wrdnik3's Full Review: Douglas Adams - The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking t...
Douglas Noel Adams, born 1952 in Cambridge (giving him a good nine months headstart over that other DNA that was all the rage a little later), is not, it must be said, the funniest man alive.
The reason for this, of course, is that he escaped this mortal coil in 2001, a sudden heart attack robbing the twenty-first century of a great wit and a crazy giant of a man.
Way back in the mists of time, DNA wrote and produced a radio show called the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, wherein the Earth is demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass, and Arthur Dent, the last human alive, finds himself trekking across a galaxy that's madder than ever he could have imagined, accompanied by his Betelgeusian friend Ford Prefect, and his trusty towel. Combining science fiction with absurd existentialist humour, this show went on to become a series of bestselling novels, a comic book, a television show, and finally (and post-humously) a movie, all of which were extremely (or at least rather) funny in very different - and often contradictory - ways.
While all that was going on, Adams found himself writing a couple novels about a "holistic" private detective named Dirk Gently, starting a dot-com venture, working with all kinds of exciting new technology, making friends with a bunch of interesting people (as varied as John Cleese, The Who and Richard Dawkins), and just generally being a cool and froody guy, you know?
The Salmon of Doubt is a collection of much of the material that was on his laptop when he died, including part of what would have been the third Dirk Gently novel, and a range of other writings by and about him (Douglas Adams, that is, not Dirk Gently). As the foreword says, there wasn't very much objectivity about this process - Stephen Fry, Ed Victor, Sophie Astin, and Adams' wife, Jane Belson, merely took what they felt to be the best material, closest to the heart of what he was all about. Really, that's all we could hope for, and they're certainly much more qualified to choose than I am, so good on them for that. What they've left us is a book that does a good job of dealing with those topics that were near and dear to Adam's heart: life, the universe and everything
Unsurprisingly, Douglas Adams, being a member of that strange primate species known as Homo sapiens, had a life. He wasn't some strange genie conjured up to write novels, only to be returned to his lamp until needed again. In fact, he had a life so fun that his ability to miss deadlines became the stuff of legends ("I love deadlines - I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by"). And undeniably he inhabited this universe (most of the time).
About him, there are interviews and biographical bits, which are rather fascinating (DNA led, as I've said, a very interesting life), touching on all aspects of his life, including his frustrations with the movie industry (the Hitchhikers movie had been "in production" for about twenty years), his experiences as an author and an atheist and a comedian - pretty much everything. Adams had a wide range of interests. He was more than just a brilliant comic writer - though he was that, of course. He was a man with a passion for the way things worked, and for ways to make them work better, and for people and their foibles and their needs. He made friends with scientists and technologists and everyone in between. He had a strong interest in religion, despite his not believing a word of the stuff (he was an atheist through and through, in the Dawkinsian mold, but funnier, and that's actually more difficult than you might think). And there's more - most movingly, Richard Dawkins's keening lament, written in the heat and tragedy of the moment of the news of his friend's death reaching him, is included, and it's one of the most touching pieces I've ever come across.
As for what he wrote...
There are travel tales written for magazines (including the tale of his journey to Australia to do a comparative test on the merits of using a Sub-Bug versus riding a manta ray); anecdotes about technology and why it never seems to work (and why there are so many dongly things lying about his home, all of which promise to make his life easier, but which seem to band together to do the exact opposite), as well as ideas on how to make things better (often linked to his website, H2G2.com); talks on science and reason (he manages to work in feng shui and evolution and astrology and physics and the history of science and not come off as a complete nutter, which is no mean feat); jokes with some important messages hidden in them; articles for kids (including a much-needed discussion of the difference between a Friday and a fried egg); tales of walking around in a rhino suit in Africa (which is, if you don't know already, rather hotter than Britain, for the most part) and just generally appreciating nature and humanity and the rest of the world's weirdness. All of this is written with sincerity and wit and clarity - part Monty Python and part P.G. Wodehouse (who also gets a mention in these pages), tied off with a bit ofZaphod Beeblebrox (ditto).
In short, there's a little bit of everything.
And then there's that salmon.
The Salmon itself is one of the world's great uncompleted works. The story goes a little like this: Dirk Gently, holistic detective extraordinaire, is hired by a beautiful and mysterious woman (what else?) to track down the other half of her cat (quantum shenanigans may be involved), who, you'll be pleased to know, is getting around just fine without its posterior. Even more puzzling is Dirk's bank balance, which inexplicably is not negative. Dirk's friends, including Thor, the Norse god of thunder, whose grasp of telephone etiquette is not quite perfect yet, are no help. And so, to clear up these mysteries, he does what private dicks do best - he tails someone. This, of course, leads him to America, where he encounters the rhinoceros Desmond and a mysterious message about the existence of gusty winds...
And sadly, that's all she wrote, for the story was never completed. But that's okay. We get eleven chapters of Adams zaniness, starring my favourite detective of all, filled with mild philosophical musings - and did I mention there was a rhino? Can't go wrong with that.
And so they say
DNA was good stuff. He was fun and funny and witty and clever, and unlike many people, he knew just what to be clever about, and why. In the end, this book serves as a perfect reminder of just what we've lost. Richard Dawkins says it straight:
Science has lost a friend, literature has lost a luminary, the mountain gorilla and the black rhino have lost a gallant defender...
Amen, brother.
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This is my fourth entry in CopeSullivan's 50 reviews by Halloween writeoff - fast and furious, that's me!
From the unfathomable imagination of Douglas Adams-his internationally bestselling final book; a zany collection of essays, articles, anecdotes, and s...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
From the unfathomable imagination of Douglas Adams, this is his internationally bestselling final book; a zany collection of essays, articles, anecdot...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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