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Something Happened
This is Joseph Heller's first novel since Catch-22, which was published in 1961 and has become the most celebrated novel of its decade — speaking for and to an entire American generation. Something Happened is different from Catch-22 in both substance and tone, but it is certain to have a comparable effect.
* * *
As it opens, he "gets the willies." At the end, he has "taken command."
What happens in Something Happened happens to Bob Slocum — in his forties, contending with his office (where just about everybody is scared of somebody), trying to come to grips with his wife ("You did it," she says. "You made me this way. ..."), with his daughter (she's "unhappy"), with his son (he's "having difficulties"), and with his other son, and with his own past and his own present.
Like his own children, like all children, Slocum once was new, valuable, eagerly waiting to grow into the good life sure to come. Now he is what he is, and his life is what it is.
What happened? (What happens?)
Something.
* * *
As it opens, he "gets the willies." At the end, he has "taken command."
What happens in Something Happened happens to Bob Slocum — in his forties, contending with his office (where just about everybody is scared of somebody), trying to come to grips with his wife ("You did it," she says. "You made me this way. ..."), with his daughter (she's "unhappy"), with his son (he's "having difficulties"), and with his other son, and with his own past and his own present.
Like his own children, like all children, Slocum once was new, valuable, eagerly waiting to grow into the good life sure to come. Now he is what he is, and his life is what it is.
What happened? (What happens?)
Something.
576 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
About the author
Joseph Heller
34 books2,700 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
Joseph Heller was the son of poor Jewish parents from Russia. Even as a child, he loved to write; at the age of eleven, he wrote a story about the Russian invasion of Finland. He sent it to New York Daily News, which rejected it. After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1941, Heller spent the next year working as a blacksmith's apprentice, a messenger boy, and a filing clerk. In 1942, at age 19, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. Two years later he was sent to Italy, where he flew 60 combat missions as a B-25 bombardier. Heller later remembered the war as "fun in the beginning... You got the feeling that there was something glorious about it." On his return home he "felt like a hero... People think it quite remarkable that I was in combat in an airplane and I flew sixty missions even though I tell them that the missions were largely milk runs."
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_H...
Joseph Heller was the son of poor Jewish parents from Russia. Even as a child, he loved to write; at the age of eleven, he wrote a story about the Russian invasion of Finland. He sent it to New York Daily News, which rejected it. After graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1941, Heller spent the next year working as a blacksmith's apprentice, a messenger boy, and a filing clerk. In 1942, at age 19, he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps. Two years later he was sent to Italy, where he flew 60 combat missions as a B-25 bombardier. Heller later remembered the war as "fun in the beginning... You got the feeling that there was something glorious about it." On his return home he "felt like a hero... People think it quite remarkable that I was in combat in an airplane and I flew sixty missions even though I tell them that the missions were largely milk runs."
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_H...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 658 reviews
June 18, 2008
This is an amazingly great book...and 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. (Hmm, I don't think I "liked" this book and I certainly didn't "enjoy" it, but in the absence of a more nuanced verb let it stay as "liked".)
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. His 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?
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. (Hmm, I don't think I "liked" this book and I certainly didn't "enjoy" it, but in the absence of a more nuanced verb let it stay as "liked".)
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. His 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?
January 13, 2022
Este Joseph Heller es el mismo que escribió «Catch-22», esa celebérrima novela calificada por muchos como de clásico moderno. Pues bien, «Algo ha pasado» es mejor… o eso pienso yo, al menos.
Pero no busquen aquí algo así como un «Catch-23». Aquí se las verán con la tortuosa y torturada mente de un oficinista, padre de familia de clase media y de mediana edad que terminará por resultarles insoportable y hasta odioso.
Bob Slocum, que así se llama el poseedor de la mente que deberán visitar y que durante toda mi lectura usurpó el cuerpo de William H. Macy en la inolvidable Fargo, es débil y cobarde (y, por tanto, peligroso), carente de una naturaleza propia, como él mismo confiesa, y con un profundo sentimiento de autodesprecio. Su mundo se divide en dos categorías: los débiles y los fuertes (estos siempre hombres, las mujeres pueden aspirar como mucho a ser un premio y quizás no uno de los más importantes), donde a los primeros se les desprecia y a los segundos se les teme y admira.
No creo que nadie se sorprenderá a estas alturas si digo que Bob Slocum vive aterrado: teme a su familia, a sus compañeros de trabajo, a sus subordinados, a sus jefes, teme a la vida. Y su decisión es precisamente la de no vivir, la de dejarse flotar sobre la existencia y sentir lo menos posible. Pero dejar de sentir es una tarea ingrata e inalcanzable.
La narración es machacona, la forma amoldándose al fondo. Y en el fondo de la novela está un ser obsesivo hasta la exageración. Al igual que aquel que no puede salir a la calle sin cerrar la puerta 20 veces, la narración parece no poder seguir si no relata una y mil veces cada una de las fobias de Bob Slocum, sus recuerdos, sus miedos, sus debilidades, sus desprecios, sus muchas mezquindades.
Y pese a todo ello, Heller consigue que uno llegue a compadecerse del personaje. No es fácil enfrentarse a sí mismo con la sinceridad de Slocum (dicen las malas lenguas que Slocum y Heller tienen más de un punto en común), no es sencillo vivir tan a disgusto consigo mismo, ser tan infeliz y estar presente en el día a día de su hijo, al que siente como si fuera una prolongación de sí mismo y que parece multiplicar hasta el infinito todos sus miedos y debilidades.
Al final, sí, algo pasa y, claro está, nada bueno. Pero en el fondo pienso que hubiera dado igual que no pasara nada; razones no le sobran a Bob Slocum para esta larga, caótica, autoflagelante, cruel, desagradable, perturbadora, desesperanzada, desordenada, deprimente, obscena y ultramegasupersincera confesión.
Cuidado, es un libro que incomoda, que puede enfrentarle a infiernos propios que no son nunca fáciles de asumir. Pero qué mejor objetivo puede tener el arte que removernos por dentro. Este libro lo logra y de forma espléndida y terrible.
Pero no busquen aquí algo así como un «Catch-23». Aquí se las verán con la tortuosa y torturada mente de un oficinista, padre de familia de clase media y de mediana edad que terminará por resultarles insoportable y hasta odioso.
Bob Slocum, que así se llama el poseedor de la mente que deberán visitar y que durante toda mi lectura usurpó el cuerpo de William H. Macy en la inolvidable Fargo, es débil y cobarde (y, por tanto, peligroso), carente de una naturaleza propia, como él mismo confiesa, y con un profundo sentimiento de autodesprecio. Su mundo se divide en dos categorías: los débiles y los fuertes (estos siempre hombres, las mujeres pueden aspirar como mucho a ser un premio y quizás no uno de los más importantes), donde a los primeros se les desprecia y a los segundos se les teme y admira.
No creo que nadie se sorprenderá a estas alturas si digo que Bob Slocum vive aterrado: teme a su familia, a sus compañeros de trabajo, a sus subordinados, a sus jefes, teme a la vida. Y su decisión es precisamente la de no vivir, la de dejarse flotar sobre la existencia y sentir lo menos posible. Pero dejar de sentir es una tarea ingrata e inalcanzable.
La narración es machacona, la forma amoldándose al fondo. Y en el fondo de la novela está un ser obsesivo hasta la exageración. Al igual que aquel que no puede salir a la calle sin cerrar la puerta 20 veces, la narración parece no poder seguir si no relata una y mil veces cada una de las fobias de Bob Slocum, sus recuerdos, sus miedos, sus debilidades, sus desprecios, sus muchas mezquindades.
Y pese a todo ello, Heller consigue que uno llegue a compadecerse del personaje. No es fácil enfrentarse a sí mismo con la sinceridad de Slocum (dicen las malas lenguas que Slocum y Heller tienen más de un punto en común), no es sencillo vivir tan a disgusto consigo mismo, ser tan infeliz y estar presente en el día a día de su hijo, al que siente como si fuera una prolongación de sí mismo y que parece multiplicar hasta el infinito todos sus miedos y debilidades.
Al final, sí, algo pasa y, claro está, nada bueno. Pero en el fondo pienso que hubiera dado igual que no pasara nada; razones no le sobran a Bob Slocum para esta larga, caótica, autoflagelante, cruel, desagradable, perturbadora, desesperanzada, desordenada, deprimente, obscena y ultramegasupersincera confesión.
Cuidado, es un libro que incomoda, que puede enfrentarle a infiernos propios que no son nunca fáciles de asumir. Pero qué mejor objetivo puede tener el arte que removernos por dentro. Este libro lo logra y de forma espléndida y terrible.
November 1, 2020
The narrator lives in the world of phobias and paranoia…
But all those phobias are just petty and paranoia is quite artificial…
Gradually the protagonist’s thoughts turn into a set of idées fixes about sex, work and family life so the narration turns static and repetitive…
The world changes and new times bring new anxieties.
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. I dislike anything unexpected.
But all those phobias are just petty and paranoia is quite artificial…
The sky is falling, tumbling down on all our heads, and I sit shedding tears over an unhealing scratch on a very tender vanity.
Gradually the protagonist’s thoughts turn into a set of idées fixes about sex, work and family life so the narration turns static and repetitive…
I float like algae in a colony of green scum, while my wife and I grow old, my daughter grows older and more dissatisfied with herself and with me…
The world changes and new times bring new anxieties.
August 1, 2018
A criminally underrated classic, SOMETHING HAPPENED is easily one of the most impressive and convincing first-person narratives of an unlikeable narrator I have ever come across. Joseph Heller is one of my favorite authors, with CATCH-22 perhaps being my favorite novel of all time, and yet, it took my over two decades to make my way to SOMETHING HAPPENED. Heller worked for more than a decade on this massive tome and it shows on every page.
Bob Slocum is a despicable man, wholly American in nature, and perhaps an even darker casting of Don Draper in the Mad Men era. As the novel progresses, Slocum's grip on his own sanity falls away as his concern over his work life and displeasure with just about everything else in his world takes over. A brilliant office satire, as well as a scathing critique of the unique upper class American man that likely plunged our country into the quagmire we now find ourselves in, this novel's take is completely different than CATCH-22 when it comes to uncovering dark truths. There are few laughs to be found, and an overwhelming sense of unhappiness will likely overcome the reader, and yet, it is compulsively readable. The carefully crafted shock and awe at each one of Slocum's new horrible revelations is both titillating and repulsive, heartbreaking and aggravating, and yet, feels completely natural. From a technical standpoint, I don't believe I've ever come across a more perfect use of numerous parentheticals, as well.
