Douglas Lives!
There is a picture I have, of a man. It’s in black and white; it’s a closeup of his face. The hair is dark, longish and curly, and a wayward group of bangs falls over one eyebrow. He looks slightly surprised. His eyes are wide and his mouth compressed in a sort of twist that says, “Oh really?” This is the face of a man somewhat less than thirty, who has just been launched into something that would make him internationally famous— just as a result of an idea that came to him one night while he was lying drunk in a field. It’s the face of a man of solid British phlegm, and no trace of the odd sense of humor that runs rampant in his enterprising brain disturbs it.
His was a grand humor. His was a wit that was not only barbed, but studded with razor blades and bits of broken bottles as well. His was a silly and self-deprecating smile, and his was a genius that was true genius— a genius that made his audience dream. He favored the crazy, lunatic, wordy type of humor. Where better to create this than the blacknesss of outer space? He called into being a slightly wretched character named Arthur Dent. In the first chapter of first book, he destroyed Arthur’s house. In the second chapter, he destroyed his planet. He gave him a best friend to comfort him, then revealed that the best friend was in fact an alien. He sent him on crazy adventures in which he lost everything that was dear to him, and gained two hundred percent more, only to lose that in turn.
Douglas was a writer and a humorist. Unlike many other writers, he not only embraced advances in technology, he married it. When he started out in the business world about thirty five years ago, he was a chicken-shed cleaner. When he died at age 49 not long ago, he was a writer of novels and screenplays, a computer programmer, a guitar player who played with Pink Floyd for his 42nd birthday, an environmental activist, a not-quite-convinced athiest; he’d gone through radio, books, newspaper, and magazine articles, short stories, television, the internet, and was about to burst onto the silver screen. He was also husband, father, and very proud dog owner. His name Douglas Noel Adams; he always loved his initials.
I have tapes of him reading his Hitch Hiker’s Guide book. Half the time, that deep British voice seems to hate the words he is intoning, and the other half the time he loves every syllable— that’s the writer in him. He changes voices for each character— gently quirky for Ford Prefect, outraged and bewildered for Arthur, serious for Trillian, overly casual for Zaphod Beelbebrox, depressed for Marvin— that’s the actor in him. There are many odd little moments when his voice subsides to a whisper and then catches suddenly before he goes on. In those split seconds, I sense how far he’s come, and how far, he feels, he still has to go.
That’s the heart in him.
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