Something Happened

Joseph Heller's second novel, Something Happened, appearing thirteen years after the publishing sensation Catch-22, turns the focus of the same jaundiced eye from life in the military to the work and home life of Corporate Man living the American Dream. Something Happened is much darker than its more highly touted predecessor. While Catch-22 is a frenetically paced book with an omniscient narrator, the bulk of Something Happened consists of the deep, often repetitive, internal monologue of the narrator, Bob Slocum, who laments the passage of time, the departure of old friends and opportunities, the futility of his career, the stagnation of his marriage, and the impossibility of being a good parent. The book has a fair amount of humor: Slocum's character studies of those around him are conducted with sadistic glee, his self-analysis is wry and rueful, and his absurdist juxtapositions at times approach those of the narrator of Catch-22; but its predecessor's darkest moments set the emotional tone for most of the work.

Literary significance & criticism

Something Happened did not match its predecessor's level of commercial success, though it was well-regarded by critics and is considered Heller's best by Kurt Vonnegut. In its moments of humor among unsparing honest, despairing stretches of self-evaluation, it recalls the great works of Anton Chekhov, and prefigures much later works such as the film American Beauty, but without allowing the reader/viewer ironic emotional distance.

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Something Happened