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Something Happened ReviewThe title of this book by Joseph Heller is "Something Happened." Another title could have been "Life: The Book." This is one of the very, very few books I know that accurately and realistically portrays real life - life as it actually is - warts and all. The book I read immediately before this one was James Joyce's much-touted masterwork, Ulysses. Now, that book can, and has been, described the same way by many, and it is, in many ways, the very last word on realism. That said, it has much in common with this book, and Something Happened is, in many ways, the better book. Classicists and romanticists may well prefer Joyce's novel and consider it downright blasphemy to have it compared with this modern masterwork, but the fact is, this is a very good and much underrated book, and will probably be preferred by post-modernists and existentialists over Ulysses. The book is very long - nearly 600 pages - and does have a tendency to ramble at times - often seemingly without a point. It's written in the style of a first-person narrative, and this is one of the few books where you truly get into the head of the main character. That is the main difference between this book and Ulysses: unlike the latter work, which follows the adventures of three separate characters as they follow parallel courses and sometimes intertwine, Something Happened consists entirely of one character's thoughts and actions. And, since it deals only with other people insofar as they relate to him, it can get a bit solipsistic at times - however, that said, Heller's intention with this book (I think) was to accurately and realistically describe the thoughts in the head of a fairly normal, everyday American male. He does a rather remarkable job of this. The only real criticism of the book I can make is that it does tend to repeat itself quite a lot at times: certain situations are mentioned again and again with little or no variation, often seemingly for no reason - but, as anyone knows, this is, indeed, how most people's minds do work. The main character, Bob Slocum, is not a perfect person - but he is a REAL person. This is not another cardboard cutout character that we see all too many of: this is a real living, breathing flesh and blood character, warts and all - HUMAN, just like us. Many of the situations he finds himself in - both in the workplace and domestically - as well as the thoughts and emotions he finds himself experiencing, will no doubt hit home with a great many readers. Although Heller more than likely constructed Slocum to portray a certain generation of people - the anguished, confused veterans of the war - he is applicable to the Average Joe: he's the true Everyman. Heller seeks, in this book, to answer the real question: What, just what, DID happen, to that great, blinding glow of post-war euphoria? Or, as Roger Waters put it, "Whatever happened to the post-war dream?" Where's the American Dream? Where's all the sun and rainbows? WHAT HAPPENED? Something did.
I highly reccommend this book. It is a masterpiece, and criminally underrated. It's a shame that Heller's reputation rests almost solely upon Catch-22, when he has so many other notable and distinct works, such as this one. As another reviewer pointed out, I believe this book was overlooked by Modern Library when they made their list of the Top 100 Books of the 20th Century: it truly belongs on it. Don't make the mistake of overlooking it.
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