Quote Porn
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
"If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now."
"The real Universe arched sickeningly away beneath them. Various pretend ones flitted silently by, like mountain goats. Primal light exploded, splattering space-time as with gobbets of Jell-O. Time blossomed, matter shrank away. The highest prime number coalesced quietly in a corner and hid itself away forever."
" 'Perhaps I'm old and tired,' he continued, 'but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.'"
Gone Girl
"A lot of people lacked that gift: knowing when to fuck off."
"So I know I am right not to settle, but it doesn't make me feel any better as my friends pair off and I stay home on Friday night with a bottle of wine and make myself an extravagant meal and tell myself, This is perfect, as if I'm the one dating me."
"You know what I was about to say? I was about to say I don't know what to believe anymore. And then I thought, that's someone else's line. That's a line from a movie, not something I should be saying, and I wonder for a second, am I in a movie? Can I stop being in this movie? Then I know I can't. But for a second, you think, I'll say something different, and this will all change. But it won't, will it?"
A Few Thoughts
So, uh, in a different bracket this could be the finals. 18 year-old me would come at me with an axe for even considering a book other than A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which I have recently reread and learned to appreciate all over again. 26 year-old me spent months telling anyone who seemed the least bit literate that they should really, really read Gone Girl.
When I spoke about Dark Places a couple days ago, I said Gillian Flynn's ceiling was a lot higher, and I was referring specifically to Gone Girl. There are so many attributes I loved and I'd like to speak about.
First, it may have been the most enthralling page-turner I've ever read. Yesterday I talked about being excited to find chances to read Never Let Me Go; Gone Girl does it one better because I read it in three sittings. I only managed to put the book down twice! It wasn't a matter of finding time to read, it was a matter of rearranging and reprioritizing other things I wanted to do. The book alternates chapters between Nick's discovery of his missing wife Amy (without ever telling you if he's responsible), and events in Amy's history from her point of view that have brought them to this situation. It's a hot and cold, off and on style that really builds and sustains tension.
A good thriller is all well and good, but the prose in Gone Girl transcends just plain storytelling, and there are great diatribes that are pro-feminist and very cynical about pop culture. Despite the fact that I didn't overly like or relate to either Nick or Amy as people, some of the things they say are perfectly insightful and stand up well out of context.
The only foible for me is the book's ending—it's probably a sort of penance to be paid for the corner that Flynn writes herself into. The things that happen in the book, twist after twist, are all thoroughly enjoyable sideswipes. The problem is that, with the aggregate awesome of the narrative path, eventually tying up all the loose ends might require a ridiculous last act. Not that the ending's terrible, but after everything that happened it just left me with an "...oh. I guess" sort of feeling because I definitely didn't want both of them to live. As always, your mileage may vary, but this book goes from 0-60 quick off the line and doesn't slow down 'til it's over.
What can I say about The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy that hasn't been said in spades by someone before me? It is the quintessential funny book. From the universe's most sophisticated computer claiming that the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42 (of course, answering the question to life, the universe and everything which is revealed in a later book to be what is six times nine?), to the ubiquitous reminders to bring a towel and not to panic, to revelation that we're not even the smartest creatures on Earth; the book is filled with delightful absurdity.
The Hitchhiker's Guide's characters are also completely timeless. Arthur Dent plays a wonderfully British only sane man (who may not even be all that sane), Zaphod's ego is riotous, Marvin's nihilism in the face of infinite wisdom is a well-played sardonic juxtaposition, and Ford Prefect is like Dean Moriarty in space. There could be no better and no worse company on a trip through the galaxy than the cast Adams wrote for the book.
When I spoke about Dark Places a couple days ago, I said Gillian Flynn's ceiling was a lot higher, and I was referring specifically to Gone Girl. There are so many attributes I loved and I'd like to speak about.
First, it may have been the most enthralling page-turner I've ever read. Yesterday I talked about being excited to find chances to read Never Let Me Go; Gone Girl does it one better because I read it in three sittings. I only managed to put the book down twice! It wasn't a matter of finding time to read, it was a matter of rearranging and reprioritizing other things I wanted to do. The book alternates chapters between Nick's discovery of his missing wife Amy (without ever telling you if he's responsible), and events in Amy's history from her point of view that have brought them to this situation. It's a hot and cold, off and on style that really builds and sustains tension.
A good thriller is all well and good, but the prose in Gone Girl transcends just plain storytelling, and there are great diatribes that are pro-feminist and very cynical about pop culture. Despite the fact that I didn't overly like or relate to either Nick or Amy as people, some of the things they say are perfectly insightful and stand up well out of context.
The only foible for me is the book's ending—it's probably a sort of penance to be paid for the corner that Flynn writes herself into. The things that happen in the book, twist after twist, are all thoroughly enjoyable sideswipes. The problem is that, with the aggregate awesome of the narrative path, eventually tying up all the loose ends might require a ridiculous last act. Not that the ending's terrible, but after everything that happened it just left me with an "...oh. I guess" sort of feeling because I definitely didn't want both of them to live. As always, your mileage may vary, but this book goes from 0-60 quick off the line and doesn't slow down 'til it's over.
What can I say about The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy that hasn't been said in spades by someone before me? It is the quintessential funny book. From the universe's most sophisticated computer claiming that the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42 (of course, answering the question to life, the universe and everything which is revealed in a later book to be what is six times nine?), to the ubiquitous reminders to bring a towel and not to panic, to revelation that we're not even the smartest creatures on Earth; the book is filled with delightful absurdity.
The Hitchhiker's Guide's characters are also completely timeless. Arthur Dent plays a wonderfully British only sane man (who may not even be all that sane), Zaphod's ego is riotous, Marvin's nihilism in the face of infinite wisdom is a well-played sardonic juxtaposition, and Ford Prefect is like Dean Moriarty in space. There could be no better and no worse company on a trip through the galaxy than the cast Adams wrote for the book.
Head-to-Head
Characters: The absurd traits of the characters in Hitchhiker's Guide were by design. The ones in Gone Girl, I'm not so sure.
Advantage: The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.
Plot: Gone Girl is well over twice the length of HHGG, and I still tore through it in half the time. Refer to your usual stereotypes about being physically unable to put the book down.
Advantage: Gone Girl.
Ending: HHGG pretty much ends with a freezeframe and cheesy music after one last comedic quip. Gone Girl's plot was so good that it wrote checks I don't think it could fully cash with its ending.
Advantage: Push.
Language/Writing: Flynn is full of flair. Adams is hilarious. Both read easy.
Advantage: Push.
Philosophy: Life's a lark vs originality is dead.
Advantage: Push. (They're both right)
Winner Winner Turkey Supper
This is a heart rending decision. I'll undoubtedly give myself flak for picking Gone Girl because once the Fincher movie's out, it's probably going to become passé while Hitchhiker's Guide is pretty much timeless. I'm going to absolve and justify myself as best I can: if we're talking the whole series with all the antics, Adams' trilogy in five parts would have it on lockdown. Taking the first book as a standalone, however, leaves just ¼ of the hilarity to consider in this match, and that's going to cause it an early exit by the slimmest of margins.
Gone Girl eliminates my longtime favorite to move on to round two.
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