My Story: "It begins with a house."
Not long ago, in an aging industrial city on the western shores of The Great Lakes, there stood an historic building known as Century Hall. Next to this was a three story pea-green house with a long porch which was a perfect place for sitting and watching pedestrians make their ways to and from the nearby crossroads of Farwell and North, a focal point of the city’s busy and fashionable East Side.
Past the gate and down a narrow walk between these was a small cottage nestled into a corner of the tall, ivy covered brick walls which completed a full enclosure, encompassing the gardens of the cottage’s former owner and a patch of feral grass and trees behind the hall. All these elements combined to give this little oasis of quiet its unique urban charm.
The cottage was where I once lived the bohemian lifestyle of a part time student, and where one day a roommate happened to notice my Hitchhiker books and asked if I knew why it is so vitally important to always know where your towel is. I answered that a traveler with their own towel gives the impression of being well prepared, and so can ask for anything, which a host will gladly provide, thinking it was just the odd thing which happened to be lost along the way. True, Scott replied, but this wasn’t the reason he had in mind. That was the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. I had to ask.
He described The Beast as not only the most ravenous creature in the universe, but also fortunately the most stupid. This was a creature so stupid, it believed that if you couldn’t see it, it couldn’t see you. I loved it instantly. Aside from being a brilliant application of the innate childrens defense of hiding behind the sofa cushions from monsters on TV, it also facilitated a very practical defense for galactic hitchhikers in potential threat from The Beast. Simply don’t look.
Of course, the conscious non-doing of something is a very tricky recreational impossibility. And so for those times when unfortunate gazes happen to meet, there is the towel. The Beast will have already begun charging upon the sight of a glance, so your only defense then is a towel at the ready to throw over your head, causing The Beast to stop dead in it’s tracks, having no clue as to what it had been after in the first place.
Upon hearing this description, I had an epiphany of sorts. I had always known it was the topsy turvy sense of logic and lunatic imagination which made DNA’s work so enjoyable. But now I reasoned that if I had no memory of an invention as wildly inspired as the RBbBOT, there might be as much fun in these books a second time round. And so there was.
In fact, I’ve since read all of DNA’s books more than “a suffusion of yellow” times, and though the novelty of the stories for me is now gone, over the course of time I have come to appreciate that it is and always has been the craftsmanship of the writing which kept me coming back for more.
It was the voice.
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iDOThalf4
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"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."