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

Today I’m investigating Hitchcock’s “secret” cameo in NBNW. There’s the woman on the train who gives the ticket collector a funny look and some people think it’s Hitchcock himself. I’ve looked at it closely. The face is his but the body is too thin. I don’t know if that sort of trick photography was around in 1959. One observer says also that the “woman’s” hands are too big. True. I think it is him somehow, a joke of his. He dressed up in drag for dinner parties at home, so it is said.

I started reading the Talented Mr. Ripley yesterday. It’s a short book, so if it turns out to be bad, no harm done. After weighing through Travels with my Aunt, I suppose it’s a change.

It’s funny how a writer can be hailed as great and then not stand up to the tests of time. That is certainly the case with Graham Greene. I think we have to be motivated to read, and we need a good character. The humdrum character can easily become a bore, which is the case in TWMA. Yet so many people said he was great. Nowadays people have so much to do that we don’t have to swallow just anything that’s thrown at us. Maybe in their day, Maugham and Greene were seen as great writers. They certainly had great skill with words, the problem is the stories. Maybe back in their day, writing about a consul in Hong Kong and his sex life had an exotic or risqué air to it, but nowadays it’s just plain boring.