Books: Boring from Within

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SOMETHING HAPPENED

by JOSEPH HELLER 569 pages. Knopf. $10.

What can a writer do for an encore who has already been compared—by a critic as restrained as Robert Brustein —to. the Marx Brothers, Kingsley Amis, S.J. Perelman and Al Capp? For 13 years, ever since Catch-22 became an unparalleled publishing phenomenon and a cult book all over the world, that has been Joseph Heller's problem. His new novel, only his second, was given its present title as early as 1963. As a fabled work-in-progress, it had become a legend long before publication; with each passing year its promise (and therefore its risk) seemed to grow.

Slow Motion. To announce that Something Happened is a terrific letdown is only to make the obvious comment on publicized great expectations. But how exactly does it fail? To try to answer that question is to get into certain kinds of bankruptcy that have to do not only with American lives but also with the novels that struggle to record them.

Something Happened, for instance, cannot really be read apart from Catch-22. It represents the second installment, so to speak, of Heller's War and Peace. Over ten years ago Heller explained: "The hero is the antithesis of Yossarian—20 years later." Of his Syrian-American bombardier in Catch-22 he had written: "It was a vile and muddy war, and Yossarian could have lived without it—lived forever, perhaps." Of his WASP business executive, Bob Slocum, in Something Happened, Heller might have written: It was a vile and muddy peace, and Slocum was dying of it—dying in slow motion.

With 100 little winks, grimaces and ha-has, Slocum describes (and mercilessly redescribes) himself and his life in a flat pattern of total recall. He is a reasonably handsome man in his 40s —wavy hair that is thinning, a paunch that is growing. In the office he is "cordial and considerate to just about everybody." He has "this wretched habit" of acquiring the characteristics of the last person he has been talking to—a stutter, a tic, even a limp.

In his private life, if it can be called that, Slocum is a petty tyrant presiding over the standard domain: first a New York apartment, then a Connecticut house; a plumpish but svelte wife who drinks; a contentious 15-year-old daughter; a couple of younger sons, one braindamaged; and a constantly changing succession of maids. On the whole, he feels more at home in the office: "I don't think I've ever had a good tune on a vacation. (I'm not sure I've ever had a good time anywhere.)"

Sex, like gray suits and regimental ties, is approved by the company. In his wallet Slocum carries a coded list of the names of 23 girls—the interchangeable inhabitants of his third world. Joylessly he fornicates. He finds "close relationships suffocating." He warns: "A friend in need is no friend of mine."