I have read
Something Happened by Joseph Heller three times. It was the second novel by the author of
Catch 22. The first was a novel of army and war life, the second a novel of office and family life. It feels closer to my own life than any other novel I have read. However, I don't think I can recommend it, except to keen readers of novels, because it has its faults. Heller was rather repetitious and wordy (he got worse later) and the novel is not exactly eventful.
The first-person narrator works in the office of a great corporation. We are not told what it does or makes or sells, it just is. He is a success. He writes about the men higher in the company who he has to please. He writes with contempt and guilt about the man who was made a failure by his success. He
is a success - so why does he feel so unsuccessful inside? Something happened, something went wrong in his life, but what, and when?
He is obsessed with the memory of the first office where he worked, a small company, when he was just a lad. He is still entranced by the office tease, a sexy, nervous girl called Virginia, who always used to say, "Virgin for short, but not for long!" Years later, he still can't see that she was a nut, even though he knows that she killed herself not long after he left the company. He knows this because he has phoned the company – one person is still working there from his period. In the phone call, he did not say who he was: pretending to be someone else, he asked about himself.
He writes about his wife, who bores him now, both in bed and out. He writes about his difficult children, his daughter who he can't love, his son who he loves too much.
And he writes about his mother:
Quote:
“Hey, look, Ma,” I could have argued with her with good reason during those sixteen months [the last period of her life, when she was very sick]. “You’re dead already, don’t you know? You died one day exactly two, four, six, eight, ten, twelve months ago right in front of my eyes, and now you’re just hanging around. I didn’t know it at the time but I felt it, and I turned away from you with a lump in my throat and sobbed, or wanted to, and grieved for you secretly for over a week because something inside me knew that you were dead and gone. You were dead but not gone. I lost my mother a while ago and keep remembering and losing her again. But you’re not her. You’re just hanging around. Now you’re just hanging around, ruining my weekends and costing me money, splotching my moods and splattering my future. You’ve been hanging around ever since. You’re depressing everybody. What do you want me to do? What are you hanging around for?”
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That short piece might give a small indication of how he could be wordy, but it shows how well he could write about, for example, emotions that we prefer not to acknowledge.