Today is turning out to be a bad day for me to post things, but I’ve been inspired by Witty & Sarcastic Bookclub’s thread on Twitter to revisit this post (and a similar one). So, why not repost it while I consider revising the list? From wayyyyyy back in 2020.
Part of what made cutting last week’s Top 5 Opening Lines down to just five was that I knew this was coming. I let myself go a little long with these, hopefully not annoyingly so. These may not be the best openings I’ve ever read, but they’re the most memorable.
White Noise by Don DeLillo
This is just one of those novels that imprinted on me in ways I don’t fathom, and it all started like this.
The station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus. In single file they eased around the orange I-beam sculpture and moved toward the dormitories. The roofs of the station wagons were loaded down with carefully secured suitcases full of light and heavy clothing; with boxes of blankets, boots and shoes, stationery and books, sheets, pillows, quilts; with rolled-up rugs and sleeping bags; with bicycles, skis, rucksacks, English and Western saddles, inflated rafts. As cars slowed to a crawl and stopped, students sprang out and raced to the rear doors to being removing the objects inside; the stereo sets, radios, personal computers; small refrigerators and table ranges; the cartons of phonograph records and cassettes; the hairdryers and styling irons; the tennis rackets, soccer balls, hockey and lacrosse sticks, bows and arrows; the controlled substances, the birth control pills and devices; the junk food still in shopping bags—onion-and-garlic chips, nacho things, peanut creme patties, Waffelos and Kabooms, fruit chews and toffee popcorn; the Dum-Dum pops, the Mystic mints.
I’ve witnessed this spectacle every September for twenty-one years. It is a brilliant event, invariable. The students greet each other with comic cries and gestures of sodden collapse. Their summer has been bloated with criminal pleasures, as always. The parents stand sun-dazes near their automobiles, seeing images of themselves in every direction. The conscientious suntans. The well-made faces and wry looks. They feel a sense of renewal, of communal recognition. The women crisp and alert, in diet trim, knowing people’s names. Their husbands content to measure out the time, distant but ungrudging, accomplished in parenthood, something about them suggesting massive insurance coverage. This assembly of station wagons, as much as anything they might do in the course of the year, more than formal liturgies or laws, tells the parents they are a collection of the like-minded and the spiritually akin, a people, a nation.
The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O’Connor
O’Connor’s the perfect mix of Southern sensibility, Roman Catholic worldview, and glorious prose.
FRANCIS MARION TARWATER’S uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up. Buford had come along about noon and when he left at sundown, the boy, Tarwater, had never returned from the still.
The old man had been Tarwater’s great-uncle, or said he was, and they had always lived together so far as the child knew. His uncle had said he was seventy years of age at the time he had rescued and undertaken to bring him up; he was eighty-four when he died. Tarwater figured this made his own age fourteen. His uncle had taught him Figures, Reading, Writing, and History beginning with Adam expelled from the Garden and going on down through the presidents to Herbert Hoover and on in speculation toward the Second Coming and the Day of Judgment.
The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout
I could’ve filled this list with Stout beginnings. But I limited myself to this one.
Since it was deciding factor, I might as well begin by describing it. It was a pink slip of paper three inches wide and seven inches long, and it told the First National City Bank to pay to the order of Nero Wolfe one hundred thousand and 00/100 dollars. Signed, Rachel Bruner. It was there on Wolfe’s desk, where Mrs. Bruner had put it. After doing so, she had returned to the red leather chair.
Dead Beat by Jim Butcher
The first words I read by Butcher, got me hooked but good.
On the whole, we’re a murderous race.
According to Genesis, it took as few as four people to make the planet too crowded to stand, and the first murder was a fratricide. Genesis says that in a fit of jealous rage, the very first child born to mortal parents, Cain, snapped and popped the first metaphorical cap in another human being. The attack was a bloody, brutal, violent, reprehensible killing. Cain’s brother Abel probably never saw it coming.
As I opened the door to my apartment, I was filled with a sense of empathic sympathy and intuitive understanding.
For freaking Cain.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
This was the hardest cut from last week’s list, but I just can’t resist the moocow.
You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.
Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece—all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round—more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
I remember in our English class in High School when we were assigned this book, pretty much no one was interested. When Mr. Russo passed out the paperbacks, a few of us flipped it opened and read these first words—and suddenly we were open to the idea (didn’t last long for all of us, but that’s beside the point, we’re focused on the opening lines here). It’s stuck with me for almost 30 years, that’s gotta say something.
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo….
Neuromancer by William Gibson
This sentence was love at first glance for me. Still love it. Naturally, no one knows what color this is referring to anymore.
The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.
“It’s not like I’m using,” Case heard someone say, as he shouldered his way through the crowd around the door of the Chat. “It’s like my body’s developed this massive drug deficiency.” It was a Sprawl voice and a Sprawl joke. The Chatsubo was a bar for professional expatriates; you could drink there for a week and never hear two words in Japanese.
Ratz was tending bar, his prosthetic arm jerking monotonously as he filled a tray of glasses with draft Kirin. He saw Case and smiled, his teeth a webwork of East European steel and brown decay. Case found a place at the bar, between the unlikely tan on one of Lonny Zone’s whores and the crisp naval uniform of a tall African whose cheekbones were ridged with precise rows of tribal scars. “Wage was in here early, with two joeboys,” Ratz said, shoving a draft across the bar with his good hand. “Maybe some business with you, Case?”
Case shrugged. The girl to his right giggled and nudged him.
The bartender’s smile widened. His ugliness was the stuff of legend. In an age of affordable beauty, there was something heraldic about his lack of it.
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
Oft-parodied. Oft-imitated. Often-celebrated. Does it get better than this?
It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.
The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. he didn’t seem to be really trying.
Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone by J. K. Rowling
Why bother saying anything here?
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has—or rather had—a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
Today is turning out to be a bad day for me to post things, but I’ve been inspired by Witty & Sarcastic Bookclub’s thread on Twitter to revisit this post (and a similar one). So, why not repost it while I consider revising the list? From wayyyyyy back in 2020.
I love a good opening line. A solid opening paragraph or page is great, but an opening line that sells you on the next 200-500 pages? Magic. When I saw this list topic listed, these 5 jumped to mind—they may not be the best I’ve ever read, but they’re the most memorable.
(I tried, tried, tried to limit myself to the opening line, but I failed on a couple of them, couldn’t help myself.)
I remember in our English class in High School when we were assigned this book, pretty much no one was interested. When Mr. Russo passed out the paperbacks, a few of us flipped it opened and read these first words—and suddenly we were open to the idea (didn’t last long for all of us, but that’s beside the point, we’re focused on the opening lines here). It’s stuck with me for almost 30 years, that’s gotta say something.
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo….
Oft-parodied. Oft-imitated. Often-celebrated. Does it get better than this?
It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense.
I’ll go on and on about this book next week, so I’ll just keep my trap shut here. But man…there was something about these lines that got into my blood.
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
I’ve been trying for a few years now to come up with a tribute to Adams. This isn’t quite what I had in mind, but it’s a start. In my mind, this is a work in progress, but I’m posting it anyway. Next year’s version will be better—or at least more complete.
Some time in 7th or 8th grade (I believe), I was at a friend’s house and his brother let us try his copy of the text-based Hitchhiker’s Guide game, and we were no good at it at all. Really, it was embarrassing. However, his brother had a copy of the first novel, and we all figured that the novel held the keys we needed for success with the game (alas, it did not help us one whit). My friends all decided that I’d be the one to read the book and come back in a few days as an expert.
I fell in love with the book almost instantly and I quickly forgot about the game. Adams’ irreverent style rocked my world—could people actually get away with saying some of these things? His skewed take on the world, his style, his humor…and a depressed robot, too! It was truly love at first read. As I recall, I started re-reading it as soon as I finished it—the only time in my life I’ve done that sort of thing.
It was one of those experiences that, looking back, I can say shaped my reading and thinking for the rest of my life (make of that what you will). Were my life the subject of a Doctor Who or Legends of Tomorrow episode, it’d be one of those immutable fixed points. I got my hands on the next three books as quickly as I could (the idea of a four-volume trilogy was one of the funniest ideas I’d encountered up to that point), and devoured them. I do know that I didn’t understand all of the humor, several of the references shot past me at the speed of light, and I couldn’t appreciate everything that was being satirized. But what I did understand I thought was brilliant. Not only did I find it funny, the series taught me about comedy—how to construct a joke, how to twist it in ways a reader wouldn’t always expect, and when not to twist but to go for the obviously funny idea. The trilogy also helped me to learn to see the absurdity in life.
Years later when the final volume (by Adams) was released, I’d already cemented what I thought about the books from these frequent re-reads. I’m not sure that <b>Mostly Harmless</b> changed things much (except for making me think for the first time that maybe I didn’t want him to write more in this series). His non-Hitchhiker’s work illustrated that he was capable of making you see things in a new light–either with a smile or a sense of regret—even when he wasn’t writing the trilogy, even when he was writing non-fiction. It was never the setting or the genre—it was Adams.
But here on Towel Day—as with most of the time I talk about Adams (but I need to change that), it comes down to where I started—the Trilogy. I read the books (particularly the first) so many times that I can quote significant portions of them, and frequently do so without noticing that I’m doing that. I have (at this time) two literary-inspired tattoos, one of which is the planet logo* featured on the original US covers. In essence, I’m saying that Adams and the series that made him famous have had an outsized influence on my life and are probably my biggest enduring fandom. If carrying around a (massively useful) piece of cloth for a day in some small way honors his memory? Sure, I’m in.
