Mostly Harmless...

[jsbowden]

I reread The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and it's followups over the last week (I finally gave up any hope of finding my first print leather bound omnibus and bought The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide in hardcover last time I hit B&N, which includes Mostly Harmless which my old one didn't as it hadn't been written yet when it was pubished).

Is it just me, or does Mostly Harmless totally not fit? I'd only read it once previously, and when I read it then, it had been a while since I read the books that preceeded it so I missed it in that context the first time around. Having read all five serially over the course of a week, Mostly Harmless is jarring.

The book reads like Adams had grown to hate his creation. I don't know, maybe I'm imagining it, but the tone of MH feels actively hostile towards the characters and the reader. Is it just me?

Comments

[leighdb.livejournal.com]

ISTR something about Adams apologizing for how he treated his characters in MH. In any case, it was clear from various interviews and stuff that he really had, if not grown to hate the Hitchhiker books, had certainly gotten very sick of them.

So, no, it's not just you.