Something happened, and to this day, I still find myself unable to fully fathom what it was.

With Heller's meticulous and passionate dialogues, combined with the profound development of his characters, he managed to bring forth his second book that seemingly had no traditional plot.

Yet, he accomplished the remarkable feat of making it captivating and powerful. There are very few authors who can write an entire novel without a conventional storyline and still engage the reader on such a deep level. I truly tip my hat to Mr. Heller.

Especially when he so astutely identifies many of the empty words and selfish tendencies that pervade our interpersonal relationships. Reading about the absurdities of the nameless protagonist can be quite a scare, as he may remind you uncomfortably of yourself.

But it is precisely this cynical example that serves as a catalyst for us to recognize the changes that we can all make in our relationships, both at home and in the workplace.

There is no doubt that this book faced significant controversy when it was first published. It was labeled as pornography, and I must confess that some of the more vividly descriptive passages did give me pause for thought.

Certainly, it is not a book for everyone, particularly those who are sensitive to immodesty. Something Happened is a hefty 530-page tome that, in my opinion, could have been condensed to 200 pages without sacrificing its essence and brilliance.

One can't help but wonder if Heller was compensated by the page or perhaps he had secluded himself in his attic for far too long. (Sorry, Joseph, but Dickens' era has passed!)

However, for a novel published in the 1970s, it struck a powerful chord regarding moral reform, a topic that few other books of that time addressed. Heller's ability to describe a tortured emotional soul is truly remarkable, leaving me to speculate about his own personal life.

But his masterful strategy of creating an anti-hero is his greatest gift, a feat that has rarely been achieved in literature since Russia's Dostoevsky.

The statement on the back of the book宣称, "Something Happened is about ambition, greed, love, lust, hate and fear, marriage and adultery. It is about the struggle among men, the war between the sexes, the conflict of parents and children. It is about the life we all lead today—and you will never be able to look at that life in the same way again."

While this may seem a bit too grandiose, it is, without a doubt, headed in the right direction.

My god,

it felt as if everybody and everything was enduring suffering. I can understand why its unrelentingly bleak, dense, and punishingly long length might be overwhelming for some readers. However, while I didn't find it anywhere near as pleasurable as reading Catch-22, in my view, it's still an excellent novel overall. I truly found it moving. And unlike Catch-22 with its countless characters, Bob Slocum and the emotional, maddening, and intelligent rollercoaster ride that Heller takes him on are at the center. Slocum's unhappiness isn't just a small void in his life; it's more like the vastness of the Mariana Trench! But you know, I don't consider misery as a reason not to love a novel. After all, that's the whole point here. Sadly, it's an overlooked novel. But when considering the American Dream and the portrayal of upper-middle-class life, it's a winner in my opinion. Richard Yates (think Revolutionary Road) and Kurt Vonnegut (for satire) came to my mind.

I wouldn't recommend this book to people who are easily offended.

However, if you have the ability to accept that the narrator is a thoroughly unlikeable character and the people in his life are equally awful, then this can be an entertaining read.

The story might take you on a journey through the eyes of this unappealing narrator, showing you the various aspects of his rather dismal life.

Despite the unlikability of the characters, there could be certain elements in the book that make it engaging and interesting.

It might offer a unique perspective on human nature and the relationships we form.

So, if you're not too sensitive and are willing to look beyond the flaws of the characters, this book could potentially provide you with an entertaining and thought-provoking experience.

In love, concussed, exhausted, and back tomorrow with a review :).

The Review

Phew! Okay: I’m going to focus only on the universality of Bob’s experience and not the time-and-place context of the thing.

The Failure of Pessimism

Isn’t that cool? I’m not sure I want to be taken seriously as a reviewer because I generally just reflect on whatever I gained from the book. What the hell is a book review? I don’t really know. Wait until you see how not-a-book-review this is, by the way. I’ve tangentially tangentialed so hard I’m not even sure this has anything to do with the book. Something must have happened to me sometime.

