Oolite Bulletins

Personally in his lifetime I had been wondering if he'll ever write a non-"Adams-ish" fiction, taking all his readers, critics etc. totally by surprise.
Like for example Kotzwinkle wrote Swimmer in the Secret Sea.
alas ...
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You may have no idea how terribly difficult it is to read Adams' works with only so-lala school English as a base; if you did not already read them in your native language.
The HHGttG is - it is mostly "vocabularily" difficult.
I try to avoid looking words up in a disctionary when reading books - on the one hand, once looking up 1 word leads to looking up the next word and the next and it always ends in never getting into the book.
On the other hand, a word/ expression is either important enough to appear several times so it sooner or later may explain itself by its context, or it isn't so important and not worth interrupting the reading-flow.
But with the HHGttG in the end I often wasn't sure if a word / expression "really" existed or if Adams made them up (from top of head example : mindboggingly - exists).
And when reading (or listening) foreign language, I pick things up - the result can be awkward.
(when I started reading English books it was Raymond Chandler's longs - me adopting lots of his version of 1940's talk, and "Chandler-style" metaphors. )

Particularly Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (pre-ordered import in pre-internet times ) - I was into chapter 8 or so and nothing really made sense, still no coherence nowhere - sigh. Very frustrating, the chapter with this entity ? awakening ?, unfolding ? , ... was hardly comprehensible at all to me.
And the German edition was still in the works, so no escape. Arrgh.

When later in the book things started to finally fall into place, it felt like headache disappearing.

I have it on tape and listen to it from time to time.
I have always found it very odd that the Peter Jones who was the voice of the book is the same Peter Jones who was the old man on Just A Minute, who died 12 years ago

book on tape ? I have a tape copy of the fanclub (4-?) LP edition of the radio show somewhere (do I still ? *crosses fingers*), can recommend it.

snork wrote:

Personally in his lifetime I had been wondering if he'll ever write a non-"Adams-ish" fiction, taking all his readers, critics etc. totally by surprise.

It certainly would now!

snork wrote:

book on tape ?

It is all the BBC radio programmes on audio cassette. The tape version of this.

The whole original radio 4 broadcast is available on CD.
Don't worry Snork DGHIA, had the same effect on me.
They've toned it down for TV (a bit) but the DA humour still shines through.
Didn't the BBC do a pilot of DG a year or so back?

NigelJK wrote:

The whole original radio 4 broadcast is available on CD.

Wednesday 8th March 1978 22:30 – I’m just about to switch to Radio 3 from Radio 4 and not really listening, when the continuity announcer introduces the next program, something about hitch-hikers guides. Having been amused when reading the hitch-hikers guide to europe, I decide to give it a listen. From the first chords of Journey of the Sorcerer, I knew something special had arrived, and listened enchanted... the rest is history, as they say.

Every 25th of May I carry a towel with me. In fact I wait for people to come up to me and say "why are you carrying a towell with you?", so that I can have the pleasure of explaining. Douglas Adams is one of the best reasons to be British.

Happy 60th Birthday Douglas Adams.

I have my towel at the ready.

Wonder what you would have made of Facebook, Twitter and the iPad (to name but three things that came into existence in the 11 years since you shuffled off this mortal coil)

El Viejo wrote:

NigelJK wrote:

The whole original radio 4 broadcast is available on CD.

Wednesday 8th March 1978 22:30 – I’m just about to switch to Radio 3 from Radio 4 and not really listening, when the continuity announcer introduces the next program, something about hitch-hikers guides. Having been amused when reading the hitch-hikers guide to europe, I decide to give it a listen. From the first chords of Journey of the Sorcerer, I knew something special had arrived, and listened enchanted... the rest is history, as they say.

This is so the best way, to accidentally stumble into some wonderful program.

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Wardy wrote:

Every 25th of May I carry a towel with me. In fact I wait for people to come up to me and say "why are you carrying a towell with you?", so that I can have the pleasure of explaining. Douglas Adams is one of the best reasons to be British.

Hehe, a friend and me for years were the only ones to always show up fully equipped* to the HHGttG shows - meaning they would show all 6 episodes in a row in a cinema show-and-dance-hall also used as cinema (early video-beamers) on working days. **
* dressing gowns, towels, satchels full with beer in cans and salted peanuts muscle-relaxant and protein-and-electrolytes-source - though they would never let us in for free, they didn't take away our beer/peanuts.

What they used to show had been a VCR-recording from TV, not cleanly edited, so between the episodes you got tv-announcing, and at one point even a most hilarious episode of "the 7th sense" - a short TV-show about "traffic security" and accident dangers in everyday life, like flowerpots falling from balconies. (really, I am not making this up.)

But the hall was always packed, I mean really really really packed, when they showed this program.


(** the Modernes, in Bremen, Germany)

<Bump!>

and a link:

http://towelday.org/

I tried to light a candle in his memory. It burnt exactly the same way that wicks don't.

Cheers,

Drew.

I like to keep his teachings where I need them the most.



!m!

Rarely does a day pass when I don't play Journey of the Sorcerer - several times!

Cody wrote:

Rarely does a day pass when I don't play Journey of the Sorcerer - several times!

I didn't know that that was the source of the Hitchhiker music. I do now (courtesy of this thread, and of Wikipedia)!