Dear Listener,

Recently I have been rereading portions of Joseph Heller’s 1974 sophomore novel that satirizes the American Dream Something Happened.  Simply put, this is not a book for an impatient reader.  In fact, I would be willing to attest to the fact that the plot (or lackthereof) lies almost entirely in the hundreds of pages of character development.  That being said, I love this book.  (I love this book so much I wanted to share a song by Sharon Van Etten called “Save Yourself” from her 2010 album Epic which coincides with Americana and hopelessness. Listen to it here:

I even love it enough to read about it.  Shortly after finishing Something Happened the first time, I read that Kurt Vonnegut had written a review for the New York Times Book Review.  Lord knows I trust Kurt Vonnegut.  After scouring the internet in search of the review, I eventually purchased a used copy (which turned out to be a first edition!) of Vonnegut’s 1981 collection of short stories, essays, letters, speeches, and reviews Palm Sunday from a library in Michigan.  Lemuria currently has a copy of Palm Sunday on the shelf, and I greatly recommend you take a look at the glowing review.

I love this book so much I decided to keep searching the internet for more literature on this piece of literature.  What I found was astonishing.  In May of 1992 Playboy Magazine published an interview, which can be found here, with not only Kurt Vonnegut, but also Joseph Heller!  I reckon satirists really do stick together! A short sample of this can be found here:

PLAYBOY: What are you working on, Kurt?

VONNEGUT: On a divorce. Which is a full-time job. Didn’t you find it a full-time job?

HELLER: Oh, it’s more than a full-time job. You ought to go back and read that section in No Laughing Matter on the divorce. I went through all the lawyers. But yours is going to be a tranquil one, you told me.

VONNEGUT: It seems to me divorce is so common now. It ought to be more institutionalized. It’s like a head-on collision every time. It’s supposed to be a surprise but it’s commonplace. Deliver your line about never having dreamed of being married.

HELLER: It’s in Something Happened: ”I want a divorce; I dream of a divorce. I was never sure I wanted to get married. But I always knew I wanted a divorce.”

VONNEGUT: Norman Mailer has what–five divorces now?

And I found this pertinent as well:

PLAYBOY: Let’s turn to books. Are you alarmed about the corporate role in publishing?

HELLER: ”Alarmed” is a strong word. I’m aware of it and I don’t think the effects will be beneficial toward literature. As I get older, I begin thinking that not only are certain things inevitable, everything is inevitable.

PLAYBOY: How about censorship in publishing? What about when Simon and Schuster decided not to publish a book it had contracted for — Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho — because of pressure?

HELLER: The allegation was made that the decision came from the head of Paramount which owns Simon and Schuster. But the book was published. I don’t think censorship is a widespread threat in this country.

VONNEGUT: You can publish yourself. During the McCarthy era, Howard Fast published Spartacus. Sold it to the movies. Nobody would publish him because he was a Communist.

PLAYBOY: Are writers supportive of one another or resentful?

VONNEGUT: Writers aren’t envious of one another.

HELLER: We may be envious of the success but not of one another.

So whether you’re a fan of hard-nosed, dense, realism satire like Joseph Heller, or you prefer a more whimsical, snarky satire like Kurt Vonnegut (I recommend his 1965 opus God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater), the important thing to remember is that we are all finding fault and dealing with it in the same way.

by Simon

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