So, Happy Towel Day You Hoopy Froods.
* I didn’t know it at the time, but Adams didn’t like that guy. Whoops.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)
Towel Day, for the few who don’t know, is the annual celebration of Douglas Adams’ life and work. It was first held two weeks after his death, fans were to carry a towel with them for the day to use as a talking point to encourage those who have never read HHGTTG to do so, or to just converse with someone about Adams. Adams is one of that handful of authors that I can’t imagine I’d be the same without having encountered/read/re-read/re-re-re-re-read, and so I do my best to pay a little tribute to him each year, even if it’s just carrying around a towel.
I’ve only been able to get one of my sons into Adams, he’s the taller, thinner one in the picture from a few several years ago.
(although I did get he and his younger siblings to use their towels to make themselves safe from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal a few years earlier:)
You really need to check out this comic from Sheldon Comics—part of the Anatomy of Authors series: The Anatomy of Douglas Adams.
Lit in a Nutshell gives this quick explanation of The Hitchiiker’s Guide:
TowelDay.org is the best collection of resources on the day. One of my favorite posts there is this pretty cool video, shot on the ISS by astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.
Even better—here’s an appearance by Douglas Adams himself from the old Letterman show—I’m so glad someone preserved this:
I’ve been trying for a few years now to come up with a tribute to Adams. This isn’t quite what I had in mind, but it’s a start. In my mind, this is a work in progress, but I’m posting it anyway. Next year’s version will be better—or at least more complete.
Some time in 7th or 8th grade (I believe), I was at a friend’s house and his brother let us try his copy of the text-based Hitchhiker’s Guide game, and we were no good at it at all. Really, it was embarrassing. However, his brother had a copy of the first novel, and we all figured that the novel held the keys we needed for success with the game (alas, it did not help us one whit). My friends all decided that I’d be the one to read the book and come back in a few days as an expert.
I fell in love with the book almost instantly and I quickly forgot about the game. Adams’ irreverent style rocked my world—could people actually get away with saying some of these things? His skewed take on the world, his style, his humor…and a depressed robot, too! It was truly love at first read. As I recall, I started re-reading it as soon as I finished it—the only time in my life I’ve done that sort of thing.
It was one of those experiences that, looking back, I can say shaped my reading and thinking for the rest of my life (make of that what you will). Were my life the subject of a Doctor Who or Legends of Tomorrow episode, it’d be one of those immutable fixed points. I got my hands on the next three books as quickly as I could (the idea of a four-volume trilogy was one of the funniest ideas I’d encountered up to that point), and devoured them. I do know that I didn’t understand all of the humor, several of the references shot past me at the speed of light, and I couldn’t appreciate everything that was being satirized. But what I did understand I thought was brilliant. Not only did I find it funny, the series taught me about comedy—how to construct a joke, how to twist it in ways a reader wouldn’t always expect, and when not to twist but to go for the obviously funny idea. The trilogy also helped me to learn to see the absurdity in life.
I read the books (particularly the first) so many times that I can quote significant portions of them, and frequently do so without noticing that I’m doing that. I have (at this time) two literary-inspired tattoos, one of which is the planet logo* featured on the original US covers. In essence, I’m saying that Adams and the series that made him famous have had an outsized influence on my life and are probably my biggest enduring fandom. If carrying around a (massively useful) piece of cloth for a day in some small way honors his memory? Sure, I’m in.
So, Happy Towel Day You Hoopy Froods.
* I didn’t know it at the time, but Adams didn’t like that guy. Whoops.
DETAILS:Publisher: Herb Lester Associates
Publication Date: April 15, 2023
Length: 2 pgs.
Read Date: May 6, 2023
What’s Douglas Adams’ London?
This is a map of important locations (42 of them, of course) in London for Douglas Adams, the Dirk Gently series, and/or the Hitchhiker’s Guide series.
The reverse side explains why the locations were selected and gives some biographical information about Adams’ relation to each spot. I loved learning something about Hotblack Desiato, Fenchurch’s apartment, the pizza place Dirk Gently talked about, and so on.
The Design/Art
The map itself has some nice little bits of art scattered throughout—cartoonish little sketches of things like a dolphin, a sperm whale, and a certain depressed android. Just fantastic illustrations that made an already interesting map into something you want to come back to time and again.
The people at Herb Lester Associates who put this together did a simply wonderful job.
So, what did I think about Douglas Adams’ London?
I’ve already given up on my dream of wandering around London—but, boy, howdy, this makes me want to go even more.
Keller is described as “the planet earth authority on Douglas Adams literary tourism,” and will soon publish a travel guide to London. Who better to put something like this together?
Douglas Adams’ London is a gem—even if you never get the chance to put this information into action, it’s great to have.
