Joseph Heller: ‘Something Happened’

This is a classic in the best sense of the word, from the man who wrote Catch 22.

I read Something Happened (Heller’s second novel) some years ago and I read it again a few weeks ago.

It took me a while to read it this time, partly because the sentences resonated that much more with experiences I’ve had, and partly because the picture it paints of what human beings are, hit me so hard I had to keep stopping to let it subside.

There’s hardly a word wrong in the book. Every sentence is truthful to what that character might say or do or think.

On the surface it is a story of a man who works in corporate America and who either hates or fears everyone around him. He wishes he were somewhere else doing something different, but he doesn’t know what he would do and he suspects he would take himself with him and be no better anywhere else.

He two-times his wife, argues unnecessarily with his children and plans his moves at work, all the time losing himself more and more.

And something happens.

Tagged as: book, Joseph Heller, novel, Something Happened