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Tuesday, June 28, 2005The Oh So Sophisticated Don DeBrandtThe Anthology at the End of the Universe is a book of essays exploring different aspects of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. One of the essays is Don DeBrandt's "That about wraps it up for Oolon Colluphid," which purports to show the existence of God and something resembling divine purpose in the universe Adams offers. DeBrandt's essay isn't half bad. The half-baked reasoning seems loopily apropos for deciphering a world of Vogon poets, Bugblatter Beasts and the like. But there's a very earthly tic that reduces what could be a good essay to an interesting period piece. Take a gander at the following: ...if you're looking for mindless entertainment and a few cheap laughs, go download some presidential quotes... [though this is a good way to describe the reading of "Bushisms"] (12)The essay is ridiculous, not to say ingenious, and pulls things out of The Guide that I hadn't noticed on my roughly dozen readings. But the throwaway lines, all unnecessary to the flow of the piece, distract. A few days ago, the San Francisco Chronicle's Datebook section had a write-up of a revival of Gershwin. The piece lamented that the updating consisted mostly of lame references to Cheney and Iraq: Each show was telescoped into a one-hour running time with a narrated summary, which struggled to bring things up to date through a few unfunny references to WMD and vice-presidential undisclosed locations.When even the Chron notices that simply jabbing the Republicans isn't the same as humor, it leaves the impression that the liberal memes of the last few years have worn out their welcome. One wonders if the obviously intelligent likes of DeBrandt will, Kant-style, awaken from their dogmatic slumbers, dumping the mindless jabs, or whether the tics associated with Bush Derangement Syndrome will keep an entire generation of otherwise intelligent liberals from reaching their potential. * * * By the way, in the same volume Vox Day has an excellent piece on the economic and policy implications of the subtext of the Hitchhiker series, noting that Adams seems libertarian more than liberal given his jokes about high taxes, unpleasant civil servants and eminent domain (the article includes a reference to the New London case when it was at the state level!). 
posted by gbarto at 11:30 PM |
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