This novel arrived on my shelf (I can't remember why now) too late, decades too late. It's like a big black-hole slab of white middle-class American male self-loathing. Mmmm, who would not want to slurp that up?

The two main targets of this book are office life in a big company and family life in the suburbs. As I mentioned, it's about the white middle class.

Groan.

After reading David Foster Wallace's brilliant hot mess The Pale King, Sinclair Lewis's heartfelt and poignant Babbitt, Joyce Carol Oates' blistering and riveting What I Lived For, not to mention all those movies like American Beauty, Office Space, The Hudsucker Proxy, Boiler Room, Glengarry Glen Ross and so on (and let's throw in American Psycho and Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road), not to mention the well-known TV show Mad Men, and not to mention Updike, Cheever, O'Hara, Roth, and Bellow, I had to conclude that Something Happened was, for me, a day late and a dollar short.

Sure, the self-loathing is off the scale, the vicious corporate backstabbing has never been more perfectly portrayed, and the bitter mutual hatred that seethes within a small nuclear (named after the bomb) family is rarely summed up so well.

But you've had all of this before. All of it. Well, I should say I have. So eventually, after realizing that there was not one single atom of daylight, not one single chink of grace, lightness, or humor in the unending vile revelations of our man Bob Slocum, the boss's ass-kisser, the own-children-disliker, and the typist almost-raper, I said

Goodbye Bob, I hope you have a stroke that paralyzes the right half of your body and you linger like that for 15 years.

(I think it's okay to wish pain and suffering to fictional people. I hope so, I do it all the time.)

I see that many fine and upstanding reviewers give 5 stars to Something Happened. And these reviews are well worth reading too. I can only assume that these readers have a higher tolerance for unrelenting misery and the ceaseless bashing of the same targets than I do. Maybe when they come to read The Pale King, Babbitt, and What I Lived For, they will begin their reviews in the following way:

This novel arrived on my shelf too late, decades too late. A big black hole slab of white middle-class American male self-loathing etc.

In my opinion, this is Joseph Heller’s best novel, bar none.

Something Happened is Mr. Heller’s second novel, published in 1974, a full thirteen years after his great first novel, Catch-22.

The protagonist, Bob Slocum, narrates the story in his stream of consciousness, delving into his family, his childhood, and his sexual escapades. The novel is quite thick, which might make you have second thoughts about reading it. There are moments in the book where I found myself confused about what was happening due to the overly repeated narrations. Moreover, the novel is often not in chronological order, jumping from his past experiences to his present ones and then back again. It’s jumbled, but you’ll eventually get the hang of it. The main character is your average opinionated and bully-typed person, so I can’t really blame him for his rants and revenges. And with this, I don’t mind his stubbornness. What struck me most about the novel is its ability to make me feel the background of every scene without having to be told in detail. I could almost smell the dust in the basement and see myself opening the rusty file cabinet. The rust of old paper clips on paper, the provocative blonde and brunette secretaries, the old plants in the offices, and the 'Agfa' colored world – all those things made me feel nostalgic.

As a fan of anything melancholic, I’m glad that I decided to read this one because I found everything I love in it. If you’re familiar with American Beauty, I guess you’ll know what I’m trying to say as I’m very positive that this is the inspiration for the award-winning film. And although the novel is obviously about the American dream, the whole point of the book is applicable to anyone.

This is definitely an underrated classic. Most critics consider his Catch-22 a hard act to follow, and it’s a shame that his popularity just remains on his first novel.

Yes, I guess it’s true, but Something Happened has its own beauty that requires a second reading. They say that the power of a novel is measured after many years have passed and still someone reads it. I don’t usually read books a second time as I have a lot to read, but if I had to pick up something again, this would definitely be one. ^_^

Let me preface this by saying that despite the single star rating, I think Joseph Heller is an amazing author.

Catch-22 is definitely one of the best books of all time, and technically Heller's writing is quite good in Something Happened.

That said, I thoroughly disenjoyed this book. It was actively unfun. It took Joseph Heller about three times as long to say exactly what Steinbeck did in The Winter of Our Discontent -- and he said it less interestingly.

