The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul – Douglas Adams, 1988 ★½

The Gods Must be Crazy

Can a hit record prove the key to solving a mysterious beheading? Will a horoscope’s dire prediction prove for once to be correct? Will a refrigerator’s possibly sinister secret force Dirk Gently to make an overdue renovation in his ultra-messy apartment?

After some 240 pages, I’m not sure I can answer any of those question, nor care very much either way. The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul manages to be rather long, very dark, and wholly frustrating finale to the Dirk Gently mysteries.

I don’t know where to begin. Let’s start with the gods.

Put Out More Flags – Evelyn Waugh, 1942 ★★

Mind You There's a War on

In September 1939 a 21-year British holiday from history came to a sharp end. War was declared and Poland carved up by Germany and Russia as the rest of the world looked on. It was time to strike back.

Only it wasn’t, not right away. First came something called the “Phoney War,” eight months of waiting and hoping. Just two years later, Evelyn Waugh set about mocking that time of simmering conflict and self-rationalization was as experienced by London’s smart set.

Put Out More Flags is a satire written in the anything-goes spirit of Waugh’s earlier, peacetime works. Government ministries set about planning ridiculous strategies, seeing the enemy everywhere but where they actually are, getting men killed by sheer lack of imagination.

George Washington Slept Here – George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart, 1940 ½★

When the Well Runs Dry

Country life became a popular subject for Americans in the 1940s, with movies like Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, comic strips like “Li’l Abner,” even paintings like Andrew Wyeth “Christina’s World.” Why not screwball comedy, too?

George Kaufman & Moss Hart had enjoyed ample enough success from collaborative playwriting to afford new homes in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. So they agreed on a play centered on country life. George Washington Slept Here was the result.

This time it seems I’m not the only person in the world who didn’t like it.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams, 1987 ★★★½

 And Now for Something Slightly Different

Is it a mystery? A fantasy? A comedy? A spiritual satire? A free-range, deep-dish metaphysical contemplation of time itself?

The most fun readers may have with Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is making guesses after every chapter as to what it is they are reading, then revising them after a few more pages.

Probably the happiest takeaway from reading this novel is the sneaking sense its author was having fun writing again. Douglas Adams leaves the increasingly dour Galaxy of his recent past behind to bring forth a distinctly different yet still engagingly silly Universe involving a fictitious British university and the ghost of a computer billionaire.

All’s Well That Ends Well – William Shakespeare, 1598-1608? ★★★

Stand by Your Man

The verdict on this play over the years can be summed up in a single word: Meh.

Its existence went unnoticed from available evidence until 1623’s publication of the First Folio. Its origins are murky, at least as far as Shakespeare’s composition is concerned. Its performance history is rather slight for a comedy by the Bard; not even a movie adaptation.

Beyond that, it is a comedy that is not that funny and a romance which leaves a bad taste in many mouths. There are many fine things about it, particularly an engaging heroine and a villain who doubles as comic relief. It has an experimental quality about it one can either go with or not, trusting in the title not to be led astray.

Whether it delivers on that title isn’t clearly answered. Since that is the one thing people know about the play going in, let’s look into it.

The Man Who Came To Dinner – George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart, 1939 ★★½

Rudeness is Its own Reward

Let no one claim the class system was confined to other parts of the world: The Man Who Came To Dinner shows it in full effect here in America. A media celebrity takes over the house of an Ohio family, throwing them into chaos. But never mind them; the celebrity and his friends are all that matters.

A successful screwball comedy by the team of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, The Man Who Came To Dinner was a long-running hit on Broadway and a popular movie starring Monty Woolley and Bette Davis. Unlike Kaufman and Hart’s even bigger earlier comedy, You Can’t Take It With You, this offers an inventive plot, some wicked one-liners, and a lead character right out of Falstaff.

But as the play rolls along, it plays up the patrician sensibilities of its authors in a smug, hard-to-take way. Kaufman and Hart seem to think if they enjoy rubbing elbows with the like of Noel Coward and Harpo Marx, so should you. Meanwhile, if you are like me, you may find a little of Sheridan Whiteside winds up more than enough.

The New! Improved! Bob & Ray Book – Bob Elliott & Ray Goulding, 1985 ★★

Curtain Call

The Bob & Ray era was winding down when this third and final volume of their collected sketches came out in 1985. More a hit and miss compilation than their first two books, The New! Improved! Bob & Ray Book at least starts out on something of a roll.

In a broadcast studio, a man in the audience introduces himself as “one of the very few people in America with a name that is completely unpronounceable,” which he spells W-W-Q-L-C-W: “I’d like to say hello to my brother on your program, but I don’t know how to pronounce his name, either.”