This post contains an affiliate link. If you purchase from it, I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you. As always, the opinions expressed are my own.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)
Towel Day, for the few who don’t know, is the annual celebration of Douglas Adams’ life and work. It was first held two weeks after his death, fans were to carry a towel with them for the day to use as a talking point to encourage those who have never read HHGTTG to do so, or to just converse with someone about Adams. Adams is one of that handful of authors that I can’t imagine I’d be the same without having encountered/read/re-read/re-re-re-re-read, and so I do my best to pay a little tribute to him each year, even if it’s just carrying around a towel.
Also, I should mention the one book Adams/Hitchhiker’s aficionado needs to read is Don’t Panic by Neil Gaiman, David K. Dickson and MJ Simpson. If you’re more in the mood for a podcast, I’d suggest The Waterstones Podcast How We Made: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—I’ve listened to several podcast episodes about this book, and generally roll my eyes at them. But this is just fantastic. Were it available, I’d listen to a Peter Jackson-length version of the episode.
I’ve only been able to get one of my sons into Adams, he’s the taller, thinner one in the picture from a few years ago.
(although I did get he and his younger siblings to use their towels to make themselves safe from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal a few years earlier:)
You really need to check out this comic from Sheldon Comics—part of the Anatomy of Authors series: The Anatomy of Douglas Adams.
Lit in a Nutshell gives this quick explanation of The Hitchiiker’s Guide:
TowelDay.org is the best collection of resources on the day. One of my favorite posts there is this pretty cool video, shot on the ISS by astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.
Even better—here’s an appearance by Douglas Adams himself from the old Letterman show—I’m so glad someone preserved this:
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.” (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)
Towel Day, for the few who don’t know, is the annual celebration of Douglas Adams’ life and work. It was first held two weeks after his death, fans were to carry a towel with them for the day to use as a talking point to encourage those who have never read HHGTTG to do so, or to just converse with someone about Adams. Adams is one of that handful of authors that I can’t imagine I’d be the same without having encountered/read/re-read/re-re-re-re-read, and so I do my best to pay a little tribute to him each year, even if it’s just carrying around a towel.
Some time in 7th or 8th grade (I believe), I was at a friend’s house and his brother let us try his copy of the text-based Hitchhiker’s Guide game, and we were no good at it at all. Really, it was embarrassing. However, his brother had a copy of the novel, and we all figured that the novel held the keys we needed for success with the game (alas, for us it did not). My friends all decided that I’d be the one to read the book and come back in a few days as an expert.
I quickly forgot about the game. Adams’ irreverent style rocked my world—could people actually get away with saying some of these things? His skewed take on the world, his style, his humor…and a depressed robot, too! It was love at first read.
It was one of those experiences that, looking back, I can say shaped my reading and thinking for the rest of my life (make of that what you will). Were my life the subject of a Doctor Who or Legends of Tomorrow episode, it’d be one of those immutable fixed points. I read the books (particularly the first) so many times that I can quote significant portions of it, and frequently do so without noticing that I’m doing that. I have (at this time) two literary-inspired tattoos, one of which is the planet logo*. In essence, I’m saying that Adams has had an outsized influence on my life and is probably my biggest enduring fandom. If carrying around a (massively useful) piece of cloth for a day in some small way honors his memory? Sure, I’m in.
* I didn’t know it at the time, but Adams didn’t like that guy. Whoops.
One of my long-delayed goals is to write up a good all-purpose Tribute to Douglas Adams and his work post, and another Towel Day has come without me doing so. Belgium. Next year . . . or later. (he says for at least the 8th straight year, a work ethic I like to believe Adams would endorse).
I’ve only been able to get one of my sons into Adams, he’s the taller, thinner one in the picture from a few years ago.
You really need to check out this comic from Sheldon Comics—part of the Anatomy of Authors series: The Anatomy of Douglas Adams.
TowelDay.org is the best collection of resources on the day. One of my favorite posts there is this pretty cool video, shot on the ISS by astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti.
Even better—here’s an appearance by Douglas Adams himself from the old Letterman show—I’m so glad someone preserved this:
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet where seventy years ago today, Douglas Adams was born.
When the Towel Day Facebook page posted about this anniversary this week, I thought about doing a big tribute post today. But I really didn’t have the time to do a decent job of it.
Instead, I’m going to do something uncharacteristic of me—I’m going to keep it brief. Douglas Adams was a formative writer for me. It’d take very little time at all to see how formative, he’s probably in the Top 5 authors I’ve mentioned on this site. His humor, his imagination, his point of view, his style was a gift that has been influencing writers and readers for decades, and likely will continue to.
In honor of this anniversary, tonight I’m going to have a gin and tonic* in his honor, read a few sections from his books (likely a little more than that), and be grateful we got his creative output.
* see The Restaurant at the End of the Universe‘s discussion about the beverage.
