“Something Happened” by Joseph Heller – A Normal Madness

Though much of his reputation unfortunately rests on Catch-22, Joseph Heller is an author with a knack for writing original stories, ones none have thought of or managed to put on paper with such style and eloquence. 

Each one of his books has a unique and distinctive atmosphere to it, and it’s no exception for one of his more overlooked novels, Something Happened.

In it, we are following the life of an average American man all while being privy to his thoughts and actions. Quite literally, we are observing the story from the perspective of that man’s brain. 

As some would say, he is indeed living the American dream, having a nice wife, career, children, house, and even mistresses. However, despite having achieved what he was taught to chase after, Bob Slocum (the man’s name) cannot find one thing: happiness.

Something Happened is in the category of longer, more introspective novels which focus on depicting and analyzing reality rather than creating fiction. This book definitely is not for everyone, as one needs a pretty good attention span and patience to see the story progress… however, the real goal here is character development rather than anything else. 

Heller gives us a very interesting, and dare I say, extremely realistic insight of what it has to be like in the mind of an average American man. We see the world through his eyes, and thus can only perceive it through his biases and experiences.

As far as I can see, Heller wanted to use this book as a vehicle to explore the madness which lies beneath what we like to refer to as normalcy. When we walk around in the street, we see people we would mostly describe as average or normal. 

However, little do we suspect that each and every one of them is a protagonist in his or her own book called life, with countless thoughts and emotions to keep in check. By dissecting Bob’s thoughts we can see that even though he may be average, his thoughts are in chaos and the things that pop up in his head can often be categorized as insane… just as it is for most of us in the real world.

All in all, if you want to read a slow and interesting exploration of the average citizen’s mind and what lurks beneath it, Something Happened is certainly a novel you should try, and that goes double when you consider the name of its author.

---

Joseph Heller (May 1, 1923 – December 12, 1999) Born in Brooklyn in 1923, Joseph Heller has become one of the most prominent figures in the world of literature, blessing readers with original and intelligent novels, being responsible for timeless works such as Catch-22 and Good as Gold.