Page Four THE MICHIGAN DAILY Sunday, October 6, 1974 BOO KS WORTH THE WAIT At last, Heller's successor to Catch-22 SOMETHING HAPPENED second novel, Something Hap- by Joseph Heller. New York: pened. Alfred A. Knopf, 569 pp., $10. The approach of Something, Happened is very different ' By CHUCK MALAND from Catch-22. Instead of de- ONE OF THE ubiquitous scribing a vast array of char-' sights on college campuses acters omnisciently, pointing in the late sixties was a small out every foible and flaw, as blue paperback with the pic- in the earlier novel, Heller tells ture of a World War II plane what happened through the and the head of some air force eyes of Bob Slocum, a middlei flyer on the cover. When I aged business executive. bought my copy in 1969, Catch- Dominant in Catch-22 was a' 22 was in its twenty-seventh stinging attack on institutions; paperback printing and head- instead of telling us that war' ing for more. is hell, Heller ridiculed, exag-, Perhaps better than any other gerated, hyperbolized, lam-' novel of the decade, Catch-22 pooned and satirized until the combined an anti-war protest total effect of his black humorI with a sense that the underpin- convinced the reader that so- nings of postwar American val- ciety as Heller envisioned it ues had become unpinned, that was insane. Inecontrast, Some- we were living in an age of thing Happened is Bob S- 'crackpot realism.' Lacking cum's 'State of My Sanity' ad- any clear plot, the novel jump- dress, describing his present ed from point to point, swiping state of mind, his work, his irreverently at American types family, his lover, and his re- from the subsidized alfalfa far- actions to them all. While mer to the advertising genius, Catch-22 focused onthe nature the Ivy Leaguer to the military of institutions, Something Hap- aristocrat. After more than a pened pictures the thoughts of decade, its author, Joseph Hel- a single person caught in insti- ler, has presented us with his tutions. BOB SLOCUM himself is a[ successful executive in a New York business. ("The company exists to sell. That's the reason we were hired, and that's the reason we're paid.") He has plenty of money, is adept enough at his job to be periodically promoted, and lives in a comfortable home with an acre of land in Connecticut. He is still married to his first wife and has three children. On the surface, Bob Slocum is a model of the successful and prosperous upper - middle - class American citizen. But his psyche is damaged, his soul sick. From one point of view, Something Happened is an ex- tended illustration of the cul- tural critic Michael Novak's assertion that "the laissez-faire attitudes of Americans in the matters of the human spirit represents one of the greatest mass betrayals of responsibility by any civilization in human history." Like Bob, each person in his family has problems.Because his wife feels she makes no dif- ference to anyone anymore ("and is probably right," adds mor and a fear of both public paisley and madras when others tains a memory of Virginia as speaking and Forgione, his have already moved to worsted pure and undefiled as Daisy's hairy-chested gym teacher who and hopsack, he limps from a memory was to Jay Gatsby. makes him climb a rope and malformed hip, his manners A S ALREADY suggested, the chides him for lack of "compe- are bad, he failed to go to col- ALREADY seted he titive spirit." Though he loves lege, he has no wit. In short, he controlling methaphor of his son, Bob shares many of his has no place in the organiz- Something Happened is fear. son's fears and remains unable ation, while Bob does: he is Heller has created in Bob Slo- to help him. In fact, as time 'being groomed' for Kagle's cum a man moving through passes, his son, rapidly ap- job because Arthur Baron, Ka- middle age who has found no proaching the traumas of ado- gle's superior, likes Bob's wit). lasting satisfactions in life, who lescence, no longer confides in And Bob-though he admits that has no personal code of values his father as he once did. he doesn't need the money or aside from office norms, and Fwant the responsibility; that he who faces only the bleak future Derek, is retarded, never to, suffers anxiety, suppresses hys- of pulled teeth, blank days at grow mentrl they are told teria, has