WARNING: If you haven't read SOMETHING
HAPPENED and don't know about its shock ending---if you've decided
you WANT to read the book and don't want to know how it ends----back
off now, because I'll be talking extensively about the ending here.
In short: SPOILER ALERT!!!!!
***
Joseph Heller's literary career
stands tall on one incredibly formidable foundation: CATCH-22. And
that's one helluva foundation, folks-----yes, I admit it, CATCH-22 is
one of my favorite novels of all time---from young adulthood up to
today, this batshit crazy, ultra-dark comedy has informed most of my
views on war, business, authority, bureaucracy, and just about all
systems of control. Plenty has been said about CATCH-22 and I can
never say enough.....but I'm not here to talk about that today.
After a long lunchtime
discussion with my wife last week about our capitalist system and the
encouragements it puts on us as a society I thought again about
Heller's oft-overlooked second novel. It's time to talk about
SOMETHING HAPPENED.
Bob Slocum's got problems; he's
got a lot of problems. He's got workplace problems, marital problems,
parenting problems and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
He's a paranoid cog vying for
a leg up in the corporate machine he works in....most of the
colleagues he fears and hates yet seeks to impress are color-coded by
name---Black, White, Brown, Green...one co-worker on his way out the
door is handicapped and Slocum fantasizes endlessly about kicking his
weak leg. He is presumably being groomed to replace this fellow, and
he can almost taste it.
He's in a miserable, loveless marriage,
his teenage daughter is rebelling and his oldest son is having
problems at school. Turns out the kid doesn't play well with others.
(“I try to give him a will to win,” complains the kid's gym coach
in a parent-teacher conference. “He don't have one. When he's ahead
in one of the relay races, do you know what he does? He starts
laughing. He does that. And then he slows down and waits for the
other guys to catch up. Can you imagine?”) His younger son, Derek
(the only family member to whom Slocum actually attributes a name) is
ironically the least human of the bunch---obviously severely
handicapped (physically, mentally---no doubt both) and the Slocums
keep him locked away from the world. Poor Bob frets endlessly about
Derek----what are they going to do with him? Should they
institutionalize him?
Slocum also moons endlessly
about the one who got away, Virginia Markowitz, his long ago office
crush, who committed suicide years before. Bob plays long, tortured,
drain circling games of What If.
Bob Slocum is one miserable
sonofabitch, and he's not especially likeable.
And laying all these cards on
the table, how do I begin to sing the praises of this long,
solipsistic book that slogs on and on inside the head of its own
loathsome (and self-loathing) protagonist while he spends page after
page navel-gazing and wallowing in his own private pity party with no
discernible end in sight?
SOMETHING HAPPENED is one of my
favorite books, and that's no mean feat when you consider the fact
that it's over 500 pages long, meanders along in lugubrious fashion
and basically has NO PLOT WHATSOEVER....
Maybe it's that the slow-shudder
depressiveness played so well into my own back in my 20s when I first
read it, but this much I tend to doubt---I never had aspirations to
be another ant in the hill and I think I always had more going on in
me as far as ideals and attitude. Plus, I could think of several
other people I turned on to the book, and they didn't really match
the Bob Slocum mindset either. Maybe, is it hangs in the light of
cinematic favorites like “Taxi Driver”, deep down we're just
maladjusts blundering through the darkness, trying to find our
way----and maybe we're all pulled instinctively to rubberneck at a
downward spiral.
Or sudden salvation.
Or something possibly worse.
Regardless, we watch Bob
Slocum's slow, morbid dissolution as his brain spins in circles,
contemplating what it was that brought him to this point in his
life---what, indeed, happened? He wonders as we're swallowed by a
deep crawl into nothing-----until, very abruptly, the titular
“SOMETHING”---happens.
And....SPOILER ALERT.
***
Toward the very end of the
second-to-last chapter, Slocum's mooning obsessively about the
growing rift between himself and his little boy when there's a
commotion and he witnesses the kid pinned underneath a car which has
crashed into a storefront. In a blue panic, Bob runs to his boy,
who's bloodied and screaming, and holds him tight.
“I have to do something,”
Heller, as Slocum, writes. “I hug his face deeper into the crook of
my shoulder. I hug him tightly with both my arms. I squeeze.”
Later at the hospital, Bob
weeps copiously as the boy is pronounced dead.
