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

It's been 5 weeks since your last journal entry. I keep checking, hoping for another gem....

So do I...

Well, then...if *you* keep checking your own journal for gems, then I think maybe you better fire your ghostwriter. He's slacking off at the job.

He's busy working on a couple of Guide articles for me, but I have to admit I've not been terribly impressed with the results so far. Over-long and over-wordy, with an intolerable smugness about the general tone - hasn't captured my true spirit at all...

I have just read two of your ghostwriter's guide entries. The one on nonsense poetry is fascinating, and as with the article on the Markov chain, I have little to no background in the subject but had little trouble following the article. The article on Thoreau inspired me. I am going to take a drive out to Walden Pond State Reservation in Concord before I leave for Europe.

I didn't read the Oswald piece because I have had enough Kennedy to last two lifetimes. And my birthday is Nov. 22. I will never forget my 6th birthday party.

It is too bad that the guide entries are so far down on the homepages. I tend not to scroll down that far. But...now I will not be impatient. I will reread the nonsense one again and again. Perhaps I will be able to contribute a comment or two.

I'm glad you enjoyed the Guide articles. Any comments are always welcome, especially from you because you always say such nice things... Of course... I should have registered the Thoreau connection - he was from New England too, wasn't he? I feel a bit embarrassed teaching Americans their own history. Seems a bit arrogant, somehow... Actually, I'd be interested to learn what sort of position he has in American culture today. Is he still quite a popular figure - I mean, do you learn about him in school and so forth? Or has he disappeared into total obscurity? I don't think many people know about him over here. I just happened to come across his name in a Paul Auster novel (Ghosts), followed the lead out of simple curiosity and ended up absorbed in this highly eccentric way of living, which seemed to me to make as much sense as any other I've come across. A revelation...


By coincidence, I've just been editing the nonsense piece, and have decided to split it up into two separate articles - one attempting to define nonsense in general terms, and the other dealing specifically with the seventeenth century stuff. So there you are - more bang for your buck, or whatever the expression is...


The article on Oswald stinks, actually, so you're not missing a great deal there. That's one that should never have got off the drawing board. I might even cancel it - or else, look around for someone to collaborate with. Know of any paranoid conspiracy theorists on h2g2? Apart from me, of course...

If I had to give a guess about conspiracy theorists on h2g2, I'd go for GargleBlaster. One of these days I am going to take him on myself

Thoreau is conspicuously absent in my brief American literature sojourn. Now there is a conspiracy theory. The man is from the area, his name is bandied about to promote environmental issues and he certainly is a well-known figure. You would think he'd be in the canon. I studied Twain, Alcott, Poe, and a few others whose names escape me, but no Thoreau. And there could have been a field trip for that! The "official" Thoreau site is at http://www.walden.org/thoreau . After I posted here yesterday, I went to the site and found out next week is the "Annual Gathering" of "Thoreauvians." Lots of lectures and nature walks. I think I will wait 'til I return from Europe to make my pilgrimage there. I don't know that I want to get involved in a Thoreau lovefest

I saw that you spilt up the nonsense piece and it works very well this way. You have worked a bit more on the Markov piece but there is still that one question mark about ATT and it looks like you may be stuck for an ending. Have you just lost interest in it? And I just noticed that you use ellipses a great deal. My most recent English professor would have you lashed 40 times for each one. I usually don't agree with her (she is horribly old-fashion), but in this case I think I would like to see the articles end with periods. Ellipsis stand for an omission and you shouldn't leave an article with the suggestion there are omissions. I do understand it may just be a writing style, though. The only reason I shy away from them is because this one professor marked me very low for using them in an interview. I always thought four dots meant a pause and three meant an omission. She said that was not an accepted form of usage, though.

Okay…so much for being picky. I still think the things you have written are intelligent and beautiful. There are lots of intelligent entries out there, but beautiful is almost a rarity.

My dear Zmrzlina, there are *always* omissions... Yes, I like ellipses and use them all the time, possibly a little too much. Some of my favourite writers - Burroughs, Pynchon - use them a great deal and I suppose I've picked up their bad habits. I didn't realise there was a semantic difference between three and four dots. I might be wrong, but I think it's just an aesthetic choice. Personally I prefer four, but normally use three because it seems to be the convention. But I can't understand how even an English teacher could be pedantic enough to insist on one or the other...

I think GB's energies are already spoken for, fighting the forces of unreason on behalf of sceptics everywhere. I wouldn't want to bother him with trivialities...

Thanks for that Thoreau link. I've put it at the bottom of the page, I'll try to work it in to the main text somehow. It does seem a bit odd that Thoreau should have been blanked out of your literary education. He's generally regarded as a master of prose - not just a highly interesting figure, but also a great writer. What's this Walden Pond state reservation? I imagine it's a kind of museum based around the remains of this house he built and lived in. Is any of it still there - the house, I mean? I'll bet he built it to last. It'll probably still be there long after the rest of America has disappeared in a cloud of poisonous rubble...

Anyway, back to the chessboard...

Okay, okay. So the ellipses are part of your style. Pedantic I am not, so I won't say another word about them

There are very few American writers' courses at my university. I have no idea why. There are tons and tons of British literature courses, though. I have not been to Walden Pond, but I have heard of it often enough. There is a museum there and I believe some original structures. I have a Japanese guest coming in August and I think I'll plan a day there and give her one of his books. She is going to be studying in the States, so I might as well get her started on a decent American writer.

And the US isn't going to disappear into a poisonous anything! Don't you know Americans are like cockroaches? You can never get rid of us!

I think even the cockroaches will have trouble surviving on what we humans leave behind...

That Thoreau site's a nice one to look round. I notice it has a good selection of his writings as well, so I think I might be going back there. I don't know what your Japanese visitor will make of Thoreau, though. She might get a bit of a lop-sided view of the country, if that's all she reads. I recommend a bit of something nasty and violent to give balance...

So which British writers have you read? And when you say 'British' do you mean 'English', or are you referring to Scottish & Welsh writers too? People don't always make the distinction. Graham Swift is one of the few English writers that I have much admiration for. Pat Barker is another. Generally I try to avoid the London literary 'scene', even though I'm a Londoner myself - a lot of it seems a bit shallow...

Okay...for British authors... Austen, :::shudder:::: Butler, the Brontes, Braddon, Chaucer, Coleridge, Donne, Eliot, Gaskell, Keats, Herbert, Plumptre, Charlotte Smith, Wordsworth, Shelley, Shakspeare, Swift, Woolfe and lots more in brief. I am well aware Scottish and Welsh writers are considered British and I don't think I've mentioned any of the above. And Woolfe is the only modern writer. I have volumes of notes on the above authors. I should sit down and make a list with a few pitty comments on each and then attach it to my homepage.

I am sure my Japanese guest will have read plenty of American fiction to prevent any kind of scale tipping toward good.

You'll have to forgive me for stilted style tonight. I just got back from the dentist and it was a strange ride. Still not feeling clear.

If you were shuddering at the thought of Jane Austen then we have something in common. All that obsessive attention to manners makes me want to run out and scream 'Down with the Bourgeoisie!' at the top of my voice. And I'm a moderate in politics...

I notice all of the writers on that list died two hundred years(ish) or more ago, with the one exception - as you say - of Virginia Woolf. I don't know whether this says more about the English literary scene or simply the way it tends to get taught in universities (here as well as in America). I quite like to look at some of the more contemporary English writers too. But they don't tend to have the market value of the 'classic' writers - not so profitable for publishers and film-makers...