SOMETHING HAPPENED

Joseph Heller

Random House Publishing Group, Sep 7, 2011 - Fiction - 576 pages

Bob Slocum was living the American dream. He had a beautiful wife, three lovely children, a nice house...and all the mistresses he desired. He had it all -- all, that is, but happiness. Slocum was discontent. Inevitably, inexorably, his discontent deteriorated into desolation until...something happened.

Something Happened is Joseph Heller's wonderfully inventive and controversial second novel satirizing business life and American culture. The story is told as if the reader was overhearing the patter of Bob Slocum's brain -- recording what is going on at the office, as well as his fantasies and memories that complete the story of his life. The result is a novel as original and memorable as his Catch-22.

What people are saying

Review: Something Happened

User Review  - Del Herman - Goodreads

Joseph Heller's second novel (after his masterpiece "Catch-22") is a thoroughly engaging read, an insightful satire to American business and personal life in the sixties and seventies, and a portrait ...

Review: Something Happened

User Review  - Rick Bowen - Goodreads

Was convinced when I first read it that this was the most important literary work of Heller's generation (the generation BTW 30 years before mine). Ostensibly a performance piece a la Portnoy's ...

About the author

Joseph Heller was born in Brooklyn in 1923. In 1961, he published Catch-22, which became a bestseller and, in 1970, a film. He went on to write such novels as Something Happened, God Knows, Picture This, Closing Time (the sequel to Catch-22), and Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man. Heller died in December 1999.

Bibliographic information

• Title: SOMETHING HAPPENED
• Author: Joseph Heller
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2011
• ISBN: 0307803619, 9780307803610
• Length: 576 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / War & Military