Joseph Heller's second novel, "Something Happened" (1974), offers a glimpse into the novelist's chilly center. Throughout this tale of career success and family failure, Heller describes the dynamic between a disappointed, bullying father and his bewildered, still-besotted teenage daughter: "I wish my daughter would stop complaining and feeling so sorry for herself all the time," the father whines. "I often strike back at her in clever, malign ways. I enjoy striking back at her." Heller puts these words in the mouth of his narrator, but as his daughter, Erica, writes in her memoir, "Yossarian Slept Here," the depiction of this relationship "was about me." When she confronted Heller, his response was typical: "What makes you think you're interesting enough to write about?"
