h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Stunned. And as I try to think of something to say, my first thought is personal, about my reaction to the piece.

Perhaps because I saw it coming early on I experienced no titillation, no arousal. That may sound like a strange first comment and perhaps even a bit callous. But the fact is that most rape scenes, especially in film and TV, are designed to arouse and titillate. I normally object to them all on that basis, angered that sexual brutality and violence is so often portrayed in a stimulating way.

There was a scene in a Clint Eastwood movie (maybe it was High Plains Drifter) where Clint's character, tired of the attitude of an arrogant town woman, dragged her into a barn and had at her on the haybales. It was more than mildly violent, and the characters had been set up so that a male audience would have been cheering for the apparent justice of the act, and then it became a passionate display as it so often does in films when the woman finally gets interested and participates energetically; the transition from violence to passion being the normal Hollywood take on this sort of thing.

I recall deciding I didn't like Clint Eastwood much after that even though it turns out the actress involved was in fact his real life wife. This explained the extreme realism of the sexual passion but still did not justify the violence.

Beyond that long boring selfish explanation of MY reaction to the subject I guess I really don't have much more to say about it. It is very well written.

My only editorial suggestion is to find all the uses of phrases like 'as if' and delete at least one. That is my only literary criticism. I don't recall where it was but just once I was asked to consider one too many comparisons of something being 'as if' or some such phrase and I felt it should have been a more emphatic comparison, a more dramatic analogy that some propositional 'maybe it was like this or that'.

I realise her clouded imagery comes out of the apparent drug induced confusion of her thinking but nearer the end, just when the drama became all too real, the 'as if' seemed to indefinite, too clouded, an inappropriate comparitive analogy. At the height of the action and violence it might be better if she 'struggled to imagine' or could 'not distinguish' between the comparitives rather than to be speculating (as if) on 'possible' comparitives.

My god, I am really being very picky here about the one time my mind stumbled over something along the path of what I was reading. But everything else worked perfectly and I was completely swept up in it.



After a re-read I find the water being 'as hot as it would go' only re-inforces the 'as' problem. While not related in any way to the other issue of comparing one reality to another it requires the same sort of thought (as if) process in the reader to consider just how hot that might be. Probably too hot. But don't let me think that. Just tell us it was 'too hot' and that maybe for a moment she didn't care or something. I'm sure this bit of dramatic business in the shower should be spelled out precisely never letting the reader wonder about just how hot is too hot... or some such.

Really impressive. And like I said, uniquely frank about the brutal nature of the act. Never once making it appealing or arousing in any way, never once suggesting she was anything but an innocent victim, you present this grim and painful brutality as a criminal act with no justification. As it should be. Well done.


~jwf~