NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/alt/fan/douglas/4839

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-25 | 3.4 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!geraldo.cc.utexas.edu!geraldo.cc.utexas.edu!usenet
From: [e-mail] (Wes Simonds)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.douglas-adams
Subject: Re: A changing DNA (was Re: Mostly Harmful)
Date: 25 Jan 1993 20:46:25 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX
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References: <lgm3#[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <martin.727986078@marsh>
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Martin Dougiamas writes:

>Perhaps you've changed more than he has.  Just because he no longer has
>so many wacky alien beings does not mean his basic comic ability,
>ie that of contemporary satire and witty dialogue, has changed much.
>In fact, the only changes I see are for the better... his characters now
>are deftly sketched with a few words and filled out rapidly with a few more
>sentences, for example.

Well, that's one way to put it.  I would agree with you that he still has
talent; I heard the man speak in person in October here at UT Austin, and he
deserved the applause and the packed room; but _MH_ is just a sloppy and
unfunny book, in which I laughed exactly twice (once for the line about
breathing fresh air in New York by going to a window and sticking your head
in a building, and once for the phrase "cross-eyed badger spit.").  The Elvis
bit, for example, is pretty plainly a first draft, and not a good one.

>And how could you not like "So Long..." ... one of the horniest bits
>of writing I've seen... How could any guy *fail* to fall in love with
>Fenchurch?  And what about all that flying stuff?  That was so well

I never said I didn't like _Fish_!  In fact, I think the Hyde Park/Biscuit
scene in it is one of the best scenes Adams has ever done, period.  What I
said was that I didn't like _Teatime_, except for Chapter Three, and I didn't
like _MH_ at all.

>I think the trick with his latest books is to read them *slowly*, so
>you can appreciate all the subtlety.  I suspect some people just

Ummm... _MH_ has some subtlety, but it is not wit.  It is instead a collection
of ideas which many people in this group have chosen to read as an extension
of Adams' "philosophy" but which are, in fact, only the rudiments of what might
have been comedy if he'd spent a little more time.  The reason that HHGTTG and
RATEOFU are frequently cited as Adams' best books is that by the time they
were books, he had written many drafts of the material and had refined it to
the point that it was as good as he could make it.  This is simply not true
of books like _Teatime_, which, as Terry Pratchett has pointed out, show
obvious signs of "deadline surfing."

My favorite Adams sequences:

1. The first three chapters of HHGTTG.
2. All the Restaurant stuff in RATEOFU.
3. The Agrajag sequence in LTUAE, as well as the first two chapters.
4. Everything in SLATFATF up to and including Wonko.
5. The Cambridge Dinner and all scenes with Dirk in DGHDA.
6. Chapter Three in TLDTOTS; also, bits in the Woodshead and Thor's Gluing.
7. Nothing in MH.

Here is a line from _Fish_:

"Grown men, he told himself, in flat contradiction of centuries of accumulated
evidence about the way grown men behave, do not behave like this."

It is, in my opinion anyway, rough going looking for lines of this quality
in _MH_.  And as for scenes to match the Hyde Park scene in the same book, you
can forget it.  They aren't there.