This story of unhappiness with the modern life probably would have worked quite well, including the surprise ending, as a short story.

As a full length novel, it was completely overwrought and practically insurmountable.

The book seemed to drag on and on, with the author going into excessive detail about the protagonist's mundane and often depressing life.

The characters were not particularly likable or engaging, and it was difficult to feel any sort of connection to them.

The plot, such as it was, was convoluted and hard to follow at times.

In conclusion, while I respect Joseph Heller as an author, Something Happened was not the book for me.

This is the truly sad story about Bob Slocum, who is not only a businessman but also a husband and a father.

Written in the first person, mainly from within the mind of Slocum, we witness his genuine unhappiness. He yearns for a more fulfilling career, engages in unsatisfying affairs with secretaries and office workers, and constantly longs for a better family and a better life.

The driving force behind this tell-all confessional of Slocum's is the curiosity about which, among all his unhappy situations, will prove to be the most destructive. As I approached the end, I had the thought that Heller might not present us with a single incident that stands out. However, he does, and it is a very good one.

"Something Happened" is a satirical, witty, and tragic work that is absolutely a book worth reading. It offers a deep and thought-provoking look into the complex and often unhappy life of Bob Slocum, making the reader reflect on the nature of happiness, success, and relationships.

This year, I did a Heller read.

Catch-22 is undoubtedly an outstanding book, whether it's his first or not. It's a remarkable achievement.

Something Happened truly blew my mind. Can you envision the conversation? “So, Mr. Heller, what are your plans for the next book? Your first one was such a huge success! What are your thoughts?”

Here enters Bob Slocum, easily one of the more contemptible characters in American fiction. He's just a terrible guy. What makes this great is that Joseph Heller is telling the world that it's okay to write about people in a state of disgust and that “good” characters don't necessarily equate to great literature. He's almost writing this as a sort of defiance to Updike, Mailer, and Roth (all of whom, admittedly, I do like). Male writers writing about maleness with crappy males at the center.

It's so much more than that. Although I don't feel any empathy for Bob Slocum, I do think this is some excellent writing. I don't want to be friends with this lonely loser, but I did want to keep reading about him. 500+ pages dedicated to him, his job, his family, his coworkers, and...

I have a few more Joseph Heller books on my to-be-read pile. I'm glad I got to this one. Try and give it a shot. Good writing is good writing, regardless of the characters.

Stream of consciousness stories are extremely difficult to bring off successfully.

And although I believe it was carried out quite well in this particular book, it is unable to conceal the truth that the fundamental story simply isn't all that captivating.

The use of the stream of consciousness technique can add a unique and engaging element to a narrative, allowing the reader to delve deep into the mind of the character.

However, if the core story lacks substance and interest, even the most skillful implementation of this technique may not be enough to hold the reader's attention.

In this case, while the author may have done a good job with the stream of consciousness aspect, the overall story fails to truly draw the reader in and keep them engaged from start to finish.

Perhaps a more interesting and developed plot would have made this book a more enjoyable and memorable read.

I actually like this book better than Catch-22.

I firmly believe that Alan Ball drew extensively on Heller's characterization in this novel to craft Lester Burnham for American Beauty. The novel's protagonist, to put it simply, is an ass.

You don't necessarily have to like him to become completely entranced (the only word that comes to my mind) by his words, deeds, and the way he perceives everything and everyone with no filters whatsoever. It's as if it's a snapshot of all the very real, dark, and horrific things that occur in all of our minds, which we don't want to admit as we struggle through each day.

The novel serves as a caustic reflection on the despair that the pursuit of the American Dream actually engenders. The protagonist is cognizant of this, but like all of us, he persists in trudging along, pursuing it page after page after page.

I'll leave it up to individual readers to discover what, if anything, actually transpired...and when.