In the last chapter, things take
a drastic and unexpected turn---after the loss of his son, it's
almost as if Slocum's entire life falls neatly into place. Despite
the trauma and grief, he....WAITAMINNIT.
BACK IT UP FOR A SEC.
“ 'Death,' says the doctor,
'was due to asphyxiation. The boy was smothered. He had superficial
lacerations of the scalp and face, a bruised hip, a deep cut on his
arm. That was all. Even his spleen was intact.' “
HE
KILLED HIS KID!!!!! HE KILLED HIS KID!!!! HOLY BLOODY FUCKBALLS, HE
SUFFOCATED HIS OWN KID!!!!!!!!!
There's a telling point toward
the end of the second-to-last chapter, just prior to this abrupt
climax, where Heller, as Slocum, writes, “I want my little boy back
too.
I don't want to lose him.
I do.”
That passage can read one of
two ways. You can read it, “I don't want to lose my boy but I lose
him anyway”, or you can read it as, “I don't want to lose my
boy, but I do want to lose him.”
Things work out perfect for Bob
Slocum after he performs a sort of “self-exorcism”------by
smothering his son, who refuses to accept the all-American sacrament
of competition, he kills the last remnant of human decency within
himself. At that point, he is officially ready to climb the ladder.
GODDAMN. GODDAMN, GODDAMN!!!!!
Do you see what I'm saying, here?
His marital problems even out,
he and his wife decide (at least temporarily) to refrain from sending
Derek off to a home and at work he's able to advance with flying
colors and everyone is “pleased with the way I've taken command”.
And Heller's telling us,
there's something wrong with this picture.
NO DIGGITY.
At the end of the day, Slocum
has to murder that one sliver of hope and goodness within
himself----that one fly in the ointment of almighty capitalism---the
“problem child” in his ethical makeup, in order to advance in
life. That's just a trifle disturbing!
You can grab the brass ring if
you want it. What are you willing to lose in the process?
YANKEE POT
ROAST #2000: BAD NEWS FOR MY FELLOW NEWZIES
Most people who know me know that
I work in the News Industry. Being a genuine weirdo and also someone
who probably leans further to the left than the average----well, the
average STADIUM full of people, I have my struggles in that setting.
And no one bristles harder than my co-workers when they hear the
term, “fake news” thrown around. I don't really blame them,
either. The people I work with every day at a little local affiliate
are serious about what they're doing and I watch them strive hard
every day to get stories right. My beef is never with them.
The Big Boys, I got issues with.
A lot of issues.
A Monmouth University Poll that
was released last month casts a pall over our humble profession that
should have my fellow newsies very concerned. And sorry, guys----but
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
Thanks, off the top, to Kyle
Kulinski and his YouTube channel, SECULAR TALK, where I originally
heard about the poll.
77 % say major news outlets
report “Fake News”, the poll says. That's a grabber of a
headline---both alarming and yet, at the same time, easy for the
average cosmopolitan elitist to write off. Sure, they might say,
that's an alarming trend, but it's all knuckle-dragging Trumpazoids
who follow their leader's every edict, pronouncement and outrageous
lie, right?
Uh....sorry, but, no.
The poll in question is squarely
bipartisan...
25 per cent of respondents
define “Fake News” as false information that is designed to
mislead----and that falls pretty well into the realm of how former
President Barack Obama defined it when he decried the phenomenon in
the press----it's what first popularized the term and we could look
at that definition as the “According to Hoyle” definition.
A lot of people, particularly
liberals, rallied behind Obama when he made these statements. I
wasn't one of them, for reasons that should soon become obvious.
When you throw the term, “Fake
News”, out there, it's not your term anymore----it belongs to
everyone----and it invites all-and-sundry to fix whatever definition
they want on the phrase.
Hence, Fox News grab it and use
it however they want. Hence, Donald Trump seizes it and does whatever
he wants. My liberal friends might wring their hands and cry “foul”
over this, but Obama opened that door. Sorry----he just did. And if
you didn't see that coming, well, there are plenty of eye doctors you
can visit.
A second, salient point in the
poll shows that sixty-five per cent in the poll say that Fake News
includes what is covered and what is not covered. Story selection
equals bias. In other words, not just lying by commission, but lying
by O-mission.
And adherents to the original
point might be disturbed by that deviation from Obama's definition,
but you know what, kids?
