Something Happened
Westminster, Maryland, U.S.A. Random House Inc, 1974. First Edition, First Printing. Cloth. Fine / Near Fine in Archival Plastic. Item #5323
ISBN: 0394465687
A handsome First Edition, First Printing signed by the author and with an interesting provenance. Included in the book is a bookmark from "Kroch's & Brentano's, Inc, 29 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago 60603" that states "1st Edition Circle -- A First Edition, Autographed by the author especially for the member of The First Edition Circle." There is also a contemporaneous name and date, "Rowland Young, 11 October 1974." Kroch's & Brentano's was a bookstore in Chicago. Carl A. Kroch took over the bookstore upon his father's retirement in 1952 and expanded the business to form Kroch's & Brentano's that grew to 20 stores. The company closed in 1995 when Kroch retired and. "Rowland Young" is believed to be Rowland Lee Young, a scholarly writer and editor at the American Bar Association for 31 years. He died in 2001 at the age of 78 in Glendale, Arizona, near where this book was purchased. The date Mr. Young wrote on the front endpaper, "11 October 1974" must have been very close to the release date of the book; the dustjacket date is "10/74." The book is black cloth with an attractive red topstain and is in fine condition. The dustjacket is complete and in fine condition but for light touches of wear on the spine ends. A wonderful copy.
A novel not for the faint of heart.
Considered Joseph Heller’s “forgotten novel” and written over a decade after “Catch -22,” Heller’s “Something Happened” seemed to puzzle the reading public, who noted it as a “difficult” novel with a departure in style and topic from the novel that brought him fame.
Rumor has it that Heller hid copies of the working manuscript in a variety of nooks and crannies, just in case his home burned down, and was so determined that the novel’s draft make it to his agent that he had his daughter accompany him on the delivery trip as back-up should he die on the way.
Kurt Vonnegut himself reviewed the book for “The New York Times” on October 6th, 1974, stating that, in comparison to Heller’s first title, “Something Happened” shows that: “Life is a whole lot smaller and cheaper in this second book. It has shrunk to the size of a grave, almost.
Mark Twain is said to have felt that his existence was all pretty much downhill from his adventures as a Mississippi riverboat pilot. Mr. Heller's two novels, when considered in sequence, might be taken as a similar statement about an entire white, middle-class generation of American males, my generation, Mr. Heller's generation, Herman Wouk's generation, Norman Mailer's generation, Irwin Shaw's generation, Vance Bourjaily's generation, James Jones's generation, and on and on--that for them everything has been downhill since World War II, as absurd and bloody as it often was.
Both books are full of excellent jokes, but neither one is funny. Taken together, they tell a tale of pain and disappointments experienced by mediocre men of good will… Is this book any good? Yes. It is splendidly put together and hypnotic to read. It is as clear and hard-edged as a cut diamond. Mr. Heller's concentration and patience are so evident on every page that one can only say that "Something Happened" is at all points precisely what he hoped it would be… "Something Happened" is so astonishingly pessimistic, in fact, that it can be called a daring experiment. Depictions of utter hopelessness in literature have been acceptable up to now only in small dose, in short-story form, as in Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis," Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," or John D. MacDonald's "The Hangover," to name a treasured few. As far as I know, though, Joseph Heller is the first major American writer to deal with unrelieved misery at novel length… The uneasiness which many people will feel about liking "Something Happened" has roots which are deep. It is no casual thing to swallow a book by Joseph Heller, for he is, whether he intends to be or not, a maker of myths. (One way to do this, surely, is to be the final and most brilliant teller of an oft-told tale.) "Catch-22" is now the dominant myth about Americans in the war against fascism.
"Something Happened," if swallowed, could become the dominant myth about the middle- class veterans who came home from that war to become heads of nuclear families. The proposed myth has it that those families were pathetically vulnerable and suffocating. It says that the heads of them commonly took jobs which were vaguely dishonorable or at least stultifying, in order to make as much money as they could for their little families, and they used that money in futile attempts to buy safety and happiness. The proposed myth says that they lost their dignity and their will to live in the process.
It says they are hideously tired now…We keep reading this overly long book, even though there is no rise and fall in passion and language, because it is structured as a suspense novel. The puzzle which seduces us is this one: Which of several possible tragedies will result from so much unhappiness? The author picks a good one."
Price: $175.00 other currencies