This book will not make you feel good about the American man, but who cares? This book is more important than that. This book peeks through the looking glass; it forces us to confront the silent poison within our culture. Sure, it's a bummer, but it's fantastic literature, and while you may not laugh as you did when reading CATCH-22, it's hard to put down. What a shame Heller didn't get to see this novel achieve more widespread acclaim, but as usual, he was ahead of his time.
Bob Slocum is a despicable man, wholly American in nature, and perhaps an even darker casting of Don Draper in the Mad Men era. As the novel progresses, Slocum's grip on his own sanity falls away as his concern over his work life and displeasure with just about everything else in his world takes over. A brilliant office satire, as well as a scathing critique of the unique upper class American man that likely plunged our country into the quagmire we now find ourselves in, this novel's take is completely different than CATCH-22 when it comes to uncovering dark truths. There are few laughs to be found, and an overwhelming sense of unhappiness will likely overcome the reader, and yet, it is compulsively readable. The carefully crafted shock and awe at each one of Slocum's new horrible revelations is both titillating and repulsive, heartbreaking and aggravating, and yet, feels completely natural. From a technical standpoint, I don't believe I've ever come across a more perfect use of numerous parentheticals, as well.
This book will not make you feel good about the American man, but who cares? This book is more important than that. This book peeks through the looking glass; it forces us to confront the silent poison within our culture. Sure, it's a bummer, but it's fantastic literature, and while you may not laugh as you did when reading CATCH-22, it's hard to put down. What a shame Heller didn't get to see this novel achieve more widespread acclaim, but as usual, he was ahead of his time.
May 18, 2020
This novel arrived on my shelf (I can’t remember why now) too late, decades too late. A big black-hole slab of white middle class American male self-loathing… mmmm, who would not want to slurp that up?
The two targets of this book : office life in a big company and family life somewhere in the suburbs. Like I say, the white middle class.
Groan.
After reading David Foster Wallace’s brilliant hot mess The Pale King, and Sinclair Lewis’s heartfelt poignant Babbitt and Joyce Carol Oates’ blistering 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 American Psycho and Richard Yates' Revolutionary Roadin here) not to mention the well-known tv show Mad Men 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-loathingness is off the scale, vicious corporate backstabbing never more perfectly portrayed and the bitter mutual hatred that seethes within a little nuclear (named after the bomb) family rarely summed up so well.
But you have had ALL of this before. All of it. Well, I should say I have. So eventually, after discerning that there was not one single atom of daylight, not one single chink of grace or lightness or humour in the unending vile revelations of our man Bob Slocum, bosses’-ass-kisser, own-children-disliker and typist almost-raper I said
Goodbye Bob, I hope you have a stroke that paralyses 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 upstanding reviewers give out 5 stars to Something Happened. And these reviews are well worth reading too. I can only assume that these readers have a higher tolerance of unrelenting misery and ceaseless bashing of the same targets than do I. 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.
The two targets of this book : office life in a big company and family life somewhere in the suburbs. Like I say, the white middle class.
Groan.
After reading David Foster Wallace’s brilliant hot mess The Pale King, and Sinclair Lewis’s heartfelt poignant Babbitt and Joyce Carol Oates’ blistering 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 American Psycho and Richard Yates' Revolutionary Roadin here) not to mention the well-known tv show Mad Men 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-loathingness is off the scale, vicious corporate backstabbing never more perfectly portrayed and the bitter mutual hatred that seethes within a little nuclear (named after the bomb) family rarely summed up so well.
But you have had ALL of this before. All of it. Well, I should say I have. So eventually, after discerning that there was not one single atom of daylight, not one single chink of grace or lightness or humour in the unending vile revelations of our man Bob Slocum, bosses’-ass-kisser, own-children-disliker and typist almost-raper I said
Goodbye Bob, I hope you have a stroke that paralyses 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 upstanding reviewers give out 5 stars to Something Happened. And these reviews are well worth reading too. I can only assume that these readers have a higher tolerance of unrelenting misery and ceaseless bashing of the same targets than do I. 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.
December 22, 2020
Anxious people should not read this book.
In the office in which I work there are five people of whom I am afraid. (13)
Anxious people should not read this book!
There is this crawling animal flourishing somewhere inside me that I try to keep hidden and that strives to get out, and I don't know what it is or whom it wishes to destroy. (111)
ANXIOUS PEOPLE SHOULD NOT READ THIS BOOK!
I have a feeling that someone nearby is soon going to find out something about me that will mean the end, although I can't imagine what that something is. (16)
Shudder. This whole book made my mind race and my skin crawl. Heller dumps us immediately into the petty, unforgiving, and constantly roiling mind of Bob Slocum - very much an unlovable loser, very much different from any protagonist I've spent this much time with, and sadly very much familiar to myself, as a highly anxious person who, as stated above, really should not have read this book. Slocum's unendingly negative thoughts wind and flow serpentine in lengthy diatribes against himself, those who have the misfortune to be around him, and the world writ large which, if it can't be said owes him any favors, it can be said maybe doesn't have to be so goddamned mean about it - though Slocum surely deserves the lion's share of the blame for the unpleasantness he finds himself mired in.
There are things going on inside me I cannot control and do not admire. (133)
My soul is fragile; my mind is tissue thin and easily pierced by emotions and images. I can do nothing at all. (170)
My mind is a storehouse of pain, a vast, invisible reservoir of sorrows as deep as I am old, waiting always to be tapped and set flowing by memory. (535)
3 stars. I hated and enjoyed it all at once, and damn if it didn't hit home for me personally. Slocum's kind of like a midlife crisis Holden Caulfield for the office-and-middle-management world. The book runs on much too long though, asking us to spend far more time on each section than is probably necessary. Plus it's full of backwards-thinking sentiments towards women and minorities which are intensely off-putting. All told it might have been great at maybe 350 pages, but 560 is overkill.
(I know how it feels to have to feel this way.)
(It doesn't feel good.) (221)
In the office in which I work there are five people of whom I am afraid. (13)
Anxious people should not read this book!
There is this crawling animal flourishing somewhere inside me that I try to keep hidden and that strives to get out, and I don't know what it is or whom it wishes to destroy. (111)
ANXIOUS PEOPLE SHOULD NOT READ THIS BOOK!
I have a feeling that someone nearby is soon going to find out something about me that will mean the end, although I can't imagine what that something is. (16)
Shudder. This whole book made my mind race and my skin crawl. Heller dumps us immediately into the petty, unforgiving, and constantly roiling mind of Bob Slocum - very much an unlovable loser, very much different from any protagonist I've spent this much time with, and sadly very much familiar to myself, as a highly anxious person who, as stated above, really should not have read this book. Slocum's unendingly negative thoughts wind and flow serpentine in lengthy diatribes against himself, those who have the misfortune to be around him, and the world writ large which, if it can't be said owes him any favors, it can be said maybe doesn't have to be so goddamned mean about it - though Slocum surely deserves the lion's share of the blame for the unpleasantness he finds himself mired in.
There are things going on inside me I cannot control and do not admire. (133)
My soul is fragile; my mind is tissue thin and easily pierced by emotions and images. I can do nothing at all. (170)
My mind is a storehouse of pain, a vast, invisible reservoir of sorrows as deep as I am old, waiting always to be tapped and set flowing by memory. (535)
3 stars. I hated and enjoyed it all at once, and damn if it didn't hit home for me personally. Slocum's kind of like a midlife crisis Holden Caulfield for the office-and-middle-management world. The book runs on much too long though, asking us to spend far more time on each section than is probably necessary. Plus it's full of backwards-thinking sentiments towards women and minorities which are intensely off-putting. All told it might have been great at maybe 350 pages, but 560 is overkill.
(I know how it feels to have to feel this way.)
(It doesn't feel good.) (221)
May 19, 2018
Something Happens
Contrary to popular belief, something does happen in this novel, in two pages towards the end. You could even argue that two things happen, one good, one bad. It’s not that important to know what they are, quite apart from spoiler concerns, because what is more important is what happened before the narrator, marketing executive Bob Slocum, starts his story.
This something or these things happened to him and to his children, but he doesn’t know what they are. It means something to us readers, because it’s possible that it happened or will happen to us. If we follow Slocum’s story, we might find out, for our benefit as well as his. If we find out, we might be able to do something about it.
Slocum’s story is structured as a tale about work, parental, marital and extramarital relationships. He tells 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 talk to, the monologue often sounds like a verbatim account of Slocum’s discussion with an analyst. It could even be an attempt to analyse himself, an attempt at something therapeutic.
Slocum’s description of the dialogues with his son can even be used to describe Heller’s novel as a whole:
The Condition of Slocum
Slocum summarises his condition as follows:
It might sound like Trump-era America, but it’s actually 1974.
"That Abominable Cafard"
Slocum believes he suffers from some form of depression or melancholia:
"Vain as a Peacock"
Slocum presents a different picture to his work colleagues (he doesn’t mention any friends outside his job):
At home, he tries 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. And his wife’s:
Growing Up
He has grown up. But what does that mean? How is he different from what he once was?
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 apply equally to the father):
Growing Away
Equally (and conversely), “something happened to both my children that I cannot explain and cannot undo...”:
He talks of his daughter and himself in the same terms:
"Nullifying a Whole Culture"
To the extent that Slocum is typical 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 says, “I can’t believe it was all my fault.”
A clue to Slocum’s plight lies in the fact that he thinks 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 just his defective imagination or memory:
“What’s the Matter? What’s Wrong?”
If it’s true, then it’s possible that Slocum’s discontent derives from an insecurity and lack of self-esteem triggered by his mother’s comment. He was dependent on her positive opinion of him, and she withdrew it on her deathbed. He became or remained a child who lacks their parents’ approval. This locks Slocum into a semi-perpetual childhood:
In effect, he wants to be nine, like his son, whose gym teacher says of him that it’s “time to start learning some responsibility and discipline.”
Cause and Effect
The novel is driven by an obsessive preoccupation with cause and effect (and therefore fault, guilt, blame and shame).
Slocum has tried to address these issues (particularly with respect to Derek, his retarded son) both professionally and in his own mind:
Immature Sexist
Slocum reveals an aspect of immaturity (and humour - throughout the emotional labyrinth of this long novel, there is a consistent, if irreverent, good humour, which is often overlooked by readers) when he comments on women’s liberation:
"Getting His Affairs in Order"
In the end, Slocum decides to take control of his affairs. He tries 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 work:
While this passage appears early in the novel, it does suggest that the same rules don’t necessarily apply to both circumstances. Or at least, not these rules.
SOUNDTRACK:
Contrary to popular belief, something does happen in this novel, in two pages towards the end. You could even argue that two things happen, one good, one bad. It’s not that important to know what they are, quite apart from spoiler concerns, because what is more important is what happened before the narrator, marketing executive Bob Slocum, starts his story.
This something or these things happened to him and to his children, but he doesn’t know what they are. It means something to us readers, because it’s possible that it happened or will happen to us. If we follow Slocum’s story, we might find out, for our benefit as well as his. If we find out, we might be able to do something about it.
