The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams's beloved comic novel is not about some astonishingly lucky guy named Arthur Dent. Nor is it about a two-headed, three-armed, stoner politician. It's not even about that voluminous precursor to the Amazon Kindle called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
No, this slim, unassuming little book is about no less than a twenty-million-year quest for the meaning of life. It tells how a number of tremendous technological efforts, put forth by a race of superintelligent pandimensional beings, fail to find this great Answer, and then how a lonely, burned-out shoreline artisan figures it all out by himself.
There are many lost souls in Galaxy, ranging from the desperate egotist Zaphod Beeblebrox, to the endlessly thinking Marvin, to the money-grubbing, brain-stealing mice from another dimension. Each of them gropes in his own particular way for meaning and truth, and each of them comes up short or has to fudge his way to success. Zaphod and his buddy Ford Prefect are constant freewheelers; clever though they are, they rarely put their minds towards some grand good. They prefer to steal valuable machinery, evade authorities, do whatever comes next, and get wasted when they can.
Marvin and Arthur are more careful and logical in their approaches to life, but they allow their thoughts to carry them away, and they sink into sadness and anxiety. Marvin, being a robot, is gifted with mighty calculative capabilities, and thus he is especially crushed by this. He can navigate complex philosophies and analyze natural phenomena in nanoseconds. With no fulfilling challenges left to him, his boredom strikes him lame.
Other characters just want to keep their jobs, their money, or their reputations, and then get through the day without going crazy. Even these people aren't entirely happy, though. Theoretical scientists lynch each other when they're outsmarted. Colossal civilizations wage interstellar war over petty insults. Boring bureaucrats insist on being seen as creative and exciting, while their poetry is considered an instrument of torture. Even the super-wealthy can't find contentment, as they resort to ordering custom-made planets in their futile search for satisfaction.
So who is the one man who really understands the meaning of life? It's none other than Slartibartfast, one of the craftsmen of the planet Earth, who won an award for designing the fjords of Norway.
Here is how he puts it:
“Maybe. Who cares?” said Slartibartfast before Arthur got too excited. “Perhaps I’m old and tired,” he continued, “but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me: I design coastlines. I got an award for Norway.”
He rummaged around in a pile of debris and puled out a large Plexiglas block with his name on it and a model of Norway molded into it.
“Where’s the sense in that?” he said. “None that I’ve been able to make out. I’ve been doing fjords all my life. For a fleeting moment they become fashionable and I get a major award.”
He turned it over in his hands with a shrug and tossed it aside carelessly, but not so carelessly that it didn’t land on something soft.
“In this replacement Earth we’re building they’ve given me Africa to do and of course I’m doing it with all fjords again because I happen to like them, and I’m old-fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely baroque feel to a continent. And they tell me it’s not equatorial enough. Equatorial!” He gave a hollow laugh. “What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day.”
Adams quietly tucks this winning philosophy into his tale as a way of defusing the restless ambitions that constantly boil in his mad universe. Slartibartfast's attitude is very serene; almost Buddha-like. He's even given up on learning where he came from or why he exists. He desires little other than the joy he derives from the work that he does.
In a later book in the Galaxy series, Arthur finds himself in a similar position to Slartibartfast, when he becomes a sandwich maker in a remote village. Sadly, this calmness doesn't last for him, but he does acknowledge it as the one precious slice of time when he felt truly content. I think there's a lesson in that.
People write off the Hitchhiker's books as rubbish novels, but I find it hard to agree with that. They may be comedies, they may be a tad baked in their efforts to be quirky and random, and some of the dialogue is implausible, but I think there is a relevant and universal message buried in there somewhere. You're not going to find it in Marvin, though, so let the little guy go.
No, this slim, unassuming little book is about no less than a twenty-million-year quest for the meaning of life. It tells how a number of tremendous technological efforts, put forth by a race of superintelligent pandimensional beings, fail to find this great Answer, and then how a lonely, burned-out shoreline artisan figures it all out by himself.
There are many lost souls in Galaxy, ranging from the desperate egotist Zaphod Beeblebrox, to the endlessly thinking Marvin, to the money-grubbing, brain-stealing mice from another dimension. Each of them gropes in his own particular way for meaning and truth, and each of them comes up short or has to fudge his way to success. Zaphod and his buddy Ford Prefect are constant freewheelers; clever though they are, they rarely put their minds towards some grand good. They prefer to steal valuable machinery, evade authorities, do whatever comes next, and get wasted when they can.
Marvin and Arthur are more careful and logical in their approaches to life, but they allow their thoughts to carry them away, and they sink into sadness and anxiety. Marvin, being a robot, is gifted with mighty calculative capabilities, and thus he is especially crushed by this. He can navigate complex philosophies and analyze natural phenomena in nanoseconds. With no fulfilling challenges left to him, his boredom strikes him lame.
Other characters just want to keep their jobs, their money, or their reputations, and then get through the day without going crazy. Even these people aren't entirely happy, though. Theoretical scientists lynch each other when they're outsmarted. Colossal civilizations wage interstellar war over petty insults. Boring bureaucrats insist on being seen as creative and exciting, while their poetry is considered an instrument of torture. Even the super-wealthy can't find contentment, as they resort to ordering custom-made planets in their futile search for satisfaction.
So who is the one man who really understands the meaning of life? It's none other than Slartibartfast, one of the craftsmen of the planet Earth, who won an award for designing the fjords of Norway.
Here is how he puts it:
“Maybe. Who cares?” said Slartibartfast before Arthur got too excited. “Perhaps I’m old and tired,” he continued, “but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me: I design coastlines. I got an award for Norway.”
He rummaged around in a pile of debris and puled out a large Plexiglas block with his name on it and a model of Norway molded into it.
“Where’s the sense in that?” he said. “None that I’ve been able to make out. I’ve been doing fjords all my life. For a fleeting moment they become fashionable and I get a major award.”
He turned it over in his hands with a shrug and tossed it aside carelessly, but not so carelessly that it didn’t land on something soft.
“In this replacement Earth we’re building they’ve given me Africa to do and of course I’m doing it with all fjords again because I happen to like them, and I’m old-fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely baroque feel to a continent. And they tell me it’s not equatorial enough. Equatorial!” He gave a hollow laugh. “What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day.”
Adams quietly tucks this winning philosophy into his tale as a way of defusing the restless ambitions that constantly boil in his mad universe. Slartibartfast's attitude is very serene; almost Buddha-like. He's even given up on learning where he came from or why he exists. He desires little other than the joy he derives from the work that he does.
In a later book in the Galaxy series, Arthur finds himself in a similar position to Slartibartfast, when he becomes a sandwich maker in a remote village. Sadly, this calmness doesn't last for him, but he does acknowledge it as the one precious slice of time when he felt truly content. I think there's a lesson in that.
People write off the Hitchhiker's books as rubbish novels, but I find it hard to agree with that. They may be comedies, they may be a tad baked in their efforts to be quirky and random, and some of the dialogue is implausible, but I think there is a relevant and universal message buried in there somewhere. You're not going to find it in Marvin, though, so let the little guy go.
posted by Daniel | 5:20 AM
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