H2G2-6 (of 3) Review

In an extraordinary turn of events, The Hitchhiker's trilogy has added a sixth book to its ranks. ...And Another Thing takes its title from a quote in the fourth book of the trilogy (all the original titles are taken from the first).  Eoin Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl series takes on the dangerous task of writing a post-mortem addendum to a beloved series.  Hailed as a stellar success and declaimed as falling completely flat.... Does this children's author bite off more than he can chew. Answer: Yes, but the world needed another Hitchhiker book and he was willing to step up to the plate with semi-decent results.

SPOILER WARNING!!!!!

If you haven't read the first five books but plan to one day, skip the next paragraph.

There aren't many salient plot points, which enables me to be brief.  The earth is blown up by Vogons (ugly bureaucrats), but not before two Earthlings and two aliens escape (not all together, they meet up just before 2 of them nearly die again).  Ford and Zaphod (Galactic President) are from Betelgeuse, Arthur and Tricia McMillian (Trillian) from England.  They find a replica earth, go back (and forward) in time, talk to a very smart computer, and find the answer to life, the universe, and everything.  In book 4, Arthur falls in love with Fenchurch, and Marvin the android dies.  By the end of Mostly Harmless (book 5): Arthur discovers he has a daughter by Trillian, named Random, and everyone is drawn back to earth just before it is destroyed on all planes of existence, this time by Grebulons (hired by Vogons).

YOU MAY RESUME.

Which I always thought was a very definite ending.  I knew Adams had thought of doing another one, but he never got around to it before he died.  And even he would have had to reach pretty far to save his characters from obliteration.  So, you can't blame Colfer if it takes him a bit to long to get the ball rolling.

...And Another Thing starts with a three page recap of the past five books.  The new story is presented as a guide entry.  We are dropped immediately into a where-are-they-now? scenario, which turns out to be a holographic dream, where each of the main characters believes he/she has lived a long, happy life.  Arthur has been sitting alone on a beach, Ford lounging at a spa, Trillian reporting throughout the universe, and Random became President of the Galaxy.  One by one they come out of the dream. Unfortunately, the reader gets the joke the first time, but is stuck reading each false scenario (a total of 16 pages), knowing it won't impact the rest of the story.

When we finally catch up to our old friends in real time, the Grebulons are bearing down on earth, warming up the death rays.  Not only has no time passed, but we have jumped back a good five minutes before the end of the world.  And given Zaphod enough time to show up to the rescue in the Heart of Gold.

The rest of the story moves forward in a fairly predictable(!) manner. The characters say they will do something and they do it, in a straightforward way.  There are only three main terrestrial locations and three space craft.  There are only two new major characters.  And the old ones don't always have much to add to the story. They are over-familiar with the territory; planetary destruction not the shock it once was. So, Colfer grants them some maturity.  Um. Yeah. Arthur becomes paternal and a bit adventurous toward the end. Trillian makes a commitment to her family. Zaphod acts responsibly.  Ford, thank goodness, drinks and spends fortunes with his limitless credit account.  Some other acquaintances that show up in an attempt to liven things up are Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, and Thor.  Thor gets a major role, along with appearances of other Norse deities, which Douglas Adams had tried in The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul, and I didn't feel it worked there or here.  There is no android at all (sigh). Despite references to every creature ever mentioned in the previous books, the story feels a mite understaffed.

Before I move on from characters, a word about Zaphod.  He is the most ill-treated character in the book.  Part of me cheers his hidden talent as a modest, almost noble hero who only plays the part of an ego-maniacal celebrity with the memory of a goldfish. But he's not Zaphod.  When given a task that takes him to Asgard, he goes straight there.  No side trips or dawdling.  He even admits at the end of the book to being at the ready to save his cousin and friends whenever the next catastrophe occurs.  I don't mind wishing these traits on Zaphod, but him admitting it destroys his un-credibility.

Which brings me to my composition points.  Colfer is spot on with his style mimicking the rest of the Guide, but his content lacks the subtlety and complexion.  Its too coherent.  So, style good, content... passable.  Structure. Oh dear.  It looks like the Guide, but it reads like a young adult novel.  I've already touched on the simplified plot and positive character growth.  The first half of the book spends far too much time throwing in references to the original Guide.  Colfer seems to be trying to impress us with his knowledge of Guide lore, and it comes across forced.  Not to forget the pop culture references.  Yes, Douglas Adams loved a sly reference, but Colfer's timing is not what it should be.  Taking a joke about modern western civilization that is more or less stolen out of Adams's annals, Colfer comes across as insulting rather than presenting humorous social commentary.  He does this more than once.  A lot of the Guide notes are elaborations of previous Guide notes. Or are direct comments on the plot, since the story is set up as a Guide entry (Adams did a lot more indirect).  And while none of the Guide notes compare to the brilliance of the towel entry, few are really all that funny.  One Guide note is the plot summary of the Matrix.  And the characters seem to have kept up with the times.  Cell phones, uBid, streaming video, etc.  The obvious time elapse echoes through the book.  Sadly, some things never seem to come comfortably to Colfer, like the  galactic slang, or the need to threaten his characters lives more than twice.  He is at his best when danger is eminent and things are forced to move quickly.

