The Salmon of Doubt, Douglas Adams
Jan. 14th, 2005 01:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sam_tI had put off reading The Salmon of Doubt for a while, as I thought that it would be little more than a collection of unfinished scraps and a few interviews: interesting in a rather vague sort of way, but nothing to write home about. However, while there are interviews (which do get rather tedious by the end) and an unfinished novel assembled from various draft scenes by Adams's usual editor, a lot of the book is a collection of Adams's shorter published works. The collection includes a short story, letters (including one written at the age of eleven to a SF magazine), introductions to books, and various essays. The essays in particular I found very interesting, even (or especially) when I disagreed violently with something Adams was arguing, and some of his turns of phrase seem to shine right off the page at you. I would provide a couple of examples, but I haven't got my copy here, and my memory has only to hear me thinking "What a memorable sentence!" for it to resolve never to recall whatever the sentence was.
Adams's introduction to Sunset at Blandings stood out, partly because it was an introduction to an unfinished work, so supremely appropriate to this collection, but mostly because it wasn't so much an introduction as a paean to Wodehouse. I have read hardly anything by Wodehouse, and nothing at all within the last few years, because of an early assumption that the books were humiliation comedy - that the humour grew solely out of a character being stupid, in a sort of upper-class version of Frank Spencer. I've realised over time that this assumption was wrong (and in fact I now have no idea what caused it in the first place), but it took this introduction to get me to resolve to read some. To which end I have borrowed Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit from the library. Adams does go off on a few interesting tangents, though.
One of Adams's main points in his praise of Wodehouse is evidently a defence of Wodehouse's subject matter against readers who claim that Wodehouse is unimportant because he does not appear to deal with subjects that they consider to be important. Adams says that Wodehouse's work is "... pure word music", that it isn't 'about' anything and shouldn't have to be. And at this point he digresses rapidly into another argument altogether. "... music isn't about anything - unless it's not very good music. Film music is about something. 'The Dam Busters' March' is about something. A Bach fugue, on the other hand, is pure form, beauty and playfulness ..." Now, hold on a minute. Film music is generally 'about' something, although it may not be identical to the film's plot or themes. It is also music that is intended to form a part of a larger artistic work. Some film music may stand on its own, and some may not, but that's beside the point really, because there are better examples. 'Don Giovanni' is about something. Montiverdi's madrigals are about something. Berlioz's 'Symphonie Fantastique' is about something. Mozart's Requiem is about something. The St. Matthew Passion is about something, and if you're going to start wiping out Bach's cantatas and church music wholesale, then you might just as well go home and listen to your local death watch beetles. I'm sure that that's not entirely what Adams meant, but the problem is that I'm not sure what he did mean, beyond an exasperated rejection of the arguments of people demanding that all art must have a deep, solemn and obvious meaning. What does it mean for a piece of music to be 'about something'? Does it refer to a narrative structure? An attempt to evoke a specific scene or atmosphere? A particular goal (which might well include the goal of 'demonstrating an exciting new tuning system', in which case there go the Bach fugues as well)? "Beauty doesn't have to be about anything," says Adams. Yes, possibly, but that doesn't mean that anