I do not remember reading this book
Understandable in a way, since it came out in the late '80s, and I've not re-read it since, but normally I'd remember at least the plot. . .
It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, "As pretty as an airport."Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only known exception to this otherwise infallible rule), and their architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.
They have sought to highlight the tiredness and crossness motif with brutal shapes and nerve-jangling colors, to make effortless the business of separating the traveler forever from his or her luggange or loved ones, to confuse the traveler with arrows that appear to point at the windows, distant tie racks, or the current position of Ursa Minor in the night sky, and wherever possible to expose the plumbing on the grounds that it is functional, and conceal the location of the departure gates, presumablu on the grounds that they are not.
From The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, by Douglas Adams.
Comments
i simply love that book. now you know where the title came from, right? there's a passage in the beginning of Life, the Universe, and Everything, in which an alien called 'Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged' (who achieved immortality in an accident involving an irrational partical accelerator, a liquid lunch, and a pair of rubber bands), has had it with being immortal. and this is what did it for him:
"In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know you'vev taken all the baths you can usefuly take that day, and however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul."
by the way, dirk gently's holistic detective agency is highly recommended. it's about the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. as is this site.
sorry for the comment hijacking.
Posted by: kd | November 21, 2002 9:19 PM
Wherever Douglas Adams has found himself, I hope he has his towel.
Bless 'im. Sigh.
Posted by: Monkey! | November 22, 2002 12:53 AM
First graph, Colson Whitehead's "John Henry Days" (from a certain Web retailer's sample page selection):
"Now he blesses the certainty of airports. His blessings, when he has occasion to perform them, are swift and minimal, thoroughly secular, consisting of a slight nod to no one present, a chin dip that no witness will mark. He nods to luck mostly, to express gratitude for whatever sliver of good fortune drops before his shoes. The day's first blessing is occasioned by a solemn white rind, a little feather, that J. Sutter notices a few yards away on the carpet and immediately recognizes, without a shade of doubt, to be a receipt."
Posted by: George | November 22, 2002 2:22 AM
Douglas, dearling, we miss you.
I'd seriously consider giving up one of my eyebrows permanently in exchange for that thatkind of eloquence. Douglas, we miss you!
Posted by: garrity | November 22, 2002 6:00 AM
I've always thought it was sort of Sick & Wrong that I feel at home in airports [sorry Heather]. Dirk [& Douglas] would have agreed w/me [about the Sick & Wrong bit], bless'em.
Posted by: Neogrammarian | November 22, 2002 6:24 AM
I'm glad I had the chance to hoist a pint with Mr. Adams once upon a time. He was just as funny and charming in person, too, which has left me with a case of permanent reverence for the man.
If you've not read his Last Chance to See, a nonfiction book about endangered species and his travels to visit them, I recommend it quite highly.
Posted by: hanne | November 22, 2002 7:44 AM