In the end, the Earth stays destroyed, Trillian falls in love, Random gets into politics, Zaphod runs for reelection, Ford sits on a beach researching the new Earth colony, Wowbagger becomes finitely prolonged, and Arthur sets up a potential sequel (but let's hope any sequels show improvement from this volume). Up until the last few pages, this book was in danger of a truly happy ending for everyone concerned.  Interestingly, the final ironic twist on the last page is the most Adams-y thing in the book.  Why couldn't there be more of those twists?

Overall, I like to view every book from Life, the Universe, and Everything (book 3) on as alternate endings: you stop whenever you feel like that is how you want to remember the characters' stories as having ended.  I like So Long, and Thanks for All  the Fish (book 4) as an ending.  But if you slog through Mostly Harmless (the most depressing book Adams ever wrote), you may need this pick-me-up.  So, it's not Adams, but the characters finally got a little more life as unexploded beings.  And that makes it all worth it.

Arthur sums it up best: "It was nice to see everybody, but why does there always have to be genocide?"  And wait till you see what Zaphod did to his head.

Definitions

I feel a little bad about my previous sentiment on LitCrit.  There is one notable aspect that I actually love: the origins of the stories we tell.  Folklore, fairy tales, fables (and to a lesser extent myth) fascinate me in that we still use these same stories in our bestsellers and blockbusters.  I love finding out how old our 'modren' concepts really are.  Similarly, I took a year of college Latin primarily because of my love for etymology.  I gave my mother a bit of a shock when an Amazon order of mine was delivered to my parents house rather than my school address.  She called me concerned, "Did you intend to order a dictionary?"  Yes, I had, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable  to be exact.  As Terry Pratchett puts it in the intro,"Brewer's is ostensibly a reference book, and an indispensible one. But it is also an idiosyncratic adventure, pulling you in and saying: 'This is, in fact, not what you're looking for; but it's much more interesting.' And, of course it usually is."  This book and others like it are resources for common English idiom and popular and literary allusion.  I keep a list in the back of phrases I try to look up but aren't included... yet.  I own the 17th edition, but the 18th has already been published.

I have a few standard dictionaries (Webster, Spanish to English, Latin), but the internet is rapidly making them obsolete.  Dictionary.com is my friend when I write, particularly its thesaurus.  Also in my collection is Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary, which I picked up for a dollar somewhere or other.  It is notably the only dictionary I read for pleasure, although I'm only to "I".  Definitions on this blog will be regularly supplemented with entries from The Devil's Dictionary.  I also have a passion for books of miscellany, but will relegate these to another post.

 The root of dictionary is diction— style of speaking or writing as dependent on choice of words and -ary a suffix denoting objects, esp. receptacles or places.  Therefore, a dictionary is a word receptacle.*

Literature has roots in the latin 'literatus'— learned, scholarly, which comes from 'lettre'— alphabetic character. 'Litterature' means grammar.  So, only written, grammatical, scholarly works count as literature. Sorry, internet.

And for the record: criticism— the act of passing judgment as to the merits of anything. Critic comes from a Greek word meaning "skilled in judging".*  I rest my case.


* From The Devil's Dictionary (henceforth FDD):
dictionary- a malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic.
critic- a person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.

Specialists in Whodunnits

I was underwhelmed when I finally got around to watching an episode of Castle. The Halloween episode, mind you. The formula was there, the acting good, so what was wrong? Perhaps it's just a matter of taste, but I started looking deeper into the issue of current programming. There is seemingly a current trend on television for cop shows and what appears to be an off-shoot—specialists. Cop shows have enjoyed a long and glorious run of TV programming, but their roots reach further back to the detective novels and mystery stories of the Victorian era. They developed into film noir private eyes in the forties and in 1990 culminated in Law and Order. But L&O and similar shows have deviated from the detectives and private eyes who operated in a limited number community of aristocracy, clergy, servants, and the mysterious stranger. Criminal Psychology has advanced, but where they notably depart from the old form is by use of officers, lawyers, judges, forensic experts and anyone involved in the practical world of crime-stopping. Previously, the detective spent an evening snow-bound in a mansion (or on a train) and had solved the mystery by morning solely through his “little gray cells”. The curtain closed with the knowledge that law enforcement was on its way, conviction a certainty. In those days who could have foreseen an arraingment (fraught with peril) would be a staple of prime time entertainment?

Judge and lawyer shows are now their own offshoot hardly connected with the mystery solving lineage. Similarly, medical dramas have root in searching out the culprit, in this case disease. Obviously, these shows are popular, with spin offs and copy-cats. Because a popular formula is guaranteed money, and if each iteration is more banal than the last, we can at least be sure of the iron-clad formula (the butler did it). Now, cop shows are less episodic with season thru-lines— This Season’s Bad Guy!— and when pressed for ratings tend to drift to the soap-y side of television This is more true of medical dramas, who have built in high stakes and are adaptable to multiple formulas. The truest to the mystery form is, of course, Dr. House, a crusty Holmes to Wilson’s Watson.

