikeable narrator that I have ever encountered. Joseph Heller, one of my favorite authors with CATCH-22 perhaps being my all-time favorite novel, it took me over two decades to finally get to SOMETHING HAPPENED. Heller spent more than a decade laboring over this massive work, and it is evident on every single page.

Bob Slocum is a truly despicable man, quintessentially American in nature, and perhaps an even darker version of Don Draper in the Mad Men era. As the novel unfolds, Slocum's hold on his own sanity gradually slips away as his concerns about his work life and dissatisfaction with just about everything else in his world consume him. It is a brilliant office satire, as well as a scathing critique of the unique upper-class American man who likely contributed to plunging our country into the mess we find ourselves in today. This novel's approach to uncovering dark truths is completely different from that of CATCH-22.

There are few laughs to be had here, and an overwhelming sense of unhappiness will probably wash over the reader. And yet, it is compulsively readable. The carefully crafted shock and awe at each new horrible revelation about Slocum is both tantalizing and repulsive, heartbreaking and aggravating, and yet, it feels entirely natural. From a technical perspective, I don't think I've ever seen a more perfect use of numerous parentheticals. This book won't make you feel good about the American man, but who cares? It is more important than that. It peeks through the looking glass and forces us to confront the silent poison within our culture. Sure, it's a downer, but it's fantastic literature. And while you may not laugh as you did when reading CATCH-22, it's extremely difficult to put down. What a pity that Heller didn't get to witness this novel achieve more widespread acclaim, but as always, he was ahead of his time.