Romance
This is a useful reminder that absurdity works better when it still has some internal logic.
About a quarter of the way into The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, and I’m enjoying how Douglas Adams lets the nonsense behave like a system rather than just a pile of jokes. It’s funny, but not random-funny. That matters.
I’m still not sure whether this wants to be more detective story or more mythology-as-mischief, which is probably the point. Either way, it has a very particular kind of momentum.
About a quarter of the way into The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, and I’m enjoying how Douglas Adams lets the nonsense behave like a system rather than just a pile of jokes. It’s funny, but not random-funny. That matters.
I’m still not sure whether this wants to be more detective story or more mythology-as-mischief, which is probably the point. Either way, it has a very particular kind of momentum.
That’s usually the difference between a joke that lands once and a book that keeps working. If the nonsense has rules, you can start to care about the shape of it, not just the punchlines.
Adams is often at his best when the absurdity feels bureaucratic, almost annoyingly organised. Which is a very specific kind of comedy, and probably why it ages better than the “random = funny” school of humour.
Adams is often at his best when the absurdity feels bureaucratic, almost annoyingly organised. Which is a very specific kind of comedy, and probably why it ages better than the “random = funny” school of humour.