A hard-luck would-be anthropologist explains how he spent all his money trying to discover a tribe of uncontacted natives somewhere in New York City: “My brother-in-law was here about a year ago. And he said he ran into some people out in Queens who seemed awfully crude to him. But I haven’t found any trace of them yet.”

From Approximately Coast To Coast…It’s The Bob And Ray Show – Bob Elliott & Ray Goulding, 1983 ★★★

Taking On The Eighties

A new decade brung with it a second collection of Bob & Ray sketches. By this time the comedians had become enshrined in that temple of culture, National Public Radio, who platformed the pair throughout the 1980s less for ratings than as a kind of public service.

Would the duo who built their reputation darting from one commercial broadcaster to another every other year or so become stuffy and dull with their non-profit status?

It doesn’t seem that way. The material here is at times sharper and funnier than what was in the first book, though you do feel time beginning to pass them by with their continued parodying of overstocked surplus sales and soap operas.

Mostly Harmless – Douglas Adams, 1992 ★★

Going Out with a Bang and a Whimper

Parallel universes and alternate timelines get quite a workout in this final installment of the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” comedic sci-fi saga. It begs a question: Can a series that always leaned hard on the utter randomness of the universe get too random?

Short answer: Yes.

Mostly Harmless is the most frenetic, depressing, and conceptually catawampus entry in the series. It delivers that boldly anarchic flavor “Hitchhiker” faithful have savored for decades. Where it falls short is tone; an uncharacteristic despairing heaviness pervades the text. For the first time, Adams’s universe is suffused not with whimsy but dread.

Write If You Get Work: The Best Of Bob & Ray – Bob Elliott & Ray Goulding, 1975 ★★★

Dipping into the Surreal

For over forty years, two men who dressed like Rotarians and rarely raised their voices conducted a quiet comedy revolution. Today, the legacy of Bob & Ray rests in hundreds of circulated radio recordings, fond memories of aging fans, and out-of-print books like this which collect their sketches.

I wanted Write If You Get Work: The Best Of Bob & Ray to justify my love with page after page of sheer laughter. Despite my deep nostalgia, I can’t claim this to be all that gut-busting. What it does is capture the essence of what they did, a slightly surreal, lightly barbed whimsy that marked them for decades as the gentlest and wittiest of media satirists.

So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish – Douglas Adams, 1984 ★★★

Love, Hitchhiker Style

Through the course of three novels, Arthur Dent had it pretty rough. First the Earth blew up. Then the Universe tried to kill him. Misery chased him across every parsec of the galaxy, then dumped him in prehistoric exile with only his towel and bathrobe for company.

So how can one begrudge him a little happiness?

The fourth book in Douglas Adams’s “Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy” trilogy, So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish sidesteps all that backstory for a rom-com where Dent returns to Earth to find it just as he left it, except all the dolphins have mysteriously disappeared:

Black Mischief – Evelyn Waugh, 1932 ★★★★

Perils of Western Civilization

Nothing prepares one for the spritely acid bath of Evelyn Waugh’s third novel less than reading it after his first two novels. Yes, those are black comedies, too, but there’s something extra-chilling about the whimsical savagery found here, where life is cheap and violence constant.

Off the coast of northeastern Africa, the island nation of Azania stands athwart the march of progress, its people enmeshed in bloody feuds and quick scams. Seth, the new emperor, seeks to change that by looking to Europe for inspiration. He happens upon a mash-up of Marxism and family planning that blows up sooner than you can say: “THROUGH STERILITY TO CULTURE.”

Counting on the help of an opportunistic Brit, Basil Seal, Seth’s road to nowhere implicates both Africans and Europeans as well as the hope they might have anything to learn from each other.

Saturday Night Live – Edited by Anne Beatts & John Head, 1977 ★★★★

Still Funny After All These Years

The late-night TV show “Saturday Night Live” is officially 50 now, as it debuted on October 11, 1975. Its legend as a comedy-culture dynamo is almost as old, captured for the first time in book form in this collection of sketch scripts from Seasons 1 and 2.

Today, it feels like an old family album, a hodgepodge of stray jokes and scrawled banter by its original cast, writers and other creatives. The website Vulture called it a “samizdat scrapbook.” Amusing it is, cohesive it isn’t. What it captures is the afterglow of brilliance that made the show such a must-see for Boomers and Gen Xers back in the day.

How does it read in retrospect? Depending on your age, either very poignant or rather dated. This was a show that took pride in its ability to be offensive back when the price for such line-stepping was minimal.