I better make fun of a serious review’s conventions in an attempt to escape them.

THE FAILURE OF PESSIMISM

I think I just made it more serious. Anyway, that’s what this book’s message is to me. Heller tries his absolute best to squeeze every drop of hope out of Bob’s life. Or does he? I think there is an Achilles heel— one that Bob wouldn’t want to stamp on (and that’s saying something: the guy wants to stamp on just about everyone’s ankles. Ha, ha. I think he imagines they are going to float away from him otherwise. If he can’t be happy, if he can’t thrive or discover something to give him joy, nobody else should be able to either. But he doesn’t want to stamp on his son’s ankle— to whom he refers exclusively as “my boy.” He steps on it accidentally and falls into further anguish. To Bob, everything is about him, so his son, the ray of hope in his life [so you can figure out what happens to him— but you can’t say this book is about plot anyway; it’s about the experience of Bob’s head] must survive.) Heller is quite brilliant, because towards the end, I was thinking, ‘Well, if nothing else, at least he’s being honest about how he feels. It surely feels good to get off his chest?’ Then Bob says something like ‘I wish I could purge all these impulses by confessing them. But they come back again.’ Is there to be no relief? Mayyyyybe. But who is Bob confessing to? To us! But we’re the reader: we’re not there. None of this is coming out loud. No matter what is going on with someone, if they’re honest about it, they’ll find someone, sooner than they think, who agrees with them. Then you’re on the path to working out what to do about it. You think this is idealistic? Can’t say I give a shit. But hey: Vonnegut said of the novel’s message that ‘many lives, judged by the standards of the people who live them, are simply not worth living.’ By their own standards. But we’re never 100% isolated. It can be fun to test out what this would feel like, but it’s never a reality. Everything in life has a counterpart.

DIGRESSION

Maybe we do all die barely scratching the surface of everything that happened around us, without understanding each other, without being honest, and with life feeling shorter than we imagined it would, and with so much of our lives feeling funereal in a way too. It sounds absolute: but it isn’t. A counterpart to this would be the tragedy of living too long, of entering a prolonged, painful existence that death can free us from. Is no death just as bad or worse than death? Is NO mystery— about life, about those around us, about ourselves, about how long we’re going to live— better than mystery? When it comes to the absolute rules of existence, if you test them, you’ll discover that everything is the way it has to be, and how you get to feel in response to them? Totally fucking arbitrary. In which case, to me, it makes no sense to be pessimistic. “Something Happened” is better than “Nothing Happened.” (Apart from in Bob’s case: something pretty shit happens.) I love stories about the pain of having no viable confidant (Lost in Translation, the others mentioned above, which I then took out of the first draft, so this parenthetical digression makes little sense)— but am I really to believe that a whole socioeconomic demographic of a whole country felt like this? There wasn’t one who didn’t, somewhere? Remember persuasive vs discursive?

RECESSION

Anyways, back to Heller’s absolute pessimism. If you do attempt to read every single word of every page in this book, it’s impossible to do so without getting bored, wanting out, or even laughing, especially towards the end when I started thinking ‘Now I know why this book took so long to write: Heller was determined to extract every negative thought Bob could have about everything in his life.’ At first, the book is seductive and promises humour. Then it becomes depressing. Then it becomes profoundly uncomfortable. Then it becomes laughable. I don’t know if this is the book’s point, but it induces a creeping cognitive dissonance in the reader that makes Bob’s outlook does-not-compute impossible. (A reminder: I am not disputing the book’s commentary on historical context; I’m talking about what happens if you read it now.)