bad feet and a de- the office, problems at home, grow mentally, tiey rEmbr' teriorating jawbone; that he and the fear of approaching beyond the age five. Embar-- death. Though man is poten- rassed to have such a son, Bob worries about riots, violence, dth. T poben desires to avoid him at all costs and teenage sex - still wants tially a creative being,Bob is ! so locked into a situation in -out of sight, out of mind. His ;the job. whole family situation, despite THOUGH HIS FAMILY life life, so devoid of the honesty to occasional periods of truce, is and work both lead Bob to face his problems and the cu depressing. Even though he is fear and axiety, he finds at age to challenge them, that he unhappy and detests four-day least temporary sustenance in as a stay against fear family holidays, Bob doesn't sex, particularly in fantasy. want a divorce because he's I His wife is still good in bed Just as Catch-22 captured a F i .X ;Slocum), she has begun to _drink during the day and to flirt (poorly) with men at eve- ning parties. Their teenage t daghte, "alonely and dis- Ac RAVEL MICH. UNION 7 -214gruntled person," is nonlonger RA ELMIH UNI 6 24Bob's favorite. He only hopes she avoids pregnancy and drugs; she only wishes he would get= her a car and not embarrass her before her friends. BOB DOESN'T CARE for his SNTER SKI W EEK older son, a slightly frail boy with a clever sense of hu- DEC. 24-31r 1974 NEEDED $282.00 f 0 COSTUME DESIGNER triple occupancy f CHOREOGRAPHER CL IGHTING DESIGNER I $291.00 0 PIANIST, SET f DESIGNER, PROP double occupancy ( HEAD, STAGE MANAGER, INCLUDES: ARTIST * round-trip air transportation from Detroit on American For Children's Musical ) Airlines. Airlines.100 AKER WOOD * accommodations at the Temple Square Hotel in Solt 1 Lake City. (Winne The Pooh)1 " round-trip transfer from airport to hotel. " daily lift passes at 6 resort areas-Alta, Brighton, Park For Interview or City, Park West, Snowbird, and Solitude. Infloo Uno (2nd Floor Mich. Union) for further details and reservations, contact: OR CALL 763-1007 or U.A.C. Travel Center D68-T729 DEADLINE OCT. 7 ture of institutions pened pictures t Single person traps , Something HaF a- ] p-' a S. ig:: he thoughts of ped in institution i!i I. i i ii i i I f a I f I j never gone through the process (and becomes especially accom- before and does not want to modating after she begins: bother. drinking during the day) but nevertheless, Bob looks else-: THE PREVAILING atmos- where for sexual satisfaction. phere at Bob's work is one We thus learn of his successionE of fear, both of those superiors of whores, lovers, and mis- to whom he is responsible and tresses, including Penny, his1 of underlings who are bright, steady for a decade, and a 26-: ambitious, accommodating and year-old from Ann Arbor, who sure to fire Bob if they rise pops into Bob's mind when- above him in the organization, ever he sees blue denims (and Never before have I seen the who jilted him after a few organization's goal of teamwork; weeks for younger men). (c o ri f o r m i t y) and am- Even these memories are bition (pleasing your super- weak and insufficient, however, iors) exposed so vividly, when compared to those of Vir- For instance, Bob's boss, An- ginia, the office girl who teased dy Kagle, doesn't fit and is him when he was a 17-year-old about to lose his position. office boy for Western Union. Though he has worked his way He stole fleeting kisses fromj up from the bottom and has her on the stairway, hid his ex- ability and experience, he lacks citement with an office folder,s the important qualities: his last and never went further. He name is bad (Kagle?), he wears regrets it constantly and re-' part of the 60's, Something Happened offers a vision of our situation today. By showing us how Bob's job and his working atmosphere define his values for him, Heller suggests the power that organizations have on the formation of our values and attitudes. In a country whose huge organizational and institutional structure discour- ages the sense of personal and social responsibility that leads people to create a humane val- ue system, it is no wonder that people are afraid, that they dis- trust one another, that they areG unable to communicate their fears to others. Only by facing problems