Review and quotes: SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH

I forget some days just how much I need Douglas Adams and his zany sense of humor in my life. Then I read another installment of the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and I'm reminded how refreshing laughter can be. 

In So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish, the 4th book in the series, we travel back to Earth (yes, back to Earth) with Arthur Dent and find out the dang thing wasn't destroyed after all, or was it? Everything seems the same except for one issue -- Where have all the dolphins gone?

“The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the 'Star Spangled Banner', but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish.”

I found myself laughing out loud, sometimes even snorting at the silliness. And I would have to stop myself by remembering that Adams wrote this book in the 1980s. How did he know we would be electing lizards to govern us in the 2020s? And why don't we stop doing it when lizards clearly do not have our best interest in mind?

“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"

Sounds about right, huh? So, let's see, what else did Adams hit right on the head? How about the truth spoken by Wonko the Sane?

The sign read:
"Hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion."

“It seemed to me,' said Wonko the Sane, 'that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.”

Ever thought that? You read the directions on packaging and wonder how could someone not know that already? One direction on medicine packaging that always stops me short is "Don't take this product if you are allergic to it." Okay. Sounds like that is logical advice but why would anyone?

Adams seems to have lived his life inside me. Why just the other day I attempted to eat the driest sandwich known to man. The thing was like attempting to eat sawdust or worse. When I read this description about sandwiches in England, I started laughing and didn't stop laughing for several hours. Apparently my sandwich was made in England and I didn't even know it.

“There is a feeling which persists in England that making a sandwich interesting, attractive, or in any way pleasant to eat is something sinful that only foreigners do.

"'Make 'em dry,' is the instruction buried somewhere in the collective national consciousness, `make 'em rubbery.' If you have to keep the buggers fresh, do it by washing 'em once a week.'

"It is by eating sandwiches in pubs on Saturday lunchtimes that the British seek to atone for whatever their national sins have been. They're not altogether clear what those sins are, and don't want to know either. Sins are not the sort of things one wants to know about. But whatever their sins are they are amply atoned for by the sandwiches they make themselves eat.”

If  you have read any of the books in the series you are familiar with how many conversations between characters just seem to have nothing to do with anything. Now I know it was intentional -- to sell books in America. Ha!

“It's guff. It doesn't advance the action. It makes for nice fat books such as the American market thrives on, but it doesn't actually get you anywhere.”

 This is the fourth book in the series. I have managed to really spread out my reading over the years, not intentionally, but every time I read the next books in the series I wonder why I haven't zoomed thru the series in one fell swoop. Here is my schedule to date:

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) -- read March 2011, reread in Sept. 2017
• The Restaurant at the End of the World (1980) -- read May 2020
• Life, the Universe, and Everything (1982) -- read September 2023
• So Long, and Thanks for the Fish (1984) -- read August 2025
• Mostly Harmless (1992) -- TBD

Likely I didn't zoom through the books because Douglas Adams didn't zoom through them either. Adams was terrible with deadlines. Apparently he was locked in a hotel room with his editor for three weeks to finish this book. He is quoted as saying, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." So I guess his personality wasn't too far off from the characters in his books.

I listened to the audiobooks so far for each book in the series. So good and double the fun. Stephen Fry narrated the first book. Oh boy, is he good at his job! Martin Freeman narrated the rest of the books in the series. He's not quite as good as the original but still excellent.

There are a few books I amazed when I learn someone hasn't read them: To Kill a Mockingbird, Pride and Prejudice, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (The sequels are just bonus material!) I love them all so much.

-Anne