What I Read This Weekend
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
Summertime is the perfect moment to embrace levity and allow for a proper reset. There are as many ways to do this as there are people. But for many, the surest route remains the pages of a good book.
Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ought to be prescribed. Originally drawn from the 1970s BBC radio sitcom, it offers such a complete break from reality that one emerges slightly dazed, oddly comforted, and more than a little suspicious of official planning notices. Beneath the farce, however, lies something more enduring: a meditation on truth, meaning, and knowledge. Not to mention the importance of reading incoming mail.
Whether it is Arthur Dent’s bewilderment, Ford Prefect’s curiosity, or Zaphod Beeblebrox’s flamboyant chaos, each character brings a different form of human confusion. All of it is filtered through Marvin, the chronically depressed robot who somehow sees the world more clearly than anyone else.
Throughout its pages, the novel addresses important questions (“What is the meaning of life?”), teaches patience when dealing with overzealous civil servants (the Vogons), and reminds us that life is long and the universe is small. After all, President Beeblebrox’s girlfriend once nearly fell for Arthur Dent at a mundane cocktail party on the now-destroyed Earth. And the book may well change the way you look at mice and dolphins.
Perhaps that is the genius of Mr. Adams’s universe. Its absurdity does not obscure reality. Instead, it reveals it. In a world that often feels more individualistic, shared laughter may be the last rational response.
I hope you will allow this superbly funny yet subtly wise novel to accompany you, whether on a sandy beach or a cool mountain top. And in both cases, do not leave home without your towel.