《The Salmon of Doubt》困惑的三文鱼英文版 -pdf、txt、mobi、kindle、epub电子版下载

中文名：困惑的三文鱼

内容简介

On Friday, May 11, 2001, the world mourned the untimely passing of Douglas Adams, beloved creator of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, dead of a heart attack at age forty-nine. Thankfully, in addition to a magnificent literary legacy—which includes seven novels and three co-authored works of nonfiction—Douglas left us something more. The book you are about to enjoy was rescued from his four computers, culled from an archive of chapters from his long-awaited novel-in-progress, as well as his short stories, speeches, articles, interviews, and letters.

In a way that none of his previous books could, The Salmon of Doubt provides the full, dazzling, laugh-out-loud experience of a journey through the galaxy as perceived by Douglas Adams. From a boy’s first love letter (to his favorite science fiction magazine) to the distinction of possessing a nose of heroic proportions; from climbing Kilimanjaro in a rhino costume to explaining why Americans can’t make a decent cup of tea; from lyrical tributes to the sublime pleasures found in music by Procol Harum, the Beatles, and Bach to the follies of his hopeless infatuation with technology; from fantastic, fictional forays into the private life of Genghis Khan to extended visits with Dirk Gently and Zaphod Beeblebrox: this is the vista from the elevated perch of one of the tallest, funniest, most brilliant, and most penetrating social critics and thinkers of our time.

Welcome to the wonderful mind of Douglas Adams.

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You see, I want to know what to think. I want to know what the new machines look like: yes, I can use my own eyes and my own sensibility, but I have got used to the superior insights offered byDouglas . He would have offered the exact epithet, the perfect metaphor, the crowning simile. Not just on the subject of New Stuff, of course. He would have found a way of linking the amiably odd behaviour and character of spectacled bears both to familiar human experience and to abstract scientific thought. Much of the world that we move in has been seen throughDouglas ’s eyes and become clearer. Which is to say the very confusion and absurd lack of clarity of our world has become clearer. We never quite knew how conflicting and insane the universe was or how ludicrous and feeble-minded the human race could be untilDouglas explained it in the uniquely affable, paradoxical and unforced style that marks him out for greatness. I’ve just visited the bathroom and noted that the soap on offer there (tightly sealed in that absurdly unopenable disc of indestructible plastic paper offered by hotels for the convenience of their guests) is not called soap at all: it is in fact an Almond Facial Bar. That would have been an email toDouglas straight away and the email back, which can now never, ever be had, would have made me giggle and dance about my hotel room for half an hour.

Everyone heard, in the sad weeks following his shocking and unfair death, how good a comic writerDouglas was, how far-ranging his interests and how broad his appeal. This book shows what a teacher he was. Just as sunsets have never been the same colour or shape sinceTurner looked at them, so a lemur and a cup of tea will never be the same again because ofDouglas ’s acute and quizzical gaze.

It is very unfair to be asked to write an introduction to a book which contains an absolutely brilliant introduction written on the very subject of introductions to books. It is even more unfair to be asked to write an introduction to the posthumous work of one the great comic writers of our age when the book one is introducing contains the definitive introduction to the posthumous work of the definitive comic writer of all ages: Douglas’s foreword to P. G. Wodehouse’sSunset at Blandings, as Ed Victor pointed out at Douglas’s memorial service in London, serves as an astonishingly accurate description of Douglas’s own gifts. Not that this was for a second inDouglas ’s mind when he wrote it.

Douglaswas not hideously Englishly modest, which is not to say that he was vain or boastful either. His passion to communicate his ideas and enthusiasms, however, could easily trap you on the telephone, over a dinner table or in a bathroom to the exclusion of all other company or considerations. In that sense, and I don’t think I’m being disrespectful here, aDouglas conversation could, mano a mano, tête à tête, be exhausting and confusing for those unable to keep up with the passionate pinging from thought to thought. But he could no more write confusingly than he could execute a perfect pirouette, and believe me there have been few human beings born less able to execute pirouettes without the destruction of furniture and all hope of safety to innocent bystanders than Douglas Noel Adams.

He was a writer. There are those who write from time to time and do it well and there are writers.Douglas , and it is pointless to attempt here an explanation or anatomization, was born, grew up and remained a Writer to his too-early dying day. For the last ten years or so of his life he ceased to be a novelist, but he never for a second stopped being a writer and it is that happy fact thatThe Salmon of Doubt celebrates. Whether in the preparation of lectures, the execution of occasional journalism or in articles for specialized scientific or technical publications,Douglas ’s natural ability to put one word after another in the service of awakening, delighting, bamboozling, affirming, informing or amusing the mind of the reader never deserted him. His is an ego-less style where every trope and every trick available to writing is used when and only when it serves the purposes of the piece. I think, when you read this book, you will be astonished by the apparent (and utterly misleading) simplicity of his style. You feel he is talking to you, almost off the cuff. But, as withWodehouse , the ease and sweet running of his authorial engine was the result of a great deal of tuning and oily wrenching of nuts and gaskets.

Douglashas in common with certain rare artists (Wodehouseagain included), the ability to make the beholder feel that he is addressing them and them alone: I think this in part explains the immense strength and fervour of his ‘fan base’, if I can use so revolting a phrase. When you look at Velázquez, listen to Mozart, read Dickens or laugh at Billy Connolly, to take four names at random (it always takes a great deal of time and thought to take names at random for the purposes of argument), you are aware that what they do they do for the world and the results are, of course, magnificent. When you look atBlake , listen to Bach, readDouglasAdams or watchEddieIzzard perform, you feel you are perhaps the only person in the world who really gets them. Just about everyone else admires them, of course, but no one really connects with them in the way you do. I advance this as a theory.Douglas ’s work is not the high art of Bach or the intense personal cosmos ofBlake , it goes without saying, but I believe my view holds nonetheless. It’s like falling in love. When an especially peachyAdams turn of phrase or epithet enters the eye and penetrates the brain you want to tap the shoulder of the nearest stranger and share it. The stranger might laugh and seem to enjoy the writing, but you hug to yourself the thought that they didn’t quite understand its force and quality the way you do – just as your friends (thank heavens) don’t also fall in love with the person you are going on and on about to them.

You are on the verge of entering the wise, provoking, benevolent, hilarious and addictive world ofDouglasAdams . Don’t bolt it all whole – as withDouglas ’s beloved Japanese food, what seems light and easy to assimilate is subtler and more nutritious by far than might at first appear.

The bottom drawer of recently deceased writers is often best left firmly locked and bolted: in the case ofDouglas , I am sure you will agree, the bottom drawer (or in his case the nested sub-folders of his hard drive) has been triumphantly well worth the prising open.ChrisOgle ,PeterGuzzardi ,Douglas ’s wifeJane and his assistantSophieAstin have done a wonderful job. ADouglas -less world is much less pleasant than a Douglas-full world, but the leaping ofThe Salmon of Doubt helps put off the full melancholy of his sudden departure.