Something Happened

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.

Something Happened has frequently been criticized as overlong, rambling, and deeply unhappy. These sentiments are echoed in a review of the novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., but are balanced with praise for the novel's prose and the meticulous patience Heller took in the creation of the novel. Based on this, Something Happened has garnered a small base of fans, with some characterizing it as "The best book you've never read".

Something Happened (film)

Something Happened (Swedish: Någonting har hänt) is a Swedish film directed by Roy Andersson. The film was conceived as an educational film about AIDS, but raised controversy and was withdrawn. The film claims that HIV was developed in American military laboratories, and that its well-established African origin is a cover-up conspiracy by the Americans. Today the film is regarded as a significant step in the development of the style seen in the director's later and more acclaimed films.

Production

In 1986, the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare contracted Roy Andersson to write and direct an information film about AIDS to be shown in Swedish schools and to military conscripts. At the time, Andersson had not made a film since the financially unsuccessful Giliap from 1975, and had since then mainly worked with television commercials. Before the film was finished, however, the Board asked Andersson to abandon the project. The board had seen the finished parts and questioned Andersson's sources, and were also sceptical about the overall approach and tone of the film. Andersson continued to work on the project on his own and eventually finished it.