Slocum’s story is structured as a tale about work, parental, marital and extramarital relationships. He tells 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 talk to, the monologue often sounds like a verbatim account of Slocum’s discussion with an analyst. It could even be an attempt to analyse himself, an attempt at something therapeutic.
Slocum’s description of the dialogues with his son can even 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 summarises 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 sound like Trump-era America, but it’s actually 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 picture to his work colleagues (he doesn’t mention any friends outside his job):
“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 tries 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. And 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 mean? 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 apply equally 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 talks 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 typical 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 says, “I can’t believe it was all my fault.”
A clue to Slocum’s plight lies in the fact that he thinks 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 just 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 derives from an insecurity and lack of self-esteem triggered by his mother’s comment. He was dependent on her positive opinion of him, and she withdrew it on her deathbed. He became or remained a child who lacks their 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 says of him that it’s “time to start learning some responsibility and discipline.”
Cause and Effect
The novel is driven by an obsessive preoccupation with cause and effect (and therefore fault, guilt, blame and shame).
Slocum has tried to address these issues (particularly with respect to 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 humour - throughout the emotional labyrinth of this long novel, there is a consistent, if irreverent, good humour, 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 tries 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 work:
“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 circumstances. Or at least, not these rules.
SOUNDTRACK:
October 9, 2018
A scathing howl of rage and despair from the school of Céline, Bernhard, and Miller. Your repugnant host is WASPish Republican lower executive Bob Slocum, tunnelling—in a breathtakingly lucid stream of hypnotic and explosive bomb-strength paragraphs—into the fieriest hells of middle-class melancholia with the savage spadework of William Kohler from Gass’s The Tunnel. Heller’s narrator is reminiscent of Bernhard’s obsessive, repetitive outcasts, trapped in self-made ouroboros of incipient madness, their increasingly ill-lucid logic yielding cathartic comedy. The novel is initially comic, until the vile pre-war attitudes of Slocum, an openly misogynistic, racist, and misanthropic creep with a suspiciously spicy sex life, whose open loathing of his autistic son, his wife and daughter, eventually brings you to howling pitches of rage, regardless of however we might empathise with his existential kvetching. An ambitious and startling and exceedingly bleak novel.
May 21, 2019
Update May 2019:
I just wanted to say a big ‘thank you’ to all that for reasons unbeknownst to me ‘liked’ my old review now in mid-2019. As I’m noting that point in time, I’m absolutely flustered about the 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 in quite the few years that was - evidently - my adolescence and young adulthood. On the other hand, I cannot seem to make sense of where the years post 2000 have gone either. And not to forget! these have been the best of my life.
Anyway, what I really wanted to say that I have passed the milestone mentioned in my review (50) and, as my fellow 50+ know - but that some of you others - facing it soon, dreading it in the future or simply unable to believe that you one day will 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 realise 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 were looking surprisingly 'ordinary' in contrast to their topic for 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 coming up close to a birthday nowadays, getting awfully close to, not 60, but 50 still. And the reason I got thinking about this at all was that I thought I should write a little something 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 at age 20something. What in the world did I see in it then? I will never know - but I do know that 20something Thomas did have great taste, because this is a fantastic book.
I realized pretty early on that the method that Heller uses is that he pulls us in and lets us identify readily with the protagonist - 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 did not know was there and had we known, would have preferred closed.
I have never felt only sadness at the death of a friend or relative or the departure to a faraway place of someone I like, or even perhaps love. Always there has been simultaneously a marked undercurrent of relief, a release, a secret, unabashed sigh of "Well, at least that's over with now, isn't it?" I wonder how I would feel about the death of a child.)
Bob Slocum is something so rare as an egotist and narcissist that frequently doubts himself and his choices. He is certainly incapable of real empathy, but other than that, he does not really fit the description. He's very unlikable and I hope he does not really exist. Foremost, I hope he's not... me.
Green is more important to me than God. So, for that matter, is Kagle and the man who handles my dry cleaning, and a transistor radio that is playing too loud is a larger catastrophe to me than the next Mexican earthquake.
The instances in which I do sympathize with him is when he feels lost and disconnected from the world;
I don't know what happened to Tom (he could have been killed, for all I know or care); he left me his handwriting, and I still sit at a desk, in my office at the company or in my study at home, and use it. I don't know what finally became of Marie Jencks. I never even found out what happened to me.
His memories are equal parts sweetly nostalgic and filled with remorse of what could have been. Also, as we come to learn, they are not to be trusted.
Interaction with others is terribly 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 that he states it ("Sometimes I do") is just shocking to me.
"I'm not. I'm sorry I said that. I don't know. I don't know why. I didn't mean to say that."
"Yes, you did. Or you wouldn't have said that, either. People say what they mean."
"So do you. She thinks you hate her."
"I don't. Sometimes I do. When she gets me mad."
Another instance is that he simultaneously shields himself from human interaction -
I should have guessed from her educational curriculum at Duke that she was a little bit nuts and would probably kill herself sooner or later. I am able to spot propensities like that in people now (and I keep my distance). A friend in need is no friend of mine.
while at the same time caring very much about what people around him may think (in his own twisted reasoning):
"She's my daughter. I can't say 'I love you' to my own daughter."
"Why not?"
"It sounds like incest."
All of this and more impacts on the reader so hard, I believe, so 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?
Nameless I came and nameless I go. I am not Bob Slocum just because my parents decided to call me that. If there is such a person, I don't know who he is. I don't even feel my name is mine, let alone my handwriting. I don't even know who I'm not.
Sometimes he's the existentialist philosopher and sometimes he sounds more like the perfectly ordinary mid-life crisis man:
The years are too short, the days are too long.
This is one of the blessed instances I do not identify with this horrible man.
Sometimes he really resorts to slapstick (just had to get this one in here) -
It wasn't so bad living in my old man's scrotum, as far as I can recall. It was warm and humid, and there was lots of companionship. I had a ball.
but most of the time he's preoccupied with arranging what's best for himself and trying to keep up a civil interaction with the people around him (the dialogs with people at his workplace are shifting between awkward and horrible, his interaction with his family is painful in his failure to keep an open mind and/or see someone else's side once in a while).
I would have a hard time to name one book 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 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 characters 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.
I just wanted to say a big ‘thank you’ to all that for reasons unbeknownst to me ‘liked’ my old review now in mid-2019. As I’m noting that point in time, I’m absolutely flustered about the 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 in quite the few years that was - evidently - my adolescence and young adulthood. On the other hand, I cannot seem to make sense of where the years post 2000 have gone either. And not to forget! these have been the best of my life.
Anyway, what I really wanted to say that I have passed the milestone mentioned in my review (50) and, as my fellow 50+ know - but that some of you others - facing it soon, dreading it in the future or simply unable to believe that you one day will 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 realise 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 were looking surprisingly 'ordinary' in contrast to their topic for 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 coming up close to a birthday nowadays, getting awfully close to, not 60, but 50 still. And the reason I got thinking about this at all was that I thought I should write a little something 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 at age 20something. What in the world did I see in it then? I will never know - but I do know that 20something Thomas did have great taste, because this is a fantastic book.
I realized pretty early on that the method that Heller uses is that he pulls us in and lets us identify readily with the protagonist - 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 did not know was there and had we known, would have preferred closed.
I have never felt only sadness at the death of a friend or relative or the departure to a faraway place of someone I like, or even perhaps love. Always there has been simultaneously a marked undercurrent of relief, a release, a secret, unabashed sigh of "Well, at least that's over with now, isn't it?" I wonder how I would feel about the death of a child.)
Bob Slocum is something so rare as an egotist and narcissist that frequently doubts himself and his choices. He is certainly incapable of real empathy, but other than that, he does not really fit the description. He's very unlikable and I hope he does not really exist. Foremost, I hope he's not... me.
Green is more important to me than God. So, for that matter, is Kagle and the man who handles my dry cleaning, and a transistor radio that is playing too loud is a larger catastrophe to me than the next Mexican earthquake.
The instances in which I do sympathize with him is when he feels lost and disconnected from the world;
I don't know what happened to Tom (he could have been killed, for all I know or care); he left me his handwriting, and I still sit at a desk, in my office at the company or in my study at home, and use it. I don't know what finally became of Marie Jencks. I never even found out what happened to me.
His memories are equal parts sweetly nostalgic and filled with remorse of what could have been. Also, as we come to learn, they are not to be trusted.
Interaction with others is terribly 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 that he states it ("Sometimes I do") is just shocking to me.
"I'm not. I'm sorry I said that. I don't know. I don't know why. I didn't mean to say that."
"Yes, you did. Or you wouldn't have said that, either. People say what they mean."
"So do you. She thinks you hate her."
"I don't. Sometimes I do. When she gets me mad."
Another instance is that he simultaneously shields himself from human interaction -
I should have guessed from her educational curriculum at Duke that she was a little bit nuts and would probably kill herself sooner or later. I am able to spot propensities like that in people now (and I keep my distance). A friend in need is no friend of mine.
while at the same time caring very much about what people around him may think (in his own twisted reasoning):
"She's my daughter. I can't say 'I love you' to my own daughter."
"Why not?"
"It sounds like incest."
All of this and more impacts on the reader so hard, I believe, so 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?
Nameless I came and nameless I go. I am not Bob Slocum just because my parents decided to call me that. If there is such a person, I don't know who he is. I don't even feel my name is mine, let alone my handwriting. I don't even know who I'm not.
Sometimes he's the existentialist philosopher and sometimes he sounds more like the perfectly ordinary mid-life crisis man:
The years are too short, the days are too long.
This is one of the blessed instances I do not identify with this horrible man.
Sometimes he really resorts to slapstick (just had to get this one in here) -
It wasn't so bad living in my old man's scrotum, as far as I can recall. It was warm and humid, and there was lots of companionship. I had a ball.
but most of the time he's preoccupied with arranging what's best for himself and trying to keep up a civil interaction with the people around him (the dialogs with people at his workplace are shifting between awkward and horrible, his interaction with his family is painful in his failure to keep an open mind and/or see someone else's side once in a while).
I would have a hard time to name one book 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 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 characters 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.
May 12, 2020
Hace ya bastantes meses que terminé esta novela, y en todo este tiempo no he dejado de pensar y hablar sobre ella. Ahora que comienzo a olvidar detalles, que esa niebla que envuelve los sucesos concretos de las lecturas ha comenzado a hacer su efecto, será más sencillo escribir unas líneas. Porque ahora puedo hablar de mi propio Bob Slocum, narrador, protagonista absoluto y principal atractivo de esta novela, y no del de cualquier otro lector o del de Heller.
