Something Happened
by Joseph Heller
Blurb Pages:
BESTSELLER! BOOK OF THE YEAR! NOVEL OF THE DECADE!
tells the story of:
Bob Slocum, inching his way up the slippery pole to success, with all the money he needs, all the women he wants — yet longing for the one girl who has eluded him, and the life he has not lived.
* His wife, who has learned to settle for sex instead of love, and is an eager apprentice at the art of infidelity.
* His teen-age daughter, who is into doing her own thing on the far-out side of the generation gap.
* His son, who stubbornly refuses to learn to compete in the all-American way.
* His other son, whom nobody wants to talk about.
How Joseph Heller tells their story, and the shocking surprises he has in store, demonstrate once again his power in driving home human truths in a way that entertains even as it exposes the agonies and absurdities of our time.
'Joseph Heller has discovered and possessed new territories of the imagination, and he has produced a major work of fiction, one that is as distinctive of its kind as
— John W. Aldridge in
'Endlessly fascinating. Maintains Heller in the first rank of American writers. The vision we get is one of chilling recognition. What is revealed is not really the hero at all, but ourselves. Me. You. Them.'
— William Kennedy in
— Larry Swindell in the
'Riveting. with a brilliant and exquisitely prepared-for shock ending that makes everything fall into place. you have to take it seriously!'
— Mary Ellin Barrett in
'It will be read and read and read!'
—
'One approaches it with awe. It leads you on hypnotically. Where
— Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in
'It's an extraordinary revelation. enriched by some of the best dialogue written in English today.'
— Don Rose in the
'Do you dare allow a book to bruise you like a kicked apple? If so, you will — no, you must — read Joseph Heller's
—
I get the willies
I get the willies when I see closed doors. Even at work, where I am doing so well now, the sight of a closed door is sometimes enough to make me dread that something horrible is happening behind it, something that is going to affect me adversely; if I am tired and dejected from a night of lies or booze or sex or just plain nerves and insomnia, I can almost smell the disaster mounting invisibly and flooding out toward me through the frosted glass panes. My hands may perspire, and my voice may come out strange. I wonder why.
Something must have happened to me sometime.
Maybe it was the day I came home unexpectedly with a fever and a sore throat and caught my father in bed with my mother that left me with my fear of doors, my fear of opening doors and my suspicion of closed ones. Or maybe it was the knowledge that we were poor, which came to me late in childhood, that made me the way I am. Or the day my father died and left me feeling guilty and ashamed — because I thought I was the only little boy in the whole world then who had no father. Or maybe it was the realization, which came to me early, that I would never have broad shoulders and huge biceps, or be good enough, tall enough, strong enough, or brave enough to become an All-American football player or champion prizefighter, the sad, discouraging realization that no matter what it was in life I ever tried to do, there would always be somebody close by who would be able to do it much better. Or maybe it was the day I did open another door and saw my big sister standing naked, drying herself on the white-tile floor of the bathroom. She yelled at me, even though she knew she had left the door unlocked and that I had stumbled in on her by accident. I was scared.
I remember also, with amusement now, because it happened so long ago, the hot summer day I wandered into the old wooden coal shed behind our redbrick apartment building and found my big brother lying on the floor with Billy Foster's skinny kid sister, who was only my own age and even in the same class I was at school. I had gone to the shed to hammer the wheels and axles from a broken baby carriage I had picked up near a garbage can and use them on a wagon I wanted to make out of a cantaloupe crate and a long plank. I heard a faint, frantic stirring the moment I entered the dark place and felt as though I had stepped on something live. I was startled and smelled dust. I smiled with relief when I saw it was my brother lying on the floor with someone in the sooty shadows filling a far corner. I felt safe again. I said:
'Hi, Eddie. Is that you, Eddie? What are you doing, Eddie?' And he shouted:
'Get the hell out of here, you little son of a bitch!' And hurled a lump of coal.
I ducked away with a soft moan, tears filling my eyes, and fled for my life. I bolted outside into the steaming, bright sunlight in front of my house, where I scuttled back and forth helplessly on the sidewalk, wondering what in the world I had done to make my big brother so angry with me that he would swear at me like that and hurl a heavy lump of coal. I couldn't decide whether to run away or wait; I felt too guilty to escape and almost too frightened to stay and take the punishment I knew I deserved — although I didn't know for what. Powerless to decide, I hung and quivered there on the sidewalk in front of my house until the enormous wooden door of the old shed finally creaked open toward me and they both came out slowly from the yawning blackness behind. My brother walked in back of her with a smug look. He smiled when he saw me and made me feel better. It was only after I saw him smile that I noticed the girl in front of him was Billy Foster's tall and skinny kid sister, who was very good in penmanship at school but could never get more than a seventy on a spelling, geography, or arithmetic test, even though she always tried to cheat. I was surprised to see them together; it had not entered my mind that he even knew her. She walked with her eyes down and pretended not to see me. They approached slowly. Everything took a long time. She was angry and said nothing. I was silent too. My brother winked at me