I wholeheartedly AGREE with
them. Bias---particularly ESTABLISHMENT bias----***IS*** fake news.
Throw a fit and cry all you want. Call me a Russia-Bot. I don't give
a rat's ass.
A third point is that forty-two
per cent of respondents believe major mainstream news outlets
disseminate false information in order to push a political agenda.
Eighty-three per cent believe outside groups----major interest groups
and lobbies---plant propaganda.
Again----I agree.
And as I said earlier----reponses
to this poll are more or less across the board. These definitions are
supported by 89 % of Republicans, 82 % of independents and 61 % of
Democrats.
Be afraid. You should be.
So should our leaders.
As Kulinski none-too-subtlely
puts it, “we live in an age of constant bullshit”, and everyone
sees through it except for those slinging it. Don't forget to duck,
pilgrim.
******
Speaking of bullshit, have you
heard about notable partisan hack Joy Reid and her homophobia
problem? Pull up a chair, 'cause it's a good one...apparently Ms.
Reid recently got called out for some old blogs she wrote that were
homo-and-transphobic in nature. As a stalwart of pseudo-liberal
MSNBC, Joy can't be havin' that kind of a sociopolitical albatross
around her neck....not she who has railed on identity politics over
class consciousness----it just doesn't look good, y'know?
So what does she do? Does she
swallow her pride and admit she was wrong? Nope----she obfuscates and
blames HACKERS. Yep----she was claiming that she'd been hacked, the
old blog posts weren't hers----except that they were. Held up to
scrutiny for obvious falsehoods, Reid backpedaled, offered half-assed
apologies and maintains that she didn't remember writing those blogs
because it's so far away from who she is today that she didn't even
recognize the words as her own.
And if you believe that, have I
got a bridge for you.
TRUE CONFESSION TIME: Once upon
a long ago time, your humble narrator was homophobic. Yep---no joke.
A lot of it was based in my religious upbringing and a lot of it was
just a defense mechanism within the teenage pecking order----but when
I was a kid I threw the term, “faggot”, around with the best of
'em. Of course, I had no clue a lot of the kids I palled around with
were gay (and probably deserved some kind of spirit award for kindly
putting up with MY bullshit)---sure, the kids we all hated called
them faggots, but hey! Everyone you didn't like was a faggot back
then. Youth in the '70s.
How I eventually broke free of
that kind of thinking as an adult was getting to know REAL GAY PEOPLE
(as opposed to their being some abstract spoken about by demagogues)
and understanding that they were just regular people like everyone
else.
Okay, so I don't like Reid
anyway, but if she'd just come out and said, “yeah, that was me
back then but it's not me, now, I'm sorry”, it would have been no
harm/no foul. We all have stupid old shit we have to work past.
But hackers had a time machine,
and they went back to the year whatever and posted incriminating
blogs, huh? Kinda reminds me of the Democratic Establishment she
gives her fealty to. Embarrassed by the fact that you got caught
rigging your own primary? Blame it on “The Russians”.
See? They even tell similar
lies!
********
As long as I'm on my yankee pot
roast high horse, that whole annual White House Correspondents'
Circle Jerk----er, dinner---happened as I was working on this blog
and I got to YouTube back (because other than this the annual affair
doesn't interest me much at all---) and see the meteoric rise of
Michelle Wolf as the great comic mind of this generation. She
handily and savagely ripped the Trump Administration, the Democrats
(“you guys don't do....ANYTHING!”) and the entire noxious,
gladhanding, self-fellating nature of these dinners and the
establishment press itself. The whole monologue was pretty spot-on
and the press's flailing display of pearl clutching and loud
castigation afterwards was a perfect example of how Wolf was right
about absolutely EVERYTHING SHE SAID. She particularly nailed the
press's pathetic obsession with decorum (last refuge of the
disingenuous) and the hypocritical, self-sabotaging culture of
“access journalism” which is no good way to run a fourth
estate...their collective umbrage shows their true mettle and marks
them as an institution that essentially needs to be thrown into a
fire.
THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:
The S.E. Apocalypse Krew-Rise
Blue Oyster Cult-Secret Treaties
Blue Oyster Cult-Spectres
THE FUTURE (mix CD)
NEXT TIME: For all you geniuses who
seem to go out of your way looking for something to find offensive,
I've got a special gift for everyone.