Definiría “Algo ha pasado” como una novela agresiva, rabiosa. Es agresivo el narrador, racista, cobarde, machista, homófobo, egoísta... es agresivo su discurso y su manera de analizarse, que diría que roza la autolesión. Lo es también en su forma, repetitiva, insistente, ¿pero qué mente no es presa de sus obsesiones?, y por tanto es también agresiva con el lector. El lector, a pesar de ser un mero espectador de ese monólogo, fácilmente se siente parte, incluso se siente Slocum y se siente interrogado por él. Toma distancia con el personaje y a la vez se reconoce. De alguna manera Bob nos pone ante un espejo no demasiado favorecedor al que quizás algún lector no se atreva a mirarse, o quizás haya lectores que tengan la suerte de no reconocerse en ningún momento.
Como lectora Slocum me ha contagiado buena parte de su agresividad y su rabia, y he llegado a la carcajada con su desesperación y sus pensamientos desquiciados. Creo que, a pesar de ser una novela furiosa, triste, deprimente y angustiosa, es también, quizás por esto mismo, profundamente cómica. Y presa de esa locura, me habría gustado conversar con el bueno de Bob, el cobarde y valiente Bob, que se atreve a rascar en su interior, y ayudarle a hurgar en la herida, agarrarle de la mano, dirigir su dedo: “rasca aquí”, “ahora aquí”, “vuelve a rascar aquí, ya hay sangre pero es mejor que profundices”, “no ha de quedar nada sin rascar”, “¿duele, querido Bob? pues rasca más.”
Who am I? I often wonder what my own nature is. Do I have one? Buenas preguntas, espero que las hayas respondido hace muchos años. En seguida es tarde. I don't really like me and am not even sure who it is I am. I don't know what I want. I wish I knew what to wish.
Tienes un buen trabajo, ¿no? Is this really the most I can get from the few years left in this one life of mine? Bueno, un trabajo es un trabajo, no es ni mucho menos lo más importante, ¿qué tal la familia? So many times when I am home with my family, I wish I were somewhere else. I often think of leaving and always have.
My daughter is unhappy. My little boy is having difficulties. My wife and I cannot really talk to each other about the same things anymore. ”I would like to know,” she'll sometimes said, “what are you really thinking.” No, she wouldn't.
Who is she?
I can't see how my wife really expects me to feel sorry for her when I have so many good reasons for feeling sorry for myself. Among them, her.
Vaya, Bob, en tu día a día te enfrentas a uno de mis mayores terrores, te compadezco. La incomunicación total, la convivencia con completos desconocidos, el compartir todo sin compartir nada más allá de la soledad más absoluta. Pero quizás así sea mejor, piensa que si te conocieran no les gustarías, lo sabes, y si supieses quiénes son, te gustarían menos todavía de lo que te gustan. En realidad, lo único importante para ellos es que cumplas con tu rol. Así podéis fingir que todo va bien, incluso que os queréis, a fin de cuentas si os conocieseis os odiaríais y todo terminaría, ya no hay lugar para el encuentro, es o esto o el fin.
What happened to us? Something did.
Ha de ser decepcionante, seguir todos los pasos que habían de llevarte al éxito, uno por uno, y terminar así. Como para volverse loco, ¿verdad?, ¿qué habréis hecho mal?, ¿cómo ha podido pasar? Consigues un buen trabajo, te casas, compras una buena casa, tienes hijos... ¿quién se podía imaginar que hacía falta algo más, que con eso no bastaba? Algo ha pasado, algo ha tenido que pasar para que esa vida perfecta haya resultado ser tan insatisfactoria para todos vosotros (porque puedes estar seguro, Bob: estáis todos igual, igual de decepcionados, de infelices y rabiosos).
I do think about divorce a lot and I always have. Even before I was married I was thinking of getting divorced.
I have always wanted one. I dream of divorce. All my life I’ve wanted a divorce. Even before I was married I wanted a divorce. I don’t think there has been a six-month period in all the years of my marriage—a six-week period—when I have not wanted to end it by divorce. I was never sure I wanted to get married. But I always knew I wanted a divorce.
¿Qué es lo que esperabas, Bob?
I have the feeling now that there is no place left for me to go. Lo siento, Bob, seguramente tengas razón. Recuerdo ahora una pregunta que ilustra bien el problema. Te la hizo un día tu hijo, ese que tanto te preocupa, en el que ves un reflejo exacto de ti mismo, y quizás por eso te preguntas si no estarás decepcionado con él: "If you were swimming," he asked me recently, "and though you were going to drown, would you yell for the liveward and let everybody on the beach see them save you? Or would you let yourself drown?" I don't know which I would do. I do know, though, that I no longer go swimming in water over my head.
I never became what I wanted to be, even though I got all the things I ever wanted.
Definiría “Algo ha pasado” como una novela agresiva, rabiosa. Es agresivo el narrador, racista, cobarde, machista, homófobo, egoísta... es agresivo su discurso y su manera de analizarse, que diría que roza la autolesión. Lo es también en su forma, repetitiva, insistente, ¿pero qué mente no es presa de sus obsesiones?, y por tanto es también agresiva con el lector. El lector, a pesar de ser un mero espectador de ese monólogo, fácilmente se siente parte, incluso se siente Slocum y se siente interrogado por él. Toma distancia con el personaje y a la vez se reconoce. De alguna manera Bob nos pone ante un espejo no demasiado favorecedor al que quizás algún lector no se atreva a mirarse, o quizás haya lectores que tengan la suerte de no reconocerse en ningún momento.
Como lectora Slocum me ha contagiado buena parte de su agresividad y su rabia, y he llegado a la carcajada con su desesperación y sus pensamientos desquiciados. Creo que, a pesar de ser una novela furiosa, triste, deprimente y angustiosa, es también, quizás por esto mismo, profundamente cómica. Y presa de esa locura, me habría gustado conversar con el bueno de Bob, el cobarde y valiente Bob, que se atreve a rascar en su interior, y ayudarle a hurgar en la herida, agarrarle de la mano, dirigir su dedo: “rasca aquí”, “ahora aquí”, “vuelve a rascar aquí, ya hay sangre pero es mejor que profundices”, “no ha de quedar nada sin rascar”, “¿duele, querido Bob? pues rasca más.”
Who am I? I often wonder what my own nature is. Do I have one? Buenas preguntas, espero que las hayas respondido hace muchos años. En seguida es tarde. I don't really like me and am not even sure who it is I am. I don't know what I want. I wish I knew what to wish.
Tienes un buen trabajo, ¿no? Is this really the most I can get from the few years left in this one life of mine? Bueno, un trabajo es un trabajo, no es ni mucho menos lo más importante, ¿qué tal la familia? So many times when I am home with my family, I wish I were somewhere else. I often think of leaving and always have.
My daughter is unhappy. My little boy is having difficulties. My wife and I cannot really talk to each other about the same things anymore. ”I would like to know,” she'll sometimes said, “what are you really thinking.” No, she wouldn't.
Who is she?
I can't see how my wife really expects me to feel sorry for her when I have so many good reasons for feeling sorry for myself. Among them, her.
Vaya, Bob, en tu día a día te enfrentas a uno de mis mayores terrores, te compadezco. La incomunicación total, la convivencia con completos desconocidos, el compartir todo sin compartir nada más allá de la soledad más absoluta. Pero quizás así sea mejor, piensa que si te conocieran no les gustarías, lo sabes, y si supieses quiénes son, te gustarían menos todavía de lo que te gustan. En realidad, lo único importante para ellos es que cumplas con tu rol. Así podéis fingir que todo va bien, incluso que os queréis, a fin de cuentas si os conocieseis os odiaríais y todo terminaría, ya no hay lugar para el encuentro, es o esto o el fin.
What happened to us? Something did.
Ha de ser decepcionante, seguir todos los pasos que habían de llevarte al éxito, uno por uno, y terminar así. Como para volverse loco, ¿verdad?, ¿qué habréis hecho mal?, ¿cómo ha podido pasar? Consigues un buen trabajo, te casas, compras una buena casa, tienes hijos... ¿quién se podía imaginar que hacía falta algo más, que con eso no bastaba? Algo ha pasado, algo ha tenido que pasar para que esa vida perfecta haya resultado ser tan insatisfactoria para todos vosotros (porque puedes estar seguro, Bob: estáis todos igual, igual de decepcionados, de infelices y rabiosos).
I do think about divorce a lot and I always have. Even before I was married I was thinking of getting divorced.
I have always wanted one. I dream of divorce. All my life I’ve wanted a divorce. Even before I was married I wanted a divorce. I don’t think there has been a six-month period in all the years of my marriage—a six-week period—when I have not wanted to end it by divorce. I was never sure I wanted to get married. But I always knew I wanted a divorce.
¿Qué es lo que esperabas, Bob?
I have the feeling now that there is no place left for me to go. Lo siento, Bob, seguramente tengas razón. Recuerdo ahora una pregunta que ilustra bien el problema. Te la hizo un día tu hijo, ese que tanto te preocupa, en el que ves un reflejo exacto de ti mismo, y quizás por eso te preguntas si no estarás decepcionado con él: "If you were swimming," he asked me recently, "and though you were going to drown, would you yell for the liveward and let everybody on the beach see them save you? Or would you let yourself drown?" I don't know which I would do. I do know, though, that I no longer go swimming in water over my head.
I never became what I wanted to be, even though I got all the things I ever wanted.
July 10, 2018
I know Bob Slocum. I hate Bob Slocum. I am far too often too much like Bob Slocum.
What do you make of 550+ pages of internal narration, with no discernible plot, no character growth, no catharsis after reading the darkest, most selfish, most petulant and childish and sad and real meanderings of a middle American mind? You get Heller's Something Happened, and you get one man's view of what has happened to the American dream.
I find it hard to write about this book without knowing when and how it came about. I try to divorce my art from my artist; I hope (usually in vain) to separate the work from all the ephemeral bullshit behind the book, the breakup that spawned the album, the life-story that crafted the novel, etc. I like the work to stand on its own. But in Heller's case, it's impossible to not look at his book as his follow-up to Catch-22. And if Catch-22 is his scathing rebuke of war, then this is his comment on his own generation. (I'd by lying if I didn't find Kurt Vonnegut's review of this novel very insightful.) And Heller's Bob Slocum returned from World War II and gave in to the illusion of picket-fence happiness, of safety through the suburbs, of wealth as a worthy end.