Life, The Universe And Everything – Douglas Adams, 1984 ★★★

How Not to End a Trilogy

Concluding a trilogy can’t be easy. A long train of character arcs, plot twists, themes, motifs, and denouements must be accounted for. That is unless you are Douglas Adams, and can surmount this challenge by entirely ignoring it with a barrage of random, winning silliness.

Not every reader can be bought off by cosmic gags or pratfalls without some closure as to what it all means. But take your pleasures in life where you can. You don’t have to love Life, The Universe And Everything to appreciate it for what it is rather than what it isn’t.

One thing it certainly isn’t is the end of the trilogy, third book or not.

The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe – Douglas Adams, 1980 ★★★★½

Intergalactic Dining at its Finest

Transforming a successful novel into an enduring media franchise requires more than just skill or luck. It requires a magnificent first sequel. Every subsequent entry in the series can run the gamut from brilliant to horrible, but that second book must sing.

The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe does just that, beginning with a clever title whose double meaning becomes a fascinating storyline in its own right. But that is just a small part of its rich pageant. Douglas Adams delivers a book even more conceptual, expansive and hilarious than what came before.

This is the book that turned Adams’s brainchild into a cultural touchstone; it’s also a terrific read.

You Can’t Take It With You – George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart, 1936 ★½

Taking it Easy...Too Easy

Screwball comedies of the 1930s are hard to judge. They live within their own unique construct where people spout earnest nonsense all at once. Roles are overturned, conventions twisted, love springs from the oddest of places. Lessons are not learned; rather they are flouted.

A first-rate screwball comedy freezes time as brilliantly as a Grecian urn. Check out Bringing Up Baby, My Man Godfrey, and The Lady Eve, all of which spoof familiar romantic tropes, spit dialogue like rappers on Ritalin, and retain the power of laughter nearly a century on.

Then there is You Can’t Take It With You, a rare comedy that won an Academy Award for Best Picture. Even before that happened, it was a Broadway comeback hit for playwrights George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. Here is a screwball comedy where time has not been so kind.

Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh, 1930 ★★★½

Aiming for the Gut

So much of what made Evelyn Waugh great, including the decade he blossomed in and the smart set he dished so ruthlessly about, is on display in this, his second novel, a triumph of form over substance.

No doubt Waugh intended it just so.

In many important ways, Vile Bodies marks a turning point in the author’s career. He already had his signature voice worked out. Here he aims for scope and bite, casting a wide net on the social antics of the jaded aristocratic scions dubbed the “Bright Young Things.” These were people he knew and loved best. And they loved him back, even more after he pilloried them in print with this mordant, often acid book.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – Douglas Adams, 1979 ★★★★

The Lighter Side of Global Annihilation

Never underestimate the creative resourcefulness of a human being utterly out of options.

Douglas Adams was a struggling writer low on cash. One evening far from home, drunk in a field after a day of hitchhiking, he found himself looking up at the twinkling sky, thinking deeply. What would it be like if there was a guidebook for people wandering across the stars?

Several years later, that idea became a BBC Radio series, and eventually a five-volume science-fiction “trilogy.” In it, we meet one Arthur Dent, adrift in an uncaring cosmos, bouncing from absurdity to absurdity after everything he knew and loved has been utterly destroyed.

Somehow Adams found the funny in that, and with this novel, launched an enduring comedy franchise that lives on after his death.

Decline And Fall – Evelyn Waugh, 1928 ★★★★

A Devilishly Delicious Debut

A famous first novel that holds up on its own merits as well as a signpost for a stellar career, Decline And Fall introduces readers to the scathing satire of Evelyn Waugh, where hope is folly, life is a joke, and people regularly suffer for the sin of being alive.

All that, and it manages to be a lot of fun, too.

Often the pleasure of reading first novels by noted authors is twigging onto themes and motifs developed with greater success in their later, more mature works. But Waugh’s debut has no youthful awkwardness to shed. It is fully accomplished fiction, somewhat facile in places and heavy-handedly abrupt in its ending, but masterful in terms of dialogue, description, and mordant observation.

Twelfth Night – William Shakespeare, 1600-1601 ★★★★★

There's Something about Cesario

A Shakespeare comedy both highly regarded and sometimes overlooked, Twelfth Night, or What You Will grabs you both with humor and insights undimmed by time. Even more famous works of more recent vintage lack its evergreen nature.

The play centers on Viola, stranded in the strange land of Illyria, chancing upon Duke Orsino, whom she loves at sight. Only he knows her as “Cesario,” his faithful manservant, whom he sends to plead his love to the Countess Olivia. When Cesario shows up at court, Olivia’s heart melts for “the invisible and subtle stealth” of the envoy’s beauty.

Telling Olivia she’s all woman would spoil Viola’s plans for winning the duke. So she tries to reject her without giving away her identity: