Something Happened!

Something Happened by Joseph Heller

Naturally, when school ended there was a host of activities that I wanted to get back to that I hadn’t had time for in the middle of the year (i.e. blogging, ha ha). Some of these I didn’t give much thought to until cleaning out my room, like oil painting and drawing. Others, like writing fiction and developing music video concepts for songs I like had never been off my mind. Naturally, reading more fiction to prevent my imagination from shriveling up was in short order, and fortunately a new used book shop had opened on Newbury Street.

There is something about a physical book, in particular a used one, that cannot be replaced by an e-reader. From the menial (yet satisfying)-turning a page, the smell of the book (hmm VOCs) to the meaningful-no worries if you spill something on a book (in fact a well-worn book is just as attractive as a brand-new one, although a partially-worn book is not attractive) and no worries if you get sand in the book while you’re at the beach. Really no worries about abusing the book at all. Then there are the more emotional reasons-reading a used book is like sharing a secret. Seeing all those date stamps on a library book has such a romance to it. And perhaps e-readers will expand what people read by increasing immediate access to multiple titles and being able to create suggestions and share recommendations, but you’ll also never find yourself browsing the shelves and suddenly picking up an interesting new book (then again maybe you’ll also be less inclined to judge the book by its cover). Anyway, enough on how much I love used books. Still, I am looking for advice on getting a wifi-enabled e-reader or tablet if anyone has recommendations (but it’s hard to compare to the $99 HP TouchPad deal that just happened, and that I just missed).

Something Happened, to put it short, is a book about a mid-life crisis, written before such a concept was cliché. And it strikes surprisingly close to home, as it doesn’t seek to exaggerate some sort of desperate state of upper-middle class America in the way some later novels do. It is Heller’s second novel, written after Catch-22, and told in the first person (the narration often punctuated with asides and onomatopoeia such as the above ‘ha ha’).. The style is clearly Heller, with just enough references to drugs and sex to remain current, and a clear penchant for irony that Heller indulges far too often. My only thought was, “just because you said something ironic or oxymoronic it doesn’t mean it was insightful.” It is after all a work of fiction, and writers can say whatever they want.

The novel has far more strengths than flaws, however, and ultimately proves itself as the more honest and insightful grandfather to Heller’s contemporaries. From the moments of insight into adults that act like children to the revelations that perhaps we really just are the same children on the inside that we once were on the outside. I'm not done yet, and based on the title of the final chapter there might be a twist.