I’ve long held the opinion, counter to the general current of thought, that Mostly Harmless is the best of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker books.
My reasons are these:
- It has a coherent plot that is driven by real motivations. For example, Random is created because Arthur is trying desperately to find Fenchurch in space and time, and because Trillian is too busy getting on with her career to have a meaningful relationship (I’m trying not to drop too many spoilers here). These things hang together really well!
- There is character development for Arthur, Random and even The Guide. It’s not just about the amazing concepts and hilarious jokes; it’s about people too.
- There are some clever, dramatic reversals of familiar ideas from the series. E.g. PANIC instead of DON’T PANIC.
- The ending has Wagnerian dimensions (and lots of other dimensions too).
- There are still lots of very good jokes – the philosophical bits on the planet Hawalius are hilarious.
Now, before you start shouting, I freely admit that books one to four in the trilogy have some of these elements too. My simple point, however, is that in none of them do all the elements come together in such a…a…writerly fashion as in Mostly Harmless.
I know it’s sad and depressing and people sometimes dislike it, but I love it.
Also, I feel more emotionally attached to Mostly Harmless because it was the only book in the trilogy that I ANTICIPATED (feverishly). I came to the series late in life (I was thirteen, but I’d had since I was 2 years old to read them and just hadn’t bothered) and so books 1-4 were already published and available in a neat sort of jigsaw puzzle paperback edition, where you could rearrange the covers into four different pictures. And then a fifth book was coming and the big question in my mind was: How will they change the puzzles to accommodate another book? And, of course, they didn’t. But the cover was brilliant anyway.
Ricoeurian
I arrived on the B ark and have been struggling to make a living ever since. I've tried book selling, book reviewing, book writing and book reading (sometimes simultaneously). Now I work for Pan Macmillan, where we make books, including those written by Douglas Adams 30 years ago (and more recently). I first read the Hitchhiker books when I was thirteen years old, then again when I was seventeen years old, and twenty-four, and most recently at thirty-one and a half. I will read them again when I turn forty-two (and possibly even sooner than that).
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