This has left Slocum in more than just a middle-age malaise; it has crippled his life, wasted his energies, reduced him to shattered nerves and pointless worrying; in short, he has achieved all the material gains promised in the American dream, and yet he is hollow, miserable, and always wanting more. The novel is not specific, but it certainly spans at least a decade in Slocum's mind, with constant flashbacks to his youth. Ah, and that youth, that pre-war awkwardness where skinny little Bobby Slocum is still tasting life for the first time, where women and handwriting and possibility lay enticingly in front of him. We don't hear much about his time at war, other than his hearty appetite for prostitutes, but upon his return, he finds himself working for a company (whose business is hilariously and purposefully vague), and from when the novel begins to its ending, we realize too late that something has happened; that Slocum's attempts at material happiness have been mere distractions, and slowly, as he looks back constantly at his withering past, does he see the life he could have, should have, led. A central metaphor involves the files of deceased people Slocum archived during his first job with an insurance company. So many lives, reduced to scraps of paper, filed away in a dank basement, forgotten forever. Slocum's youthfulness fears this anonymous oblivion, and yet that is exactly what he achieves. Instead of living the life he wanted, instead of sleeping with Virginia and being his own person, he has opted for bigger houses in Connecticut, three-minute speeches, meaningless affairs with a huge cast of faceless nothings, higher salaries, and an endless striving for some kind of solace.
Put that solace never comes. Everything Slocum has built is hollow, ashes to his touch, repugnant to him. The few things he can love - his wife, his daughter, his son - are so alien to him, so much a burden, that he rarely feels anything but rejection and spite. The job that has gnawed his mind and soul was ostensibly to provide for these people, and while he certainly does provide materially, he is absolutely 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, be it material or personal. When at the end of the novel something truly horrible does happen, Slocum does what he has done his entire life: he pities himself, he smothers, he refuses to let go as he thinks only of him self ... and he pays the ultimate price.
What did I learn from this novel? That the world is full of Bob Slocums, full of people who (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 follow the path of least resistance. Do not follow the highway to America's suburban destiny, do not let some unnameable thing happen that sees you working 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.
What do you make of 550+ pages of internal narration, with no discernible plot, no character growth, no catharsis after reading the darkest, most selfish, most petulant and childish and sad and real meanderings of a middle American mind? You get Heller's Something Happened, and you get one man's view of what has happened to the American dream.
I find it hard to write about this book without knowing when and how it came about. I try to divorce my art from my artist; I hope (usually in vain) to separate the work from all the ephemeral bullshit behind the book, the breakup that spawned the album, the life-story that crafted the novel, etc. I like the work to stand on its own. But in Heller's case, it's impossible to not look at his book as his follow-up to Catch-22. And if Catch-22 is his scathing rebuke of war, then this is his comment on his own generation. (I'd by lying if I didn't find Kurt Vonnegut's review of this novel very insightful.) And Heller's Bob Slocum returned from World War II and gave in to the illusion of picket-fence happiness, of safety through the suburbs, of wealth as a worthy end.
This has left Slocum in more than just a middle-age malaise; it has crippled his life, wasted his energies, reduced him to shattered nerves and pointless worrying; in short, he has achieved all the material gains promised in the American dream, and yet he is hollow, miserable, and always wanting more. The novel is not specific, but it certainly spans at least a decade in Slocum's mind, with constant flashbacks to his youth. Ah, and that youth, that pre-war awkwardness where skinny little Bobby Slocum is still tasting life for the first time, where women and handwriting and possibility lay enticingly in front of him. We don't hear much about his time at war, other than his hearty appetite for prostitutes, but upon his return, he finds himself working for a company (whose business is hilariously and purposefully vague), and from when the novel begins to its ending, we realize too late that something has happened; that Slocum's attempts at material happiness have been mere distractions, and slowly, as he looks back constantly at his withering past, does he see the life he could have, should have, led. A central metaphor involves the files of deceased people Slocum archived during his first job with an insurance company. So many lives, reduced to scraps of paper, filed away in a dank basement, forgotten forever. Slocum's youthfulness fears this anonymous oblivion, and yet that is exactly what he achieves. Instead of living the life he wanted, instead of sleeping with Virginia and being his own person, he has opted for bigger houses in Connecticut, three-minute speeches, meaningless affairs with a huge cast of faceless nothings, higher salaries, and an endless striving for some kind of solace.
Put that solace never comes. Everything Slocum has built is hollow, ashes to his touch, repugnant to him. The few things he can love - his wife, his daughter, his son - are so alien to him, so much a burden, that he rarely feels anything but rejection and spite. The job that has gnawed his mind and soul was ostensibly to provide for these people, and while he certainly does provide materially, he is absolutely 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, be it material or personal. When at the end of the novel something truly horrible does happen, Slocum does what he has done his entire life: he pities himself, he smothers, he refuses to let go as he thinks only of him self ... and he pays the ultimate price.
What did I learn from this novel? That the world is full of Bob Slocums, full of people who (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 follow the path of least resistance. Do not follow the highway to America's suburban destiny, do not let some unnameable thing happen that sees you working 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.
March 30, 2023
Egoísta, bipolar, machista, chovinista, cínico, presuntuoso, inseguro, paranoico y para remate hipócrita. Esos son algunos de los muchos calificativos que podrían encajarle a ese tremendo personaje literario creado por J. Heller, al que bautizó como Bob Slocum.
Es un tipo odioso al estilo del Portnoy de Phillip Roth, me lo recordó en muchos momentos. Aquí el protagonista es perfectamente conocedor de sus carencias y usa el humor negro como sello de identidad y esa ironía como recurso defensivo. Se trata de una gran combinación del escéptico incurable y lúcido, con el cínico de manual. Su pauta de conducta viene determinada por el miedo: el miedo en sus relaciones laborales, el temor en su entorno familiar, el miedo que provoca en ellos y que también recibe de todos.
Slocum es la encarnación del capitalismo más agresivo y la novela es el campo de batalla sobre este tema y las complejidades de la vida social y familiar americana, basada como eje de todo en el dinero: conseguir dinero a cualquier precio, falta de escrúpulos, medrar a costa de cualquier sacrificio, ofreciendo a cambio a la familia, el tiempo libre con partidos de golf, etc.
Su campo de acción no es demasiado extenso, pero sin embargo es muy rico: familia, trabajo, relaciones familiares, obsesión sexual. Sobre todo la obsesión sexual.
Lo mejor mejor mejor de todo son los brotes y arranques de ironía (sobre lo que quiera que trate) y que ya decía que usa con mucha frecuencia. Ese paréntesis, seguido de dos sonoros Ja, ja, que perfectamente imaginas en un tipo de mediana edad con una doble moral absolutamente abyecta y admirable. Ese pequeño recurso literario (además de novedoso) me ha parecido fantástico.
“(…) como mi mujer, cuya infancia fue en realidad un desierto de cenizas sofocante, hasta que yo aparecí en la escena y me la llevé de su infelicidad a su vida actual de dicha ininterrumpida. ¡Ja, ja!”
¿Se puede ser más golfo? (o hijo de puta, a elegir). Muchas veces después de un párrafo o una reflexión seria y profunda, viene una salida de tono semejante, es absolutamente genial.
El segundo capítulo es para mí el comienzo verdadero de la novela, donde enganchas: La gran decepción de la edad madura. Se ha descubierto el fraude que escondía la vida. El tiempo pasa inexorable y ya no nos resistimos a ello, ni se buscan cambios. La tediosidad del mundo laboral al cabo de los años. Orfebrería pura de Heller.
Solo le encontré un pequeño “pero”: hay alguna conversación con los hijos que van un poco forzadas, por muy inteligentes y precoces que sean los hijos, parecen corresponderse las conversaciones con hijos de mayor edad. Esa pequeña licencia literaria se la consentimos y pasamos por alto sin ningún problema dado el buen trabajo de Heller.
Es un tipo odioso al estilo del Portnoy de Phillip Roth, me lo recordó en muchos momentos. Aquí el protagonista es perfectamente conocedor de sus carencias y usa el humor negro como sello de identidad y esa ironía como recurso defensivo. Se trata de una gran combinación del escéptico incurable y lúcido, con el cínico de manual. Su pauta de conducta viene determinada por el miedo: el miedo en sus relaciones laborales, el temor en su entorno familiar, el miedo que provoca en ellos y que también recibe de todos.
Slocum es la encarnación del capitalismo más agresivo y la novela es el campo de batalla sobre este tema y las complejidades de la vida social y familiar americana, basada como eje de todo en el dinero: conseguir dinero a cualquier precio, falta de escrúpulos, medrar a costa de cualquier sacrificio, ofreciendo a cambio a la familia, el tiempo libre con partidos de golf, etc.
Su campo de acción no es demasiado extenso, pero sin embargo es muy rico: familia, trabajo, relaciones familiares, obsesión sexual. Sobre todo la obsesión sexual.
Lo mejor mejor mejor de todo son los brotes y arranques de ironía (sobre lo que quiera que trate) y que ya decía que usa con mucha frecuencia. Ese paréntesis, seguido de dos sonoros Ja, ja, que perfectamente imaginas en un tipo de mediana edad con una doble moral absolutamente abyecta y admirable. Ese pequeño recurso literario (además de novedoso) me ha parecido fantástico.
“(…) como mi mujer, cuya infancia fue en realidad un desierto de cenizas sofocante, hasta que yo aparecí en la escena y me la llevé de su infelicidad a su vida actual de dicha ininterrumpida. ¡Ja, ja!”
¿Se puede ser más golfo? (o hijo de puta, a elegir). Muchas veces después de un párrafo o una reflexión seria y profunda, viene una salida de tono semejante, es absolutamente genial.
El segundo capítulo es para mí el comienzo verdadero de la novela, donde enganchas: La gran decepción de la edad madura. Se ha descubierto el fraude que escondía la vida. El tiempo pasa inexorable y ya no nos resistimos a ello, ni se buscan cambios. La tediosidad del mundo laboral al cabo de los años. Orfebrería pura de Heller.
Solo le encontré un pequeño “pero”: hay alguna conversación con los hijos que van un poco forzadas, por muy inteligentes y precoces que sean los hijos, parecen corresponderse las conversaciones con hijos de mayor edad. Esa pequeña licencia literaria se la consentimos y pasamos por alto sin ningún problema dado el buen trabajo de Heller.
April 2, 2014
It was love at first sight (pun intended) and my affection with Catch-22 continues for over a decade. It is strange that I never thought of reading another one of Joseph Heller's, until one of my close mates bought "Something Happened" for me. I would have abandoned this book at the first 20 pages, if not for that kind soul who gifted it and the lingering memories of Catch-22. In hindsight, I should have moved on.
You are on a crowded bus, the journey is tedious, you don't how long it is gonna take to reach your destination, no place to even stand properly, sweat, irritation, all kind of bad smells. You can get off at the next stop and forego the journey, but you don't. You don't even know what makes you to go through the ordeal. At every other stop, you get some breeze briefly when people shuffle around. After three fourth of journey, you are no longer bothered about anything. All you want is, to get over with it.
Bob Slocum is a mid level manager in an american company, at the outset he is living the American dream.
