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.