Arbie's Unoriginally Titled Book Blog

This partially posthumous volume consists of a collection of magazine articles, newspaper columns, interviews and such like, along with one short story (about a young Zaphod)originally published in the Utterly Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book...a copy of which I own...and the (very) incomplete conflated text of three versions of the third Dirk Gently's novel. This novel was abandoned whilst Adams was still alive, in favour of a 6th Hitchhikers' novel. Adams had decided that the material/theme was better suited to the latter. Personally, I think a 3rd Gently's would have been much more fun than a 6th 'Hikers'. The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul is my favourite Adams novel and The Salmon of Doubt looked to be very much in a similar vein, structurally and stylistically. It's a great shame that we will never see an end to this fragment.

Young Zaphod Plays it Safe is a corrosively satirical story and something of an admission that whilst one can get by without Dent, Zaphod or Ford are necessary to make the Hitchers' universe funny. This is well worth reading and the two fictional items make the book worthwhile on their own.

As for the non-fiction, I found it by turns amusing, interesting, informative of Adams' character. Only three pieces in the book failed, in my view. One of these isn't even by Adams...Richard Dawkins writes an afterword in which he appears to get a biographical fact completely wrong and comes over as an annoying arrogant prat: Dawkins states that Adams climbed Kilimanjaro. In one of the articles in the book Adams states that he only walked part of the approach hike and did not tackle the mountain itself. Which one of them do you believe?

The worst piece is an interview Adams did for the American Association of Arrogant Atheists (or some such pro-Atheist body). In it Adams states views such as Agnosticism is "wishy-washy" where-as Atheism (or his version at least) is based on Deep Thought. (No not his fictional computer or the chess machine - just his own personal Deep Thoughts.) He comes over as supercilious and stupid and it becomes obvious why he was such great pals with Dawkins. Just for the record it is entirely possible to arrive at the Agnostic position through a proper understanding of science and one little thought experiment - no wishy-washiness involved. Unfortunately neither Adams nor Dawkins have the requisite understanding of scientific method. Boy, did my hackles rise!

The other "failed" piece is in praise of P.G. Wodehouse. Here Adams states that Shakespeare can't tell jokes and Wodehouse is much funnier...I just can't agree with this. Wodehouse might have been a better joke teller, but his novels aren't (to me) nearly as funny as a good production of any of Shakespeare's major Comedies. Humour isn't purely about jokes...there is such a thing as situational humour and visual humour. This piece is not badly written and examples showed just how talented a writer Wodehouse was, at least at the level of individual sentences. Now Adams wrote many jokes into his novels and in that respect was similar to Pratchet and Wodehouse, so maybe he was simply much more appreciative of that type of humour than any other or than I am. Personally, I find the absurdities in Adams' fiction to be far funnier than most of the individual punch lines - with two exceptions that I paraphrase from memory: "Haven't I done you before?" and "It's bleedin' obvious, innit? He's got a time machine!" So we disagree about Wodehouse and what makes the funniest writing but this wasn't nearly so annoying as his frothy-mouthed Fundamentalist Atheist rant because at least he's not telling everyone who happens to have a different opinion that they are wrong, stupid and not worth debating with...

Anyway...if you're an Adams fan, you should appreciate much or all of this book.