Don't read that. You need the illustrations. 13 clocks is an illustrated novel and the illustrations are fucking sublime. Hit the library if need be. I've given out 13 clocks as a christmas gift a few times. It was a major part of my childhood, and is, in my opinion, the standard against which all 'once upon a time' stories are to be judged. I'm a Douglas Adams fan, but the Dirk Gently stuff, as with most of his stuff, was comedy first, metaphor second. He was certainly clever. He was not, however, a starer-into-the-Abyss, more of a smug glancer if you will. American Gods assumes the cloak of allegory; Teatime was kind of more of a political cartoon. (CL&D is one of those crazy fever dreams you get when you've both drunk too much and smoked too much pot all at once, except that it lingers with you and won't go away once you've sobered up)
Okay, thanks. Will do. Yes, although his glances should be given a lot more credit than they are. The first Dirk Gently had the most moving passages on extinction I've ever read, because of their context in a comedy.Don't read that. You need the illustrations. 13 clocks is an illustrated novel and the illustrations are fucking sublime. Hit the library if need be. I've given out 13 clocks as a christmas gift a few times. It was a major part of my childhood, and is, in my opinion, the standard against which all 'once upon a time' stories are to be judged.
I'm a Douglas Adams fan, but the Dirk Gently stuff, as with most of his stuff, was comedy first, metaphor second. He was certainly clever. He was not, however, a starer-into-the-Abyss, more of a smug glancer if you will. American Gods assumes the cloak of allegory; Teatime was kind of more of a political cartoon.
Agreed. I think the problem with Douglas Adams is he just didn't know how to frame things in a way that didn't get dismissed as trite. Jonathan Swift had the same problem; nobody got the comedy in "A Modest Proposal" so they sure as shit didn't get the political message.
Maybe he didn't live long enough to make the transition from pure comedy to writing something else. In a lot of his essays and letters he showed a sublime, tragic understanding of the world which reminded me of some of the greatest novelists of the late 19th/early 20th century. Last Chance To See was a start.
Bump it up if you can. It's heartbreaking, and it doesn't feel anything like Adam's books. Honestly, it feels like a conversation with the man himself - it's witty in an offhand, unstructured way. It's sad and beautiful and doesn't have the "pat" feel that gets some much of the rest written off as juvenile.