Definitely Dent’s your Imagination (Reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)

24th August, 2009; 3:30pm; Pune

Definitely Dent’s your Imagination (Reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)

I still remember the first time I heard about this book by Douglas Adams. It was almost two years ago during a Literary Criticism lecture. Although I don’t remember in what context but I guess it probably had something to do with defamiliarization. I tried several times to get my hands on that books but it just never happened. I have always believed that if you are meant to read a book, that book will somehow find its way to you. ( An excuse I often use to avoid reading a book actually ;)

Anyway, by sheer chance a friend of mine happened to have The Ultimate Edition of the whole series and I borrowed it. And, thus, I hitched a ride onto this Guide. And the journey I must say was definitely one of a kind. The book begins with the destruction of the earth thereby breaking the only tangible thing in the life of the main character, Arthur Dent. From then on, he embarks on a journey that he would otherwise have thought completely nonsensical. The author surely puts forth some original ideas like the mice being the one’s experimenting on humans and not the other way round, or how the dolphins end up saving the earth.

The edition I read had the entire series, so I ended up reading it in one go. The author seemed to have sustained the tempo throughout the series. I usually tend to get fed up by the repetitiveness that comes about in a series but this one surely left me satisfied with not much to complain about.