The are comic troubles In the office in which he works. His wife is unhappy. His daughter's unhappy. His little boy is having difficulties. There is no getting away from it.
Oh, this is not just the plot, they are also chapter titles.
569 pages of first person narration (à la 150,000+ words of self ejaculation), seriously? Same things are repeated over and over, in the name of stream of conscience. And, it is not a first rate stream of conscience either. He keeps on talking about his urge to kick his daughter at her ankles. At the seventh time, I got fed up and wanted to shout, "If you wanna kick the shit outta her, please go ahead and get over it, just don't talk about it again". Imagine 10,000 Dilbert comic strips stacked up continuously, sans sketches. Juxtapose them with a mediocre soap opera. Thats what this novel is.
I don't recommend this book even if you are interested in a satire about 'American Middle class Consumerism', you are better off with Sam Mendes' 2 hours flick "American Beauty".
You are on a crowded bus, the journey is tedious, you don't how long it is gonna take to reach your destination, no place to even stand properly, sweat, irritation, all kind of bad smells. You can get off at the next stop and forego the journey, but you don't. You don't even know what makes you to go through the ordeal. At every other stop, you get some breeze briefly when people shuffle around. After three fourth of journey, you are no longer bothered about anything. All you want is, to get over with it.
Bob Slocum is a mid level manager in an american company, at the outset he is living the American dream.
The are comic troubles In the office in which he works. His wife is unhappy. His daughter's unhappy. His little boy is having difficulties. There is no getting away from it.
Oh, this is not just the plot, they are also chapter titles.
569 pages of first person narration (à la 150,000+ words of self ejaculation), seriously? Same things are repeated over and over, in the name of stream of conscience. And, it is not a first rate stream of conscience either. He keeps on talking about his urge to kick his daughter at her ankles. At the seventh time, I got fed up and wanted to shout, "If you wanna kick the shit outta her, please go ahead and get over it, just don't talk about it again". Imagine 10,000 Dilbert comic strips stacked up continuously, sans sketches. Juxtapose them with a mediocre soap opera. Thats what this novel is.
I don't recommend this book even if you are interested in a satire about 'American Middle class Consumerism', you are better off with Sam Mendes' 2 hours flick "American Beauty".
June 24, 2016
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 realilty. 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.’
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 realilty. 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.’
September 7, 2020
Doing a Heller read this year. Catch-22 is obviously an outstanding book. First book or otherwise. A terrific achievement. Something Happened blew my mind. Can you imagine the conversation? “So, Mr. Heller, what are you planning to write next? Your first book was such a success! What are you thinking?” Here comes Bob Slocum, easily one of the more despicable characters in American fiction. Just a terrible dude. What made this great is Joseph Heller telling the world that’s ok to write people in disgust and “good” characters don’t necessarily equal great literature. He’s almost writing this as a screw-you to Updike and Mailer and Roth (all admittedly, I do like). Male writers writing about maleness starring crappy males.
It’s so much more than that. While I don’t feel any empathy for Bob Slocum I do think this is some outstanding writing. I don’t want to be friends with this lonesome loser but I did want to keep reading about him. 500+ pages of him and his job and his family and his coworkers and...
I have a couple more Joseph Heller books on the TBR pile. I’m glad I got to this one. Try and give it a shot. Good writing is good writing. Regardless the characters.
It’s so much more than that. While I don’t feel any empathy for Bob Slocum I do think this is some outstanding writing. I don’t want to be friends with this lonesome loser but I did want to keep reading about him. 500+ pages of him and his job and his family and his coworkers and...
I have a couple more Joseph Heller books on the TBR pile. I’m glad I got to this one. Try and give it a shot. Good writing is good writing. Regardless the characters.
June 25, 2023
A difficult book to like, yet unique and compelling. Ironically, almost nothing happens for 500 pages, there is no plot. Instead it is a stream of consciousness inside the head of Bob Slocum. It's not a nice head to be inside, he is inwardly not a nice man, yet, like so many, outwardly presents a 'normal' family life. It would be interesting to see how many readers, men especially, would admit to identifying with some of his baser attitudes that remain taboo and hidden to our inner lives. Not an easily read, but a worthwhile one.
November 21, 2018
The storyline reminds me of a story I heard about Joseph Heller, known more for the modern classic Catch-22.He was at a cocktail party in Connecticut and someone pointed out a hedge fund manager and remarked that, "He makes more in a year than you ever made for writing Catch-22."
Heller replied, "Yeah, but I have something he'll never have."
His host said, "Really? What's that?"
"Enough."
January 29, 2018
A truly excellent novel from the author of Catch 22. Written with the same satiric style, this novel follows the rather tedious life of Bob Slocum. He is an office worker, who loves office politics and dislikes three quarters of his immediate family members. Nothing much happens until the end of this 600 page novel, and we simply listen to Slocum's monologue about his life.
He's not meant to be likeable (although I did find his dry humour hilarious in parts). He is a rambling middle age man who is prone to rambling and repeating himself. There sexism is rife, and there is casual racism abounds. The book is partially a product of its time but most of the characters are just awful people.
He's not meant to be likeable (although I did find his dry humour hilarious in parts). He is a rambling middle age man who is prone to rambling and repeating himself. There sexism is rife, and there is casual racism abounds. The book is partially a product of its time but most of the characters are just awful people.
September 14, 2008
This is the sad story about Bob Slocum: business man, husband and father. Written in 1st person, largely inside the mind of Slocum, we see true unhappiness as he pines for a better career, has unsatisfying affairs with secretaries and office workers, and constantly wishes for a better family and better life. The drive of this tell-all confessional of Slocum's, is the curiosity as to which, of all his unhappy situations, will be the most destructive. I thought, as I neared the end, that Heller might not give us one single incident, but he does, and it's a good one. Something Happened is satirical, witty, tragic and absolutely a book worth reading.
November 15, 2020
I don't get the low rating for this book. It's a masterpiece of the highest literary calibre. Perhaps it cuts too close to the bone for some people.
December 29, 2019
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.
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.
January 10, 2013
In my opinion, this is Joseph Heller’s best novel, bar none.
Something Happened is Mr. Heller’s second novel, published in 1974 and is thirteen years after his great first novel, Catch-22.
The protagonist Bob Slocum, narrates the story in his stream of consciousness about his family, his childhood, and sexual escapades. The novel is pretty thick that you might have second thoughts about reading it. There are moments in the book where i found myself confuse on what’s happening (and it’s overly repeated narrations) but the novel is often not in it’s chronological order ranging from his past experiences to his present ones so it goes back where it takes off. Jumbled, but you’ll get the hang of it. The main character is your average opinionated and bully-typed so i can’t blame him for his rants and revenges. And with this, I don’t mind him being stubborn. What struck me most about the novel is it’s ability to make me feel the background of every scene without telling it in detail. I smell the dust on the basement and opens the rusty file cabinet. Old paper clips' rust on paper, blonde and brunette provocative secretaries, old plants on offices', the 'Agfa' colored world. Those things makes me feel nostalgic.
As a fan of anything melancholic, I’m glad that I decided to read this one for I found everything what I love in here. If you’re familiar with American Beauty, I guess you’ll know what I’m trying to say for I am 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, for most critics considers his Catch-22 a hard act to follow. It’s a shame that his popularity just remains on his first novel.
Yes, i guess it’s true but Something Happened has it’s own beauty that requires a second reading. They say that the power of a novel is measured after many years have come and still someone reads it. I don’t usually read books at the second time -for i have a lot to read- but if i have to pick up something (again), this would definitely be one. ^_^
Something Happened is Mr. Heller’s second novel, published in 1974 and is thirteen years after his great first novel, Catch-22.
The protagonist Bob Slocum, narrates the story in his stream of consciousness about his family, his childhood, and sexual escapades. The novel is pretty thick that you might have second thoughts about reading it. There are moments in the book where i found myself confuse on what’s happening (and it’s overly repeated narrations) but the novel is often not in it’s chronological order ranging from his past experiences to his present ones so it goes back where it takes off. Jumbled, but you’ll get the hang of it. The main character is your average opinionated and bully-typed so i can’t blame him for his rants and revenges. And with this, I don’t mind him being stubborn. What struck me most about the novel is it’s ability to make me feel the background of every scene without telling it in detail. I smell the dust on the basement and opens the rusty file cabinet. Old paper clips' rust on paper, blonde and brunette provocative secretaries, old plants on offices', the 'Agfa' colored world. Those things makes me feel nostalgic.
As a fan of anything melancholic, I’m glad that I decided to read this one for I found everything what I love in here. If you’re familiar with American Beauty, I guess you’ll know what I’m trying to say for I am 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, for most critics considers his Catch-22 a hard act to follow. It’s a shame that his popularity just remains on his first novel.
Yes, i guess it’s true but Something Happened has it’s own beauty that requires a second reading. They say that the power of a novel is measured after many years have come and still someone reads it. I don’t usually read books at the second time -for i have a lot to read- but if i have to pick up something (again), this would definitely be one. ^_^
June 28, 2010
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 .
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 .
Read
September 23, 2016One=Star because I hate Bob Slocum.
There. I feel better. Take that, Middle America!
There. I feel better. Take that, Middle America!
October 30, 2019
Cada uno de nosotros podemos identificarnos en algún aspecto con el conglomerado de vilezas que resulta ser Bob Slocum. Aquí podríamos enumerar una serie de adjetivos condenatorios sobre el personaje, pero la lista sería demasiado larga. Para resumir, diremos que Slocum ejemplifica lo insidiosamente desagradable de la naturaleza humana. Es un desasosegante retrato del mal cotidiano, ese despliegue discreto de inmoralidad que se produce en el día a día de nuestras vidas. Todo aquello que envenena el discurrir de la existencia, que inflige dolor perverso en nuestros semejantes, que dinamita el contacto sincero, que trabaja con el fin de acumular material para elevar una cordillera de nieves perpetuas, letales para la supervivencia, en cuyo haber se cuentan por miles las amputaciones por congelación.
Pese a que en ocasiones parece recular y arrepentirse, ello solo se debe a una cobardía congénita, no responde a ningún código ético. El cinismo es su divisa y gracias a él desnuda la hipocresía a la que él contribuye generosamente. Sólo en la soledad e intimidad de su cráneo es capaz de esos ejercicios de descarnado desvelamiento; una vez más el miedo hace su trabajo de contención. Quiere ser amado por todos, respetado -y temido- por todos, necesitado por todos, preservar su orgullo de manera que ninguna supuesta debilidad se haga patente. Detrás de estas ensoñaciones infantiles está, una vez más, el miedo: a ser rechazado, a ser herido, a ser confrontado y desarmado, a ser insignificante e irrelevante, a ser vencido, a sentirse vulnerable frente al otro...a vivir, en definitiva.