Vonnegut also says: “He began this book way back in 1962, and there have been countless gut-ripping news items and confrontations since then. But Heller's man Slocum is deaf and blind to them. He receives signals from only three sources: his office, his memory and home.” There you have it: the guy is trapped in his own head. We alone don’t need to know how to solve all our problems. I have no doubt we feel like this. I have no doubt that Bob feels like everything he’s saying is true. But we cannot trust our pure judgement on anything. This is an important lesson in today’s quite isolating age: remember to collect second opinions! (When it comes to an outlook on life? You’re receiving mine right now!) Bob does a lot of telling: ‘I don’t care,’ ‘I didn’t give a damn,’ ‘I felt sad.’ I don’t have to believe him. It’s like when white middle class writers call writing “hell”: do you have to take that at face value? “Hell” (and “Heller” if that makes sense or at least sounds clever) is clearly relative.

The Title

Something Happened. It’s brilliant. The expression arises several times in the narrative. Bob has no idea how he ended up feeling the way he does. I can’t imagine he wants to feel that way, but how to get out when he doesn’t know what the hell happened? Something did. He used to enjoy his daughter’s company. He might have been a man who, while valuing his son’s equal opportunity mindset, didn’t discourage it, for reasons unknown. Something must have happened to society that men like Bob Slocum came into existence.

The Structure.

I want to say that the chapters go in order of whom Bob chooses to describe, starting with himself, then his wife, his daughter, his son, then his mentally disabled son (whose chapter is titled, interestingly, “It is not true.”) But Heller has said he finds his way into the text with opening sentences, and after the opening sentence about each family member, the ramble begins and digresses all over the place. But these signposts are important: we all take aspects of ourselves from others and hope they find us equally useful in this regard; someone like Slocum sees everyone as a projection of himself or purely as a device to bring him something of value. In which case, in lieu of plot, we can see Bob’s apparently non-developing thoughts retrogressing through each family member.

Grieving Grievances

I think it’s healthy to grieve for people you never even knew: it’s part of feeling connected to humanity at large. It doesn’t always feel like Robbie Williams Nikon camera ‘Oh my god!’ AHhhhah ahah ahhahhhhhhh ahhh ahhhhhhhhhhh fuckin’ hipsters drinking Southern Comfort on a roof. (Does it ever feel like that when product selling isn’t involved anyway? Most times I hang out with people to remember how overrated it is so I can enjoy my solitude again! But only the right people will read that confession, because they’ve made it this far and I suspect share this opinion.) Any time I’ve ever meditated or done something similar (read a hypnotic book, stared at some interesting artwork), I’m always left with a brighter (like a light) but emotionally neutral feeling, for this very reason. When you marry someone, you marry their whole family. When you open your heart, not only do you HAVE to let everything in, but it’s the healthiest option. Heller taught me this: so did Inside Out. Life is sometimes sad. But ultimately worth it (I am TOTALLY making burritos tonight!)

These books are a staple of our culture. Of course I would only know the American ones (American Psycho, What I Lived For- both inferior) but we as a people have decided that reflecting on attitudes like Bob’s is an act with artistic value. (And where there’s art, there’s hope- ha!)

Anyway, always remember: even if there is no pleasure in your life, there exists some method of reintroducing joy that you have not yet tried. I don’t doubt it sometimes feels like there isn’t, but there is. This is not blind hope; this is FACT.

Dostoyevsky said ‘Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.’

I said, ‘I don’t get Catch - 22.’

I don't understand why this book has received such a low rating. It is truly a masterpiece of the highest literary caliber.

The writing is exquisite, with beautiful prose that flows seamlessly and engages the reader from beginning to end. The story is complex and thought-provoking, delving deep into the human condition and exploring themes such as love, loss, and redemption.

Maybe some people find it too intense or too close to the bone. It doesn't shy away from the harsh realities of life, and that might make some readers uncomfortable. But that's what makes it a great work of literature. It challenges us to look at ourselves and the world around us in a new light.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who appreciates good literature and is not afraid to be moved and inspired.

The joke got old after awhile.

Bob Slocum is a character who overthinks everything and has a deep-seated self-hatred. The entire book is essentially an internal monologue that delves into the nothingness of office life and the existential crisis of personal life.

Spanning close to 600 pages, it really drives the point home. It does so again and again, almost to the point of exhaustion.

The reader is left with a sense of the protagonist's profound dissatisfaction and the mundanity of his existence.

While the exploration of these themes may be interesting at first, the length and repetition can make it a bit of a slog to get through.

However, for those who are interested in a deep dive into the human psyche and the challenges of modern life, this book may still hold some value.

It forces the reader to confront their own feelings of meaninglessness and question the purpose of their daily routines.

Overall, it is a thought-provoking but perhaps not entirely enjoyable read.

Family dynamics and office politics are explored with acerbic wit in the ranting, eccentric ramblings of our sleaze ball narrator in Something Happened.

The internal monologue is so steeped in hate and vindictive self-righteousness that it will easily polarize half the readers. But following the main character’s galloping train of thought is like having a lucid nightmare. The endless parentheses and asides, pages dripping with spittle and spite ring true to me. You don’t have to agree with anything the narrator says, or the author, for that matter.

Is it possible to write a great American novel about the depressing lie of the American dream? How oppressive and selfish it is? How the American dream every salesman, and most every man dreams, can quite possibly lead to personal tragedy? More than that though, I feel that most people can sympathize with the self-destructive tendencies of our over-stimulated, Consumerist state of mind. In this book there are a plethora of self-created problems. It reads like the sorry tale you might hear if you interviewed the well-dressed man at the end of most of the bars in America. Even so, it is indicative of, and a product of, the time in which it was written. Open commentary, racism, misogyny and nihilism played for cheap laughs, lascivious daydreaming, anxiety-ridden whimpering, and a slew of other incantatory criticisms, extrapolated and examined endlessly from a solitary point of view.

In the end, after the storm passes, a vast emptiness is left in its wake. Perhaps it is a warning against perpetuation, an entreaty to make more of an effort at kindness. More likely, it is a purgative, a way to become conscious of the little devil on your shoulder, who whispers bad things, who always points out how fat or lazy people are, which is always pointlessly going on about stupidity, incompetence and denial. The trap of self-loathing and of loathing everyone and everything is almost more natural than complacency, than quiet acceptance. It is possible to be alone, even around other people, but it is never necessary.

Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is an established classic, cause for much grumbling in high school English classrooms, and is a more positive satire.

But if you aren’t scared of a little negativity, if you find you can rise above complainers and reflect upon the sheer volume of complaining that warrants tuning out, then there is a lot of value in this prolonged tirade against the cruel and inhuman state of our own minds, enmeshed in a prison society of corporate greed and filial pressures. Love it or hate it, you will not set the book down unmoved. It forces you to confront the darker aspects of human nature and the society we live in, making you question your own beliefs and values. It is a powerful and thought-provoking work that will stay with you long after you finish reading.

Anxious people should not read this book.

In the office where I work, there are five people whom I fear. This statement sets the tone for a rather disturbing and intense exploration.

The author describes a crawling animal within, something hidden yet striving to get out, and the uncertainty of what it is or whom it wishes to destroy.

There is a feeling that someone nearby will soon discover something about the narrator that could mean the end, yet the nature of that something remains a mystery.

The book immediately dumps us into the mind of Bob Slocum, an unlovable loser with unendingly negative thoughts. His diatribes against himself, those around him, and the world are both captivating and off-putting.

The narrator admits to having things inside that cannot be controlled or admired, a fragile soul and a mind easily pierced by emotions and images.

The mind is described as a storehouse of pain, a reservoir of sorrows waiting to be tapped by memory.

Overall, the book is a complex and somewhat polarizing read. It hits home for some, like the highly anxious narrator, but it also has its flaws. The book runs too long, with each section perhaps requiring less time. Additionally, the backwards-thinking sentiments towards women and minorities are intensely off-putting.

Despite these issues, the book manages to evoke strong emotions and make the reader think. It's a unique and somewhat disturbing portrayal of a troubled mind.

Three stars. I hated and enjoyed it all at once, and it definitely hit home for me personally. Slocum is like a midlife crisis Holden Caulfield for the office-and-middle-management world.

However, it might have been a great book at around 350 pages instead of the 560 it actually is.

(I know how it feels to have to feel this way.)

(It doesn't feel good.)

A scathing howl of rage and despair emanates from the school of Céline, Bernhard, and Miller.

Your repugnant host is WASPish Republican lower executive Bob Slocum. He tunnels, in a breathtakingly lucid stream of hypnotic and explosive bomb-strength paragraphs, into the fieriest hells of middle-class melancholia, employing the savage spadework of William Kohler from Gass’s The Tunnel.

Heller’s narrator is reminiscent of Bernhard’s obsessive, repetitive outcasts. They are trapped in a self-made ouroboros of incipient madness, with their increasingly ill-lucid logic yielding cathartic comedy.

The novel is initially comic. However, the vile pre-war attitudes of Slocum, an openly misogynistic, racist, and misanthropic creep with a suspiciously spicy sex life, soon come to the fore. His open loathing of his autistic son, his wife, and daughter eventually brings the reader to howling pitches of rage, regardless of any possible empathy with his existential kvetching.

This is an ambitious, startling, and exceedingly bleak novel that delves deep into the dark recesses of the human psyche and the flaws of middle-class society.

The narrator exists in a world dominated by phobias and paranoia.

Something truly significant occurred to him at some point, stripping him of confidence and courage. It left him with a profound fear of discovery and change, and a palpable dread of everything unknown that might transpire. He detests anything unexpected.

However, all those phobias seem rather petty, and the paranoia is quite artificial.

The sky appears to be falling, crashing down upon all their heads, and yet he sits there, shedding tears over an unhealing scratch on a very delicate vanity.

Gradually, the protagonist's thoughts morph into a set of fixed ideas about sex, work, and family life. As a result, the narration becomes static and repetitive.

He feels as if he is floating like algae in a colony of green scum, while his wife and he grow older, and his daughter grows older and more dissatisfied with both herself and him.

The world continuously changes, and new times usher in new anxieties.

I know Bob Slocum. I despise him. Yet, I am often too much like him.

What do you make of 550+ pages of internal narration with no clear plot, no character development, and no catharsis after reading the darkest, most selfish, most petulant, childish, sad, and real meanderings of a middle American mind? You get Heller's Something Happened, which offers one man's perspective on what has become of the American dream.

I find it difficult to write about this book without knowing its origin. I attempt to separate the art from the artist, hoping (usually in vain) to divorce the work from all the transient nonsense behind it, like the breakup that inspired the album or the life story that shaped the novel. I prefer the work to stand on its own. But in Heller's case, it's impossible not to view this book as a follow-up to Catch-22. If Catch-22 is his scathing condemnation of war, then this is his commentary on his own generation. (I'd be lying if I didn't find Kurt Vonnegut's review of this novel extremely perceptive.) Heller's Bob Slocum returned from World War II and succumbed to the illusion of picket-fence happiness, safety in the suburbs, and wealth as a worthy goal.