squarely and dealing with them creatively can men go beyond fear. Lest I turn Heller into a rad- ical optimist or gestalt thera- pist, however, let me add that he does not end his book in rosy cheer; Bob doesn't face his: problems but suppresses them by becoming more efficient at work, by choosing security and order over the dual threat and creative challenge posed by freedom. Though Bob at times! has good intentions, he also tells us "there are thing going on inside me that I cannot con-j trol and do not admire" and attributes his shortcomings toI "some dark and frightening area of my soul with which I am not in communication." Hel-j ler's vision tells us both that our institutions foster fear and insecurity and that men like Bob Slocum (and maybe all men?) are unable to transform them because of dark and chilly hollows in their souls. TELLER'S VISION reminds one of other contemporary American novelists. With Philip Roth, Heller shares an under- standing of the great emphasis on sex in American life to the point where lovely women in slinky velvet dresses sell us booze and anti-perspirant and virile men in cowboy hats or scuba outfits peddle cigarettes. Heller's Mrs. Yerger, Bob's Western Union suervisor, re- minds one of the big nurse in Ken Kesev's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but Heller lacks in his novel a liberating force like McMurphy, who can see through institutional s h a m enough to challenge its power and to propose an alternative. In his picture of the dark re- cesses of the human soul, un- controllable by human will, Hel- ler seems close to Joyce Carol Oates, whose characters exhibit these passions not by suppress- ing them, like Bob Slocum, but by brief blurries of violence. Heller has in the end offered a challenge and a good second novel, a worthy successor to Catch-22, a book that demon- strated his versatility as a writ- er. Though I personally prefer the first novel's irreverent and penetrating black humor, Some- thing Happened has strong mer- its as a study of a single con- sciousness responding to the in- stitutions that have locked it in, curtailed its freedom. One might spend a profitable day (perhancs when the football team is out of town) following the tormenting route of Bob S- cum, from the beginning to the point where he notices that "everyone seems to be pleased with the way I've taken com- mand." Chnck Maland is a graduate studcnt in American Studies. DELEGATE BUCKLEY U.N. General Assembly: A bastion for bores UNITED NATIONS JOUR- NAL: A DELEGATE'S ODYS- SEY by William F. Buckley Jr. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 260 pages, $7.95. By CHARLES STORCH IN SEPTEMBER, 1973, William1 F. Buckley Jr. was appoint- ed to the United States Dele- gation to the United Nations General Assembly. After a three month's journey in the diplo- matic jungle, Buckley returns to inform us that the natives are listless. B u c k 1 e y ' s United Nations Journal: A Delegate's Odyssey attempts to explain this im- probable appointment (In a1 column in his conservative Na- tional Review, Buckley once re- ferred to the U.N. as a place where "nations meet in order handily to exchange insults, bribes, intimidations, and cyni- cism") and to provide a forum for his views denied him in New York. THE REALIST Buckley admits to a lapse into "Walter Mittyism" in accepting a seat in the General Assembly and, in its Human Rights Committee. As public delegate (or layman- diplomat), he envisions himself: addressing the Assembly, "hold- ing the delegates spellbound as I read to them from Solzhenit- syn, as I described the latest accounts of concentration camps in Mainland China, as I pleaded the case of the ballet dancer Panov. I would cajole, wheedle, parry, thrust, mesmerize, dis- may, seduce, intimidate." It takes just a slight exposure to U.N. rhetoric, however, to convince Buckley that the Gen- eral Assembly is no place for serious or seductive speeches., This comes in the form of a typically overlong, empty dis- course by the Saudi Arabian rep- resentative, Jamil Baroody. Baroody, a U.N. figure since 1948, has done his best, Buckley convinces us, to fortify the' U.N.'s image as the "densestI collection of oratorical bores' in the history of the world." VAROODY CHASTIZES the U.S. media for not printing,I in entirety, his ramblina, hours-! long interviews, and offers this1 as proof that U.S. citizens are7 denied freedom of information. He makes no mention of con-I ditions in his own country, nor do the vast majority of dele- gates. They rail against racism in South Africa, Portugal's Af- rican colonies and Israel as if' their countries had cornered the market on human freedoms. Re-; minding us that only 20 of the U.N.'s 135 member states (since Buckley's tenure, three more states have been admitted), are ruled by parliamentary repre- sentation, Buckley himself takes aim at this double standard, and lets both barrels go at the So- viet Union's domination of Eastern Europe and repression of domestic dissidents. Yet Bucklev's anti-Soviet re- marks cannot be made in the General Assembly. Delegate Buckley is a prisoner of detente -in a time of warming rela- tions, one does not remind an adversary of the thinas most reprehensible about hiro-but aithor Buckley is not. United Nations Journal gives Buckley the chance to comment on As- sembly debate had he been allowed to and had he been awake at the time. re the most compelling argu- ment in debates is whether to table discussion for a year or indefinitely. WUCKLEY'S KEEN eye, how- Aever, does not miss those ,are moments of U.N. activity. Thus, we are treated to the snne, in the General Assembly, of the Chilean delegate being xrerbally and phvsically attacked by the Cuban delegate, whose bodyguards are poised to draw their mins and start shooting. NOW AT . NOW OPEN! Oyster Bar& The Spaghetti Machine OPEN TUESDAY THRU SATURDAY, 5:00-10:00 P.M. (CORNER OF WEST HURON & S. FIRST ST.) 301 W. HURON 663-2403 MENU: FRESH BLUE POINT OYSTERS ON HALF SHELL............. .$1.75 DINNERS: Green Salad-CAESAR dressinq, home made bread, butter and coffee included. SPAGHETTI: V.I.P. Discount 213 S. STATE COMPLETE DAIRY DEPARTMENT 21 Gal. MILK.. $1.19 There ISa difference!!! PREPARE FOR: Mover35 years S MCAT perience 0 uDAT andsuccess 0 Small classes LSAT Volumnous home GRE studymaterials ATGsB courses that are --: IUDconstantlyaeupdated S " OC TaTpe facilities for " - CAT rviews of class* C PAT lessons and for use. " ofr~ supplementary * " aterials 0 FLEX s" " ECFMG missed lessons a NAT'L MED DOS 0 THOUSANDS HAVEASH E * RAISED THEIR SCORES " A N IMPORTANT istruction Nor do we miss the heated ex- to new delegates is not to change, in English, between the fall asleen at the desk. "You Chinese and Soviet delegates, can have the earpiece on up- in which Mr. Chiao informs Mr. side down," Bcklev confides, Malik that "he has no class." "and nobody is the wiser." Buckley's Journal is a snright- Buckley, however, is just as lv account of a personally te- renetitive of the Soviet Union's! dious, disappointing experience. crimes as the member dele- It is told with the usual style gates are of South Africa's, and wit of Buckley-whom the Portugal's and Israel's. . Wall Street Journal calls the Though perhaps not an objec- "ranier on the Right"-and tive commentary, the Journal with a casualness that is too is insightful and instructive. Itj often missing in books on public describes the strength of the policy. The author of Up from African bloc (which, a Portu- Liberalism and Cruising Speed, gese delegate warns, could turn among other books, has done the General Assembly into the the impossible: he has written Organization for African Unity) , a book about the United Na- and the weakness of the U.S. tions which actually seems too delegation, which numbly ab- short. sorbs rhetorical assaults on every subject. It also portrays; how problems manage not to be Charles Storch is a graduate resolved at the United Nations,' student in Journalism. SUNDAY at HILLEL 11:00 a.m.-UNDERGRAD BRUNCH GUEST SPEAKER 6:00-7:00-DELI DINNER ALL YOU CAN EAT FOR $1.75 1429 HILL ST. MOVING SALE 1 11 I I, Tomato sauce .... . . ....... 2. Meat sauceu 3. Mushroom sauce............ 4. Meat and Mushroom sauce . ,.. $2.50 $2.50 $2.50 $2.50 1CO 7r, 8. Chicken Liver sauce ..........$2.75 9. Tomato sauce with Meat Balls . $2.75 10. Tomato sauce with Chicken Livers .............. $2.75 11. Marinara sauce............. $2.75 Ann Arbor Civic Theatre presents A Musical Farce based on "The Importance of Beinq Earnest" by Oscar Wilde Cntejt I I I f I I