But what about some good, old-fashioned, no-holds-barred bit o’ detectin’ like the formula started with Poe's "The Murders in Rue Morgue" in 1841? If you find cop shows too reality based, despite their best efforts to spice things up, never fear, there is an entire sub-genre truer to the old form that is so prolific right now, which I have dubbed specialist shows.

There are 3 types. The first is the specialist or professional. He or she may be a retired LEO or an expert in a field of science or an expert in crime. He is hired to work with the agency or department for certain types of cases. Examples past and present: Columbo, Magnum PI, Monk, Bones, Numbers, White Collar, Dexter. I don’t count CSI. That is a cop show heavy on forensics. Dexter may work for The Man, but all his real work gets done after hours. Our specialists operate outside of departmental restrictions, solve cases single-handedly, and defy authority, making for good television.

Secondly, and more spectacularly (read ‘spectacle-based’), are the “specialists”. These people have NO business solving crime. They should not be allowed in a police station, let alone at a crime scene. But it so happens that solving crime is what they are preternaturally good at. Examples: Murder, She Wrote, Diagnosis Murder, Psych/The Mentalist, Castle (updated Murder She Wrote?), Medium….. so on and so forth. At first the cops try to enforce some sort of boundaries, but as a series progresses, our “specialist” is allowed full run of all facilities, few questions asked. Now, supernatural or psychological, they do earn their keep, but they commit enough crimes along the way that should have gotten them locked up.

And third, the rogue specialists. This is (apparently) what happens when the first 2 groups get kicked out of the station/agency/what-have-you. They are the Robin Hoods of our day. There’s no veneer here; they ARE committing crimes to stop evil. Any cops, etc. on these shows tend to be villains. Examples: A-Team, Burn Notice, Leverage. Royal Pains get an honorable mention for being the only rogue doctor show currently airing that I know of.

I love these show, for the most part. I have seen at least one episode of almost every current “cop show” on TV. But like sequels, each iteration has a tendency to decay, especially if you know the formula and are in danger of getting bored with it. Here is my specialist formula (may it stay confined to only already airing shows for awhile):

Specialist: Hey, I know who the murderer is!

Cop: Cool! That’s helpful, now scram.

Specialist: But I could help you. Please be won over by my charm and good looks.

Cop: Look we have rules and procedures.

Specialist: Look a murderer!

Cop: Darn. I guess we should start paying you. As long as you do what we tell you.

Specialist: You can trust me. I have no secret dark past and no agenda in helping you. See my disarming smile?

Cop: How do you know so much about crime?

Specialist: I read detective novels (or write them, let’s be honest). Look a murderer!

Cop: What were you doing while my back was turned?

Specialist: Nothing you need to worry about.

And so forth. So my problem with Castle? I already watch the same show, for one. And while I could watch just for the sake of Nathan Fillion, I already paid my penance with years of watching One Life To Live with my grandmother. Or, maybe I’m just still upset that Dollhouse has been cancelled.

Foreword

My name is Sarah and I was an English minor, much to my father's disappointment. He wanted, and still wants, me to be a literary critic. He seems to think I have a natural gift for criticism. I love literature, but struggled to get through my upper level college classes. Here's the problem: I want to read what interests me, discuss it, and not have to put that discussion in MLA format by the end of the semester. I enjoy learning for the sake of learning. I also have a problem with the concept of criticism as a field. Mainly the part where people get PhD's in order to write editorials about dead authors, expecting to change the popular conception of the piece. Because criticism is opinion— highly educated opinion, but still.

To clarify, I am not cynical of literature, just criticism. But because of my tendency toward it, regardless of my refusal to pursue it, I find I am in need of an outlet. And where better to air my opinion than the internet? Everyone else is doing it...

What you can expect:

Very little research. I'll try to make dates accurate and give an idea of where I came by facts, but I promise nothing.

Eclectic genres. When I have time to read something classic, it'll make an appearance, but anything I see, watch, or hear is fair game.

Tangents. I never really liked trig enough to let the concept soak in. If you don't get it, prepare for trouble in the future.

Logic leaps. See tangents. Though to be fair, I try to explain, but my explanations don't always break down the leap enough.

Thinly veiled attempts at wit. See above.

Literary and movie allusions without source reference. Be prepeared.

Good grammar and vocabulary.

Not so good punctuation. Every time I go into a book store I think about buying a book on punctuation, but I am usually waylaid by the Scifi section.

And now, I'll leave you with a few definitions.

Cynic- a person who believes that only selfishness motivates human actions and who disbelieves in or minimizes selfless acts or disinterested points of view
  -OR-

one of a sect of Greek philosophers (4th century bc) who advocated the doctrines that virtue is the only good, that the essence of virtue is self-control, and that surrender to any external influence is beneath human dignity. (dictionary.com)
  -Also- 
 a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision. (The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce)