"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.

Jan 2025:

I re-read this book for the fourth time, perhaps. I had a buddy read with the lovely and extremely insightful Sarah. Our discussions truly brought new perspectives to this story that I thought I knew so well by now. Thank you, Sarah!

One early realization was just how much of an accomplishment this book really is. I was aware of Heller's meticulous method, but I never truly grasped that he lived with this story for over a decade. And since it's written very much in a (highly convincing) "stream of consciousness," it means he spent all that time getting in and out of Bob Slocum's head, something I wouldn't wish on anyone!

I still maintain that, considering Slocum's severe alienation from family, colleagues, and basically everyone around him, as well as his existential angst, you can sympathize with him from certain aspects, at least at the start. Sarah might disagree with me; you can read her review here.

I know I once stated that "there is not a superfluous word in there," but especially when reading it with someone, I realized this isn't true. Specifically, the "It's not true" part is way too long and just adds examples of Slocum's complete lack of empathy, selfishness, and distorted view of others. This section somewhat slows down the narrative. Even with this flaw, the book remains in my very top favorites ever, and I'm sure it will hold up for a future re-read, potentially even in my 60s.

Update May 2019:

I just wanted to express a big "thank you" to all those who, for reasons unknown to me, "liked" my old review in mid-2019. As I note this point in time, I'm absolutely flustered about its significance. Actually, and I'm a bit sad to tell you younger people, it's not "like" everyone before us said - it is exactly like they said. Time slips away.

Looking back now, I can't seem to fit all the happenings that I remember from what was evidently my adolescence and young adulthood into the few years that it was. On the other hand, I also can't seem to make sense of where the years after 2000 have gone. And not to forget! These have been the best of my life.

Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that I have passed the milestone mentioned in my review (50), and as my fellow 50+ know - but some of you others, who are facing it soon, dreading it in the future, or simply unable to believe that you'll one day be that ancient - don't: it's no different. Absolutely nothing happened to me - had I not marked my calendar or paid attention to it, I never would have known.

Come to think of it, this was pretty much my conclusion after turning 30 and 40 too...

Sorry about the deviation. Thanks again. Pulling this review up before my eyes made me realize I should queue it up for another re-read!

—————

I overheard two men talking on the subway some time ago. Apparently, they had been using and abusing drugs and alcohol quite a lot in their time, but they looked surprisingly "ordinary" in contrast to their topic of conversation. One of the guys said, "I'm going to be 60 soon, just imagine," and the other responded, "Well, age is but a number, you are not older than you feel." The first speaker was silent for a while and then replied, "Well, you know, I feel pretty old."

And this is how I always feel as I approach a birthday nowadays, getting awfully close to, not 60, but 50 still. The reason I started thinking about this at all was that I thought I should write a little more about this book, which I claim to be one of my favorites ever. When reading it this time around, what struck me was the incredulity of me adoring this book in my 20s. What in the world did I see in it then? I'll never know - but I do know that 20-something Thomas had great taste because this is a fantastic book.

I realized pretty early on that the method Heller uses is that he draws us in and makes it easy for us to identify with the protagonist. There are little things of recognition: "I'm also like that, I shy away from confrontation in those circumstances," "I find it hard to indulge people like those," "I don't like those social events either." And then he slowly pulls the rug out from under us or opens a door we didn't know was there and, had we known, would have preferred to keep closed.

Bob Slocum is a rare combination of an egotist and a narcissist who frequently doubts himself and his choices. He is certainly incapable of real empathy, but other than that, he doesn't really fit the description. He's very unlikable, and I hope he doesn't really exist. Foremost, I hope he's not... me.

The instances in which I do sympathize with him are when he feels lost and disconnected from the world. His memories are a mix of sweet nostalgia and remorse for what could have been. Also, as we come to learn, they are not to be trusted.

Interaction with others is extremely cumbersome for Slocum - and this is where I find myself reassuringly different from him. I do mean what I say, and I would never ever say or claim to hate another person. The way he states it ("Sometimes I do") is just shocking to me.

Another instance is that he simultaneously shields himself from human interaction while at the same time caring very much about what people around him may think (in his own twisted reasoning).

All of this and more impacts the reader so strongly that the final horrible act is surely shocking but not as unexpected as it should be, which makes it even harder to stomach.

I did say I was going to try to be coherent.

So is he us? Sometimes he's the existentialist philosopher, and sometimes he sounds more like the perfectly ordinary mid-life crisis man.

This is one of the blessed instances where I do not identify with this horrible man.

Sometimes he really resorts to slapstick, but most of the time, he's preoccupied with arranging what's best for himself and trying to maintain a civil interaction with the people around him.

I would have a hard time naming one book as my "favorite," but I will say that this one is in the top. Read it at your own peril.

- - - - -

Re-read in April 2017, this book remains one of the best I know. I will try to put some of my thoughts on it in a somewhat coherent order soon.

- - - - -

Original review: My favorite author - and this is the book that is the main reason for that. Heller's amazingly honest and unflinching portrait of Bob Slocum is one of the most convincing insights into a character's mind and persona. And it is not an easy ride - Slocum is not someone you sympathize with or like, but he is not a villain either, but instead very humanly complex. A book that really stays with you.

A difficult book to like, yet unique and compelling.

Ironically, for a staggering 500 pages, almost nothing seems to occur. There is no traditional plot to speak of. Instead, it delves deep into the stream of consciousness within the head of Bob Slocum. It's not a pleasant place to be inside his mind. He is, inwardly, far from a nice man. However, like so many others, on the outside, he presents a façade of a 'normal' family life.

It would indeed be fascinating to discover how many readers, particularly men, would have the courage to admit to identifying with some of his baser attitudes. These attitudes often remain taboo and hidden within our own inner lives. This book is not an easy read by any means, but it is most definitely a worthwhile one. It challenges our perceptions and forces us to confront the less savory aspects of the human psyche.

Despite its lack of a conventional plot, the exploration of Bob Slocum's mind offers a unique and thought-provoking experience. It makes us question our own facades and the hidden thoughts and desires that lurk within us all.

In conclusion, while this book may be difficult to like initially, its depth and uniqueness make it a must-read for those seeking a more profound understanding of the human condition.

Each of us can identify with some aspect of the conglomerate of vices that is Bob Slocum. We could list a series of condemnatory adjectives about the character here, but the list would be too long. To summarize, we will say that Slocum exemplifies the insidiously unpleasant nature of humanity. He is a disturbing portrait of everyday evil, that discrete display of immorality that occurs in the daily lives of all of us. Everything that poisons the course of existence, that inflicts perverse pain on our fellow beings, that dynamites sincere contact, that works with the aim of accumulating material to build a mountain range of perpetual snow, lethal to survival, in whose possession there are thousands of amputations due to frostbite.

Although at times he seems to retreat and repent, this is only due to a congenital cowardice, not to any ethical code. Cynicism is his motto and thanks to it he strips the hypocrisy to which he generously contributes. Only in the solitude and intimacy of his skull is he capable of those exercises of ruthless revelation; once again, fear does its job of containment. He wants to be loved by everyone, respected - and feared - by everyone, needed by everyone, to preserve his pride so that no supposed weakness becomes evident. Behind these childish daydreams is, once again, fear: of being rejected, of being hurt, of being confronted and disarmed, of being insignificant and irrelevant, of being defeated, of feeling vulnerable in front of others... of living, in short.

He is the perfect businessman who saves his appearance with solvency, always adapting to each situation and interlocutor, skilled in the representation of his role and in whose interior boils a disenchanted discourse. He is incapable of changing in any direction, clinging to his misery with the stubbornness that feeds a secret pride in himself.

The account of his relationship with women, cornered in the most inhuman utilitarianism, will arouse in many readers a understandable repugnance. At this point, Slocum understands masculinity as something primitive and wild, which serves him to delight in the feeling of power, of superiority, of continuous conquest, all elements that feed his self-esteem. He collects women like an obsessive philatelist, a little for fun, a little for pleasure, always with the slight boredom of someone who knows in advance the result of his initiatives. His prey is usually young, naive, indifferent to the physical attributes that make her so attractive to the predator, easy to deceive by the worked-up discourse and artificial charm of a Don Juan; or a prostitute, if the occasion requires it; or a steady lover with whom he balances. His voracity is compulsive, sex is a temporary refuge in which to dilute subjectivity and relax the tension of duty.

But it's not just Slocum who is mired in decadence. The rest of his family, as if by contagion or mimicry, suffers a degenerative process that tries to portray the average modern family, in which communication is chronically lacking, no matter how much is said, and where the bonds are painful fetters immersed in sadistic and masochistic dynamics. The years fall like lead on family relationships and a cynical nihilism settles among the members, generating incomprehension and the chronic inability to connect, as if love had evaporated and in doing so had revealed a desert, sterile landscape. His son is the object of his cares because he sees in him a version of himself. He does everything possible to make the creature up to par, nullifying with his attitude the authentic personality of the child, who ends up being a victim of a disabling paralysis. He is turning him into a replica of himself that orbits around him, incapable of forging his own and confident will.

Slocum has the merit of bravely taking up the scalpel and proceeding to dissect his life and that of his family, leaving no aspect aside. In the pages of his monologue is the courage that is lacking in his life, the boldness to explore the septic pits, faithfully describing what ferments there. There remains the taste of someone who insists on continuously sabotaging what is good in him, without being able to give a reason for it. Slocum is a full-time fraud. He doesn't know who he is and never has. He seems to have no substance or entity of his own.

At the end of the story of Slocum and his family, we ask ourselves the question of whether current society and its living conditions are the cause of this fair phenomenon that challenges us all. If this ecosystem in which our life takes place potentiates the nutrients necessary for this particular type of individual and family to germinate. If the pressure of social demands on certain characters ends up being too much, completely dissolving the person, forcibly converted into a model of everything that is supposed to be, forever constricted in the mold of environmental expectations.

As one delves deeper into adulthood, childhood starts to seem like a shrinking, distant landscape in the mind.

Once, you frolicked in that land of pure imagination, unrestricted joys, and absolute ignorance of the world's reality that would later consume you.

Then, somewhere, somehow, something occurs to you, and those experiences vanish into the realm of memory.

It's as if you suddenly wake from a deep sleep, screaming in incoherent gibberish: "Who put me here? How will I ever get out?"

Somehow, imperceptibly, time passes.

On the verge of 30, I find myself having to hold back from yelling at children in supermarkets or playgrounds to "Savour this moment, for God's sake! You don't realize what's about to happen to you! You don't know how good you have it!"

But, alas, I don't warn them of the impending vague sense of "cafard."

As Bob Slocum, the protagonist of Joseph Heller's complex novel 'Something Happened,' astutely explains:

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

The adults in the world treat the knowledge of this existence like a magic trick—ruined if you explain the secrets of its process to the audience.

Such would be the case when explaining the truth of adult life to a child: the incredibly long days of drudgery and boredom, and the eternal nights filled with a vague sense of cafard that follow; those nights when one lies awake, staring at the ceiling with wide-open eyes (as if searching for the answer in the void), trying to piece together what happened in their life to bring them to this exact point, and ruminating on what might happen next.

Something happens in childhood that changes each of us, as Bob Slocum says at the beginning of the novel:

"Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur."

The plot centers around Slocum attempting to figure out precisely what happened to him in his past that messed him up so thoroughly.

Heller structured the book like a suspense novel, and the clue is in the title itself—an expectation (what is going to happen?) looms large over the novel's hefty 580-page length.

And yes: things happen in this novel (who would have thought?), but they are mainly vague, quiet, and unspoken things.

What exactly ruined Bob Slocum's life is for the reader to piece together (and one suspects there are several leading causes of his discontent).

Heller explains in a 1975 interview:

"In Something Happened there’s not the threat of actual death that’s bothered Slocum, but spiritual disintegration, emotional disintegration; and it’s much more frightening.

There is nothing specific that I give that enables Slocum to recognize the source of danger.

There’s a vague source of anxiety.

Slocum does not know what it is that has brought him to this position in life where he has everything he has always wanted, and yet feels a sense of loss, a sense of loneliness, an inability to thrive emotionally.

The plot is concerned with his trying to find out what did happen to him, what happened to that little boy he used to be.

And he can’t find out.

In fact I’ve constructed the book in a way so that no one interpretation will explain it.

And that, I think, is the contemporary condition."

Plot-wise, this is a dense novel told from the first-person perspective of a very sick, twisted, dishonest, cheating, despicable, immoral man; and yet, I found myself identifying with so much of what Slocum said or thought.

Genius is the web Heller weaves in this tome, for we see everything directly through Slocum's eyes or think about his current situation in reference to his past.

We are Slocum, such is the effectiveness of Heller's prose.

Line by line, paragraph by paragraph, we fall victim to Slocum's mind (often, which is contradictory—his thought processes are within parentheses like this sentence, and this device is used skillfully to force the deeper consciousness of Slocum to drip over us until we have completely soaked up his character and he is alive within us!).

He is constantly plagued by the onslaught of fear, anxiety, and rumination about the past, which he believes was stolen from him by someone at some unknown time in his past.

He constantly ponders what happened to his childhood self (which he describes as a separate entity from his adult self), the inner child:

"Lost somewhere deep inside his [Slocum's son] small self already is the smaller boy he used to be, the original article.

Or is there?

If that is not so, if there is no vanished and irretrievable little me and him so starkly different from what each of us since has been forced to become, if there is no wandering, desolate lost little being I yearn for and started from so far back in my history who took a sudden, inevitable lurch into some inaccessible black recess at a moment when I must have been staring the other way, for I am unable to pinpoint the moment, and left me disoriented all by myself to continue willy-nilly on my own—then how the fuck did I ever get here?

Somebody pushed me.

Somebody must have set me off in this direction, and clusters of hands must have touched themselves to the controls at various times, for I would not have picked this way for the world.

He has never been found. Lost: one child, age unknown, goes by the name of me."

We are all influenced by those who raised us.

Parents try to mold their children as best they can, but they can't shield them from the world "happening" to them (for better or worse).

Slocum watches his children closely, and in effect, he witnesses something happening to them too.

His daughter (16) has already had something happen to her ("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?"), and his son (9) is in the process of having something happen to him (which Slocum has no control over at all).

His son begins to change in front of him, going from being an overly needy boy literally under Slocum's feet to transforming into a private boy who closes the door of his bedroom, gets anxious about going to school and socializing, and constantly retreats internally.

The world has begun to take him.

Memory plays an essential role in the structure of Something Happened, and the constant return to certain memories creates a mosaic-like structure that makes Slocum's mind feel like a house composed of various different rooms—some well-furnished and lavish, others gloomy and spare.

Heller explains further:

"I think that memory is the biggest character in Something Happened.

And the organization of the novel works the way I imagine memory works in other people: as we keep returning to certain periods of our life there may be four or five certain people who made very deep impressions on us as we grew up and consequently, Slocum, with memory as a transporting device, constantly returns to things in his past."

As Slocum attempts to piece together his life and create some sort of evidence against the monstrosity the world forced upon him, memories are explored at different depths as the novel progresses until, at the end, we are completely immersed in Slocum.

We feel as if we have inhabited his mind entirely—it's truly ventriloquous.

And it's not an exaggeration for me to say that Heller's narration of Bob Slocum is one of the best-written first-person perspectives in literature.

It's uncomfortable yet familiar, and absolutely addictive.

Just as there is a strange joy-in-suffering one gets from ruminating on a painful memory or bad experience (we love to suffer, worry, and ruminate on our ills—maybe that is the source of all the misery in our brief existences on this globe?), so too do we enjoy jumping into Slocum's consciousness.

For Heller, this novel was an opportunity to go completely off the beaten path after the success of Catch-22 to mine the mundane everyday for gold—and make no mistake, he struck gold in this book.

It's magical how real it feels—and this is with nearly no physical descriptors.

Everything here is Slocum's perspective, dialogue, thought.

It is alive in the reader's mind like a memory: more feeling than physical.

Who knew reading about the miseries of someone else could make you feel so whole within yourself?

Maybe that's the beauty of this novel: we can identify with Slocum in his anxiety and fear, in his suspicious jadedness of the world, in his dissatisfaction with every aspect of his life (yet changing none of it).

This is not a novel that will be devoured by the masses as eagerly as I did.

As someone who has been quietly haunted by the idea that our childhood was a brief period of time that will never be replicated and that it, day by day, becomes more deeply entrenched in the caverns of our memory (and not our reality), I found comfort in Bob Slocum.

Great literature sheds light on the human condition, and never before have I read such an honest portrayal of the mundanities of everyday life or the vague sense of unease and anxiety that assaults our senses in adulthood as I have in 'Something Happened'.

I will leave you with Bob Slocum's words on his future wishes.

They are not of money, sex, fame, success, or power (things he spends the entire novel chasing), but rather:

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

A return to joy. A return to innocence. A return to a beginner's mind. A return to the safe womb from which we are unfairly cast out at the beginning of our lives.

I suppose the question should be: how can we reclaim such a lost childhood outlook on life in our adult lives?

In other words, how to not end up like Bob Slocum?

That is our quest.