Se trata del perfecto hombre de negocios que salva su apariencia con solvencia, siempre adecuándose a cada situación e interlocutor, hábil en la representación de su papel y en cuyo interior bulle un desencantado discurso. Es incapaz de cambiar en ninguna dirección, aferrado a su miseria con la tozudez que alimenta un secreto orgullo de sí mismo.
El relato de su relación con las mujeres, arrinconadas en el utilitarismo más inhumano, despertará en muchos lectores una repugnancia comprensible. En este punto, Slocum entiende la masculinidad como algo primitivo y salvaje, que le sirve para deleitarse con la sensación de poder, de superioridad, de conquista continua, elementos todos que alimentan su autoestima. Colecciona mujeres como un obsesivo filatélico, un poco por diversión, otro poco por placer, siempre con la leve desidia de quien conoce de antemano el resultado de sus iniciativas. Su presa suele ser joven, ingenua, indiferente a los atributos físicos que la hacen tan llamativa para el depredador, fácil de embaucar por el trabajado discurso y artificial encanto de un Don Juan; o una prostituta, caso de que la ocasión lo requiera; o una amante estable con la que roza el equilibrio. Su voracidad es compulsiva, el sexo resulta un refugio momentáneo en el que diluir la subjetividad y relajar la tensión del deber.
Pero no solo Slocum está sumido en la decadencia. El resto de su familia, como por contagio o mimetismo, sufre un proceso degenerativo que trata de retratar la familia media moderna, en la que la incomunicación es crónica, por mucho que se hable, y donde los vínculos resultan ataduras dolorosas sumidas en dinámicas sádicas y masoquistas. Los años caen como plomo sobre las relaciones familiares y un nihilismo cínico se instala entre los miembros, generando incomprensión y la imposibilidad crónica de conexión, como si el amor se hubiera evaporado y al hacerlo descubriera un paisaje desértico, estéril. Su hijo es el objeto de sus desvelos porque ve en él una versión de sí mismo. Hace todo lo posible para que la criatura esté a la altura, anulando con su actitud la auténtica personalidad del niño, que termina por ser víctima de una parálisis incapacitante. Lo está convirtiendo en una réplica de sí mismo que orbita a su alrededor incapaz de forjar una voluntad propia y confiada.
Slocum tiene el mérito de empuñar con valentía el escalpelo y proceder a diseccionar su vida y la de su familia, sin dejar de lado ningún aspecto. En las páginas de su monólogo está el coraje que falta en su vida, el arrojo para explorar las fosas sépticas describiendo fielmente lo que allí fermenta. Queda el regusto de alguien que se empeña en sabotear continuamente lo que de bueno hay en él, sin ser capaz de dar una razón para ello. Slocum es un farsante a tiempo completo. No sabe quién es y nunca lo ha sabido. Parece no tener sustancia alguna ni entidad propia.
Al terminar la historia de Slocum y su familia nos planteamos la cuestión de si la sociedad actual y sus condiciones de vida son la causa de este fenómeno de feria que a todos nos interpela. Si este ecosistema en el que transcurre nuestra vida potencia los nutrientes necesarios para que germine este tipo particular de individuo y de familia. Si la presión de las exigencias sociales sobre ciertos caracteres termina por ser demasiada, disolviendo por completo a la persona, convertida a la fuerza en modelo de todo lo que se supone que debe ser, constreñido para siempre en el molde de las expectativas ambientales.
Pese a que en ocasiones parece recular y arrepentirse, ello solo se debe a una cobardía congénita, no responde a ningún código ético. El cinismo es su divisa y gracias a él desnuda la hipocresía a la que él contribuye generosamente. Sólo en la soledad e intimidad de su cráneo es capaz de esos ejercicios de descarnado desvelamiento; una vez más el miedo hace su trabajo de contención. Quiere ser amado por todos, respetado -y temido- por todos, necesitado por todos, preservar su orgullo de manera que ninguna supuesta debilidad se haga patente. Detrás de estas ensoñaciones infantiles está, una vez más, el miedo: a ser rechazado, a ser herido, a ser confrontado y desarmado, a ser insignificante e irrelevante, a ser vencido, a sentirse vulnerable frente al otro...a vivir, en definitiva.
Se trata del perfecto hombre de negocios que salva su apariencia con solvencia, siempre adecuándose a cada situación e interlocutor, hábil en la representación de su papel y en cuyo interior bulle un desencantado discurso. Es incapaz de cambiar en ninguna dirección, aferrado a su miseria con la tozudez que alimenta un secreto orgullo de sí mismo.
El relato de su relación con las mujeres, arrinconadas en el utilitarismo más inhumano, despertará en muchos lectores una repugnancia comprensible. En este punto, Slocum entiende la masculinidad como algo primitivo y salvaje, que le sirve para deleitarse con la sensación de poder, de superioridad, de conquista continua, elementos todos que alimentan su autoestima. Colecciona mujeres como un obsesivo filatélico, un poco por diversión, otro poco por placer, siempre con la leve desidia de quien conoce de antemano el resultado de sus iniciativas. Su presa suele ser joven, ingenua, indiferente a los atributos físicos que la hacen tan llamativa para el depredador, fácil de embaucar por el trabajado discurso y artificial encanto de un Don Juan; o una prostituta, caso de que la ocasión lo requiera; o una amante estable con la que roza el equilibrio. Su voracidad es compulsiva, el sexo resulta un refugio momentáneo en el que diluir la subjetividad y relajar la tensión del deber.
Pero no solo Slocum está sumido en la decadencia. El resto de su familia, como por contagio o mimetismo, sufre un proceso degenerativo que trata de retratar la familia media moderna, en la que la incomunicación es crónica, por mucho que se hable, y donde los vínculos resultan ataduras dolorosas sumidas en dinámicas sádicas y masoquistas. Los años caen como plomo sobre las relaciones familiares y un nihilismo cínico se instala entre los miembros, generando incomprensión y la imposibilidad crónica de conexión, como si el amor se hubiera evaporado y al hacerlo descubriera un paisaje desértico, estéril. Su hijo es el objeto de sus desvelos porque ve en él una versión de sí mismo. Hace todo lo posible para que la criatura esté a la altura, anulando con su actitud la auténtica personalidad del niño, que termina por ser víctima de una parálisis incapacitante. Lo está convirtiendo en una réplica de sí mismo que orbita a su alrededor incapaz de forjar una voluntad propia y confiada.
Slocum tiene el mérito de empuñar con valentía el escalpelo y proceder a diseccionar su vida y la de su familia, sin dejar de lado ningún aspecto. En las páginas de su monólogo está el coraje que falta en su vida, el arrojo para explorar las fosas sépticas describiendo fielmente lo que allí fermenta. Queda el regusto de alguien que se empeña en sabotear continuamente lo que de bueno hay en él, sin ser capaz de dar una razón para ello. Slocum es un farsante a tiempo completo. No sabe quién es y nunca lo ha sabido. Parece no tener sustancia alguna ni entidad propia.
Al terminar la historia de Slocum y su familia nos planteamos la cuestión de si la sociedad actual y sus condiciones de vida son la causa de este fenómeno de feria que a todos nos interpela. Si este ecosistema en el que transcurre nuestra vida potencia los nutrientes necesarios para que germine este tipo particular de individuo y de familia. Si la presión de las exigencias sociales sobre ciertos caracteres termina por ser demasiada, disolviendo por completo a la persona, convertida a la fuerza en modelo de todo lo que se supone que debe ser, constreñido para siempre en el molde de las expectativas ambientales.
February 3, 2008
Something happened…and I still can’t figure out what it is. With Heller’s careful and passionate dialogues along with profound character development, he successfully produced his second book about nothing. There are few authors that can write an entire novel without a plot and still make it encapsulating and powerful. I take my hat off to Mr. Heller, especially when he identifies many of our empty words and selfish tendencies in our interpersonal relationships. It will scare you to read the absurdities of the nameless protagonist—he will remind you of you. But it is that cynical example that helps identify the changes we can all make in our relationships: at home and at work.
No doubt that this book was all but burned when it was first published—labeled as pornography (and I have to admit that some of the more descriptive passages had me wondering…). It is not reading for everyone, especially those sensitive to immodesty. Something Happened is a 530 page book that could be condensed to 200 pages while maintaining its correctness and brilliance. Heller must have either been compensated by the page or locked himself in his attic for way too long. (Dickens’ time is over Joseph!) But for a novel published in the 70s, it struck a chord about moral reform that few other books did at the time. Heller’s ability to describe a tortured emotional soul is way too good; it makes me wonder about his personal life. But his strategy of creating an anti-hero is his gift, rarely accomplished in literature since Russia’s Dostoevsky.
“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.” This might be too grandiose of a statement (it is on the back of the book) but it’s in the right direction.
No doubt that this book was all but burned when it was first published—labeled as pornography (and I have to admit that some of the more descriptive passages had me wondering…). It is not reading for everyone, especially those sensitive to immodesty. Something Happened is a 530 page book that could be condensed to 200 pages while maintaining its correctness and brilliance. Heller must have either been compensated by the page or locked himself in his attic for way too long. (Dickens’ time is over Joseph!) But for a novel published in the 70s, it struck a chord about moral reform that few other books did at the time. Heller’s ability to describe a tortured emotional soul is way too good; it makes me wonder about his personal life. But his strategy of creating an anti-hero is his gift, rarely accomplished in literature since Russia’s Dostoevsky.
“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.” This might be too grandiose of a statement (it is on the back of the book) but it’s in the right direction.
October 7, 2017
Hey where'd my review go?? I think it's on a different edition. Oh well.
Got through it for the third time! Read every damn word this time. I rarely got through a page without stopping to scribble down notes for the thing I'm writing—whereas I can get through legions of other books without being inspired in the slightest. My subconscious redirected me back to this book to get everything flowing in an authentic manner again. It's a bit like if you start a new diet and your stomach goes "I've had it with this shit, get a pizza in your bad self NOW!" Except artistic and benevolent in this case ;)
While it's quite simple in its premise and execution, I think slightly differently about it each time I go back. In this case that it would be a wonderfully therapeutic reading experience for anyone in the social media age. I remember thinking Slocum (slow come, impotent, aha aha) was one of literature's most repellent characters ever, the first time I read it. It's hard to maintain that disgust for a third reading and also I'd wager that everyone has thought everything he says in this book, at least once. It's a book filled exclusively with dark, dismissed thoughts. And what's surprising then is how big it is. Reading it this time I thought, "I've thought that, I've thought that, in instances that appeared to be small, but summing them all up and putting them in one place, wow are there a lot of thoughts. In which case, I should get these in check. In which case, I should realise I'm not the only one thinking them. And I should experience their cumulative damage in this book's one sitting."
