I just posted this on the science fiction community lemmy.ml link to post, hadn’t found this community yet.
OK, so first off, as the title says, there will be spoilers in here. So if you’re planning on reading it and haven’t yet already, please stop.
I read the series as a teenager and absolutely love them. Recently, I have taken the time to reread all five of them, and have to say I was slightly disappointed. I still thought that the writing was very amusing, the social commentary was good and the lightly touched philosophical discussions were good as well. My main problem concerns character development, or better said, the complete lack thereof in my opinion. I found that most disturbing into different aspects:
The lack of real, meaningful friendship between characters As an example, Arthur and Ford are supposed to be friends, but from the interaction in the book it seems more like they tolerate each other and don’t really appreciate each other’s presence or influence on their adventures. Every time they get out of touch, they don’t appear to feel sorry about it, and when they see each other again, they are extremely British about it. This also applies to the other characters in my opinion.
** the complete abandonment of the relationship between Arthur and Fenchurch** So, in the first three books, Arthur is like this maladjusted guy, who really doesn’t know what his place in the universe is. This also applies to his personal relationships. Then, he meets a woman that is presented as his soulmate, someone that finally understands him and respects/likes him the way he is. All of a sudden, she disappears into thin air, and she’s only mentioned one more time in the book series. Arthur seems happy to just make sandwiches and doesn’t seem to mourn this loss too much after the initial search. To me, this makes the character rather shallow. I appreciate the author was not trying to write a novel about love in space, or whatever, but still, it feels a bit lacking to me.
I will end my rant here, I am very curious as to your opinions on this matter. Do you feel like I’m just expecting too much from these books or do you tend to agree with these criticisms?
I agree with all you're saying. The books are what they are. Could they be even better? Yes. Are they enjoyable the way they are? Also yes.
I found the 4th book to be a departure from the established tone and the 5th one to be closer to the first three, which helped me not to mourn for Fenchurch that much, but I agree her disappearance feels strange.
What I like about Adams is that he didn't treat his creations as finalized and ultimate. The books are different from the original radio play and the film script is different again. So I think he didn't view it as perfect either. It was more like an evolving organism.
The edition I have has some excerpts from an interview he did way back in the day and he talks about how he had to produce different scripts for adaptations and how the story had evolved over time. His solution was when he had to change the script everyone either said the same things for different reasons or different things for the same reasons. It made it feel like the story was always kind of fluid for him.
Edit because lemmy is such a small world and I just found myself agreeing with you again
It's always nice to see a friendly username again. It gives me the urge to wave at the monitor.