I read this in high school, some time after devouring Catch-22. In fact, I might have completely forgotten about it had it not been for my recent reading of various materials about Joseph Heller on the occasion of the anniversary of his death or perhaps his birthday. You see, this particular book had such a profound impact on me back then. It left me feeling utterly depressed. It seemed to be a world apart from my youthful naivete, a grown-up and terrible place. The emotions it evoked were just... TERRIBLE-sad. It was as if the weight of the world had been placed on my shoulders while reading those pages. The story was so powerful and poignant that it still lingers in my memory to this day, a reminder of the darker side of life that I was just beginning to discover.

This one was truly so puzzling.

It stands as one of the most disgusting and reprehensible novels I have ever had the misfortune to read.

Initially, I found myself very intrigued by it. This was almost a necessity, as I typically don't bother to finish books that don't appeal to me in some manner. After all, there is simply an abundance of truly good literature out there.

However, as I delved deeper into the story, it became evident that it failed to answer many of the questions it had artfully set up.

In a nutshell, this book is centered around a man who is completely incapable of love, and the gradual realization of this fact by his family.

It could be argued that this is either an immensely flawed work of brilliance, with its unique exploration of human nature, or a truly awful one that only sporadically has some interesting things to say.

Books like this make me fundamentally question the very validity of rating books. How can one accurately assign a value to a work that is so complex and multifaceted?

My tolerance for unlikeable, unpleasant, and unreliable narrators and characters is, much like my tolerance for strong coffee, rather high. Or at least that's what I like to convince myself. Just as a cup of coffee can make your insides churn, this book (and its narrator) serves as a reminder that everyone has their breaking points.

To be fair to Joseph Heller: based on the evidence of two books, he is extremely successful at achieving what he sets out to do. Whether it's highlighting the sheer absurdity and madness of war in Catch-22, or exposing the pitfalls of modern life in Something Happened. However, there is a great deal of tedium that comes with this territory. In Catch, this was offset by several hilarious and memorable episodes and characters. But here, there is simply no relief.

Sure, it is possible to recognize (and even appreciate) how effectively Heller satirizes the American dream once you have endured these 600-plus pages. But truly, it feels like a rather poor use of one's time.

Joseph Heller, in an interview, once made a rather bold statement. He said that he’s never written a truly three-dimensional character; instead, they’re all just caricatures. In a sense, this book serves as a perfect illustration of that claim.

This book seems to be a compilation of the id of numerous different people. Many sections of the book offer refreshingly honest expressions of thoughts that people typically keep to themselves. However, other parts can be quite disturbing and, hopefully, untrue for most, if not all, people. So, Bob can be seen as Jung’s shadow, albeit with a somewhat sympathetic second dimension. But, and this is where it gets tricky to express clearly, there is no third dimension. He’s a real guy, but only the worst aspects of him (along with a few of the most charming parts) are on display.

Despite all this, it’s a very funny book. I had forgotten this as I raced through the latter part of the book. For instance, early on, he gives a whole speech about how he’s afraid of everyone at his office and never wants to get into a fight with anyone. Then, when he gets home, he’s like, “Well, except every member of my family.” When he arrives home and his wife is quiet, he can’t recall if she was happy, angry, or indifferent towards him when he left that morning. As he tries to figure her out, he realizes she’s not quiet because she’s giving him the cold shoulder – she’s also trying to remember if he’s mad at her. He realizes this, and as he sits down for dinner, he thinks, “Ah, nice. We can all have a relaxed evening.” But immediately after, he calls his daughter fat, starting an argument.

In any case, I truly don’t think any other author could have managed to create a book quite like this. It’s great, although I’m not entirely sure if I’ll ever pick it up and read it again.

This book was truly weird.

When I first began reading it, I had no inkling that it would have such a profound impact on my day-to-day life.

However, as I delved deeper into the book and started to think about it more, it made me become more reflective of the various "What's" that were going on in my life.

It made me more appreciative of the people in my life, but at the same time, it also made me realize that they too were going through similar experiences.

I'm not entirely sure how to put it into words, but this book served as a great reflection of how we navigate through our daily worlds, and the pain and problems that we bring to every situation.

It made me stop and think about the choices I make and the consequences they have.

Overall, it was a thought-provoking read that left a lasting impression on me.