Comedian Maria Bamford had persistent negative thoughts and underwent a therapeutic process known as flooding: "What they do is they have you read out loud in the present tense of your worst fear happening. You just listen to it over and over and over again." If you're anything like me, you fear the seductive influences of many different stimuli around you. Sometimes I feel like I can't get off Twitter even although I hate it! But the truth is you can wear yourself out on the things that are bad for you. There are many novels about people stuck in bad lives, but in practice I think you inevitably reach breaking points on those combinations that are just not working out for you. They become fundamentally unliveable. And we use fear as a crutch, almost, like without fear we would not be motivated. Maybe, but it does steal a lot of life's enjoyment. In Slocum's case it steals all his enjoyment. Is it physically possible that we allow our worries to detract from anything that may be pleasurable in our lives? I know it feels that way sometimes and we know the best way to conquer fears is to address them head on, and so the reading of this book is like exhausting yourself on every daily fear you've ever had. (Minus perhaps contemporary components such as social media—enter Leo ;)!!)
I know my own taste pretty well and I've cleverly coupled this reading experience with a rereading of Alain de Botton's The Course of Love, which sets off a happy marriage by stating, "There will be an affair, and they may think of killing themselves more than once."
I look around my life today, the crashes I've had this year, and I think, I have a job that is interesting for many hours a week. I get to leave it after 4pm and do my own thing. It funds my hobbies. I have many of those and I enjoy improving upon them. I have a husband with whom I occasionally have big fights, but we recover from them quicker, and do our best not to extend their animosity. Marriage is a skill and we are curious amateurs. This is what a good life looks like. It works for the most part, and I've done it long enough to see that. There's also something about the light of autumn that encourages positive reflections—it's my favourite season :D
I could write an anti-text to Something Happened with everything good I think about my own life. If Something Happened is 600 pages, anti-Something Happened would be... 610 pages. To recognise that is to understand how best to appreciate my own life. Slocum is incapable of hearing his anti-thoughts, the unplayed notes.
I should point out that I doubt this was the main reason for this book being written. A sweeping post-war statement about a certain type of man. The reasons I return to it are different though.
My contender for the Great American Novel.
Got through it for the third time! Read every damn word this time. I rarely got through a page without stopping to scribble down notes for the thing I'm writing—whereas I can get through legions of other books without being inspired in the slightest. My subconscious redirected me back to this book to get everything flowing in an authentic manner again. It's a bit like if you start a new diet and your stomach goes "I've had it with this shit, get a pizza in your bad self NOW!" Except artistic and benevolent in this case ;)
While it's quite simple in its premise and execution, I think slightly differently about it each time I go back. In this case that it would be a wonderfully therapeutic reading experience for anyone in the social media age. I remember thinking Slocum (slow come, impotent, aha aha) was one of literature's most repellent characters ever, the first time I read it. It's hard to maintain that disgust for a third reading and also I'd wager that everyone has thought everything he says in this book, at least once. It's a book filled exclusively with dark, dismissed thoughts. And what's surprising then is how big it is. Reading it this time I thought, "I've thought that, I've thought that, in instances that appeared to be small, but summing them all up and putting them in one place, wow are there a lot of thoughts. In which case, I should get these in check. In which case, I should realise I'm not the only one thinking them. And I should experience their cumulative damage in this book's one sitting."
Comedian Maria Bamford had persistent negative thoughts and underwent a therapeutic process known as flooding: "What they do is they have you read out loud in the present tense of your worst fear happening. You just listen to it over and over and over again." If you're anything like me, you fear the seductive influences of many different stimuli around you. Sometimes I feel like I can't get off Twitter even although I hate it! But the truth is you can wear yourself out on the things that are bad for you. There are many novels about people stuck in bad lives, but in practice I think you inevitably reach breaking points on those combinations that are just not working out for you. They become fundamentally unliveable. And we use fear as a crutch, almost, like without fear we would not be motivated. Maybe, but it does steal a lot of life's enjoyment. In Slocum's case it steals all his enjoyment. Is it physically possible that we allow our worries to detract from anything that may be pleasurable in our lives? I know it feels that way sometimes and we know the best way to conquer fears is to address them head on, and so the reading of this book is like exhausting yourself on every daily fear you've ever had. (Minus perhaps contemporary components such as social media—enter Leo ;)!!)
I know my own taste pretty well and I've cleverly coupled this reading experience with a rereading of Alain de Botton's The Course of Love, which sets off a happy marriage by stating, "There will be an affair, and they may think of killing themselves more than once."
I look around my life today, the crashes I've had this year, and I think, I have a job that is interesting for many hours a week. I get to leave it after 4pm and do my own thing. It funds my hobbies. I have many of those and I enjoy improving upon them. I have a husband with whom I occasionally have big fights, but we recover from them quicker, and do our best not to extend their animosity. Marriage is a skill and we are curious amateurs. This is what a good life looks like. It works for the most part, and I've done it long enough to see that. There's also something about the light of autumn that encourages positive reflections—it's my favourite season :D
I could write an anti-text to Something Happened with everything good I think about my own life. If Something Happened is 600 pages, anti-Something Happened would be... 610 pages. To recognise that is to understand how best to appreciate my own life. Slocum is incapable of hearing his anti-thoughts, the unplayed notes.
I should point out that I doubt this was the main reason for this book being written. A sweeping post-war statement about a certain type of man. The reasons I return to it are different though.
My contender for the Great American Novel.
February 21, 2021
3.5
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.
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.
March 11, 2020
There will be no spoilers in this review. But I will say that if you've ever read this entire book and talk to someone else who read the entire book you both might benefit from questioning each other about it. I am not certain whether one of the key events in it took place or not. I feel sure that Heller wants us to have a definite idea of what happened in this instance.
This novel came out in 1974. It was very well received. Kurt Vonnegut wrote 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 one of Vonnegut's best pieces of writing. The review always stuck with me, and, in the ensuing decades, I read and re-read the first forty or so pages of SOMETHING HAPPENED, always meaning to tackle the whole book at some time. I was fourteen in 1974. Almost fifty years later, having now read the novel from beginning to end, I can say it has influenced my thinking all this time.
As any cursory glance will tell the reader, this book covers ground most major mid-century American authors covered: A corporate executive has a miserable home life. John Updike, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Philip Roth and John O'Hara, all of whom modeled their ulcerated fat-cats on Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt, explored this territory with sardonic joy. Joseph Heller, on the other hand, dispensed with his famous humor and wrote a Wagnerian saga of the post-World War Two businessman. There are a handful of mirthful moments here, but unlike Heller's much-earlier, infinitely more popular CATCH-22, or his slightly later, quite obscure GOOD AS GOLD, this novel is grim throughout. This is not to say it does not depict moments of joy. An exhilarating passage about the narrator play-fighting with his son is almost valiant in its love of life. But it's like those moments in Dostoevsky's NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND showing the wretched hero catching 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. As with O'Neill, the audience or reader must be ready for clinical descriptions of despair. Heller, like O'Neill, shows a great sense of pacing. SOMETHING HAPPENED is a monumental treatment of the harrowing of the soul.
This novel came out in 1974. It was very well received. Kurt Vonnegut wrote 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 one of Vonnegut's best pieces of writing. The review always stuck with me, and, in the ensuing decades, I read and re-read the first forty or so pages of SOMETHING HAPPENED, always meaning to tackle the whole book at some time. I was fourteen in 1974. Almost fifty years later, having now read the novel from beginning to end, I can say it has influenced my thinking all this time.
As any cursory glance will tell the reader, this book covers ground most major mid-century American authors covered: A corporate executive has a miserable home life. John Updike, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Philip Roth and John O'Hara, all of whom modeled their ulcerated fat-cats on Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt, explored this territory with sardonic joy. Joseph Heller, on the other hand, dispensed with his famous humor and wrote a Wagnerian saga of the post-World War Two businessman. There are a handful of mirthful moments here, but unlike Heller's much-earlier, infinitely more popular CATCH-22, or his slightly later, quite obscure GOOD AS GOLD, this novel is grim throughout. This is not to say it does not depict moments of joy. An exhilarating passage about the narrator play-fighting with his son is almost valiant in its love of life. But it's like those moments in Dostoevsky's NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND showing the wretched hero catching 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. As with O'Neill, the audience or reader must be ready for clinical descriptions of despair. Heller, like O'Neill, shows a great sense of pacing. SOMETHING HAPPENED is a monumental treatment of the harrowing of the soul.
July 29, 2017
My actual rating for Joseph Heller’s follow up to Catch-22 would be 3/12 stars, given that some parts of this book were prone to ramble, repetition, and excessive sugar in some parts.
Still, after reading this book, you feel something essential is being said here about modern life, and feelings and emotions (sometimes masked as demons) are conveyed that either currently live in us or will grow in us the more we’re exposed to our relationships, our life at home, and our interactions in the workplace. So at times, the rating veered to 4 stars.
Who, for example, hasn’t at one point looked at the person you’re with, the one you’ve grown accustomed to - especially if you weren’t lucky enough to somehow escape life’s grind and all the permeating monotony and pall of indifference it casts over all of us - and said:
‘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. I think we liked each other once. I think we used to have fun; at least it seems that way now, although we were always struggling about one thing or another. I was always struggling to get her clothes off, and she was always struggling to keep them on. I remember things like that’.
There’s a duality in all of us, well captured in this passage:
‘There is this crawling animal flourishing somewhere inside me that I try to keep hidden and that strives to get out, and I don’t know what it is or whom it wishes to destroy. I know it is covered with warts. It might be me; it might also be me that it wishes to destroy’
Life is merciless, but – like the protagonist – we seek victories somehow, no matter how hollow they might ring; promotions at work, an indiscretion on the side, and hanging onto fading memories.
Still, after reading this book, you feel something essential is being said here about modern life, and feelings and emotions (sometimes masked as demons) are conveyed that either currently live in us or will grow in us the more we’re exposed to our relationships, our life at home, and our interactions in the workplace. So at times, the rating veered to 4 stars.
Who, for example, hasn’t at one point looked at the person you’re with, the one you’ve grown accustomed to - especially if you weren’t lucky enough to somehow escape life’s grind and all the permeating monotony and pall of indifference it casts over all of us - and said:
‘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. I think we liked each other once. I think we used to have fun; at least it seems that way now, although we were always struggling about one thing or another. I was always struggling to get her clothes off, and she was always struggling to keep them on. I remember things like that’.
There’s a duality in all of us, well captured in this passage:
‘There is this crawling animal flourishing somewhere inside me that I try to keep hidden and that strives to get out, and I don’t know what it is or whom it wishes to destroy. I know it is covered with warts. It might be me; it might also be me that it wishes to destroy’
Life is merciless, but – like the protagonist – we seek victories somehow, no matter how hollow they might ring; promotions at work, an indiscretion on the side, and hanging onto fading memories.
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