Something Happened is a crushing book. It is an unrelentless, crushing book. It left a shadow in my mind. Like LSD, you either have or you haven't, and you don't know which is better.I say that this is the most memorable, and therefore the most permanent variation on a familiar theme, in that it says baldly what the other variations only implied, what the other variations tried with desperate sentimentality not to imply: That many lives, judged by the standards of the people who live them, are simply not worth living.
Good review, mk - I read this a few years back, and feel exactly the same way. It is a good book, and Heller is a gifted writer, but (unlike Catch-22) this book is absolutely no fun, at all, and I would be hesitant to recommend it. Bleak and depressing, with a pathetic and unlikable protagonist. There aren't many good things written about Hellers other works, because there ARE no other Hellers novels, by the way. This is a well-written novel, but if it weren't for Catch-22, Something Happened would be unknown, I'd wager.