Something Happened | |
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1st edition cover |
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Author(s) | Joseph Heller |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre(s) | novel |
Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
Publication date | September 1974 |
Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
ISBN | ISBN 0-394-46568-7 (hardback edition) |
OCLC Number | 902893 |
Dewey Decimal | 813/.5/4 |
LC Classification | PZ4.H47665 So PS3558.E476 |
Preceded by | Catch-22 |
Followed by | Good As Gold |
Something Happened is Joseph Heller's second novel (published in 1974, thirteen years after Catch-22). Its main character and narrator is Bob Slocum, a businessman who engages in a stream of consciousness narrative about his job, his family, his childhood, his sexual escapades, and his own psyche.
While there is an ongoing plot about Slocum preparing for a promotion at work, most of the book focuses on detailing various events from his life, ranging from early childhood to his predictions for the future, often in non-chronological order and with little if anything to connect one anecdote to the next. Near the end of the book, Slocum starts worrying about the state of his own sanity as he finds himself hallucinating or remembering events incorrectly, suggesting that some or all of the novel might be the product of his imagination, making him an unreliable narrator.
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