This has left Slocum not just in a midlife crisis but has crippled his life, wasted his energy, and reduced him to a bundle of shattered nerves and pointless worry. In short, he has achieved all the material gains promised by the American dream, yet he is hollow, miserable, and always craving more. The novel is not specific, but it spans at least a decade in Slocum's mind, with constant flashbacks to his youth. Ah, that youth, that pre-war awkwardness when skinny little Bobby Slocum was first experiencing life, with women, handwriting, and possibility alluringly before him. We don't hear much about his war years, except for his voracious appetite for prostitutes. But upon his return, he finds himself working for a company (whose business is hilariously and deliberately vague). From the beginning to the end of the novel, we realize too late that something has happened; that Slocum's pursuit of material happiness has been nothing but a distraction. Slowly, as he constantly looks back on his fading past, he sees the life he could have, should have, lived. A central metaphor involves the files of deceased people that Slocum archived in his first job at an insurance company. So many lives reduced to scraps of paper, filed away in a dank basement, forgotten forever. Slocum's youthful self fears this anonymous oblivion, yet that is precisely what he achieves. Instead of living the life he wanted, instead of sleeping with Virginia and being true to himself, he has chosen bigger houses in Connecticut, three-minute speeches, meaningless affairs with a cast of faceless nobodies, higher salaries, and an endless pursuit of some kind of solace.

But that solace never comes. Everything Slocum has built is hollow, ashes to his touch, repulsive to him. The few things he can love - his wife, his daughter, his son - are so foreign to him, such a burden, that he rarely feels anything but rejection and spite. The job that has consumed his mind and soul was ostensibly to provide for these people, but while he materially provides, he is completely absent in every other meaningful way. And he wonders why his daughter hates him and his son has stopped talking to him? Like everything in his life, Slocum tries to buy their love, to purchase their happiness, without risking anything real, whether material or personal. When at the end of the novel something truly terrible does occur, Slocum does what he has done his entire life: he pities himself, he suffocates, he refuses to let go as he thinks only of himself... and he pays the ultimate price.

What did I learn from this novel? That the world is filled with Bob Slocums, people who (as Vonnegut notes) live lives that, "judged by the standards of the people who live them, are simply not worth living." If there is one thing I take from this novel, it is to embrace life. Dare to live. Do not settle. Do not take the path of least resistance. Do not follow the highway to America's suburban destiny. Do not let some unnamed thing happen that leads you to work a job you hate to buy worthless things for a family you don't know. Do not become a Bob Slocum; make the story of your life one where something truly amazing happened.

This is an amazingly great book.

However, I generally recommend against reading it.

This book takes place entirely inside the head of a middle-aged, upper middle-class, middle manager. He is not a nice person. He is not a unique person. He is not a particularly interesting person.

Except for the stunning detail in which we get to know him. We see - no - we live through his insecurities, his sex drive, his job, his nostalgia, his insecurities, his wife, his sex drive, his humor, his insecurities, his daughter, his nostalgia, his insecurities, his son, his sex drive, his neuroses, his other son, his humor.

And yes, like a real person his thoughts often return to the same tracks they have covered before.

I fully believe that 99% of readers will want to yell "Let Me Out Of This Man's Skull!" within the first hundred pages because it is such a cramped and uncomfortable place to be in.

However, for the other 1%, let me give two reasons for why I liked the book.

The first reason is the multi-layered portrayal of the character. Consider the instance when Bob visits his son's gym teacher because his son hates some of the activities. Bob is intimidated by the gym teacher because he himself wasn't very good at sports. He feels superior because he is a business manager and not a mere gym teacher. He feels love for his son. He feels his son is right not to enjoy gym because he himself didn't. He feels his son is a wimp because he isn't competitive in sports. He wants to get his way to help his son. He wants to get his way because that proves he is a more powerful man than the gym teacher. This mixture of the good, bad, and banal is ever present in the descriptions of Bob's thoughts and actions.

The second reason is that Heller created an unsympathetic character and made him fully human. The man is despicable. He is an adulterer, a liar, a manipulator, and a betrayer. Yet somehow for me instead of repulsion and denial ("Thank God I am not a sinner like him") Bob evoked repulsion and empathy ("There but for the grace of God go I"). Because as the reader I am so enmeshed in Bob's insecurity and despair, I understand where his impulse to lash out comes from at the same time as I cringe at his behavior. And aren't I a little bit of Bob, speaking thoughtlessly and selfishly just because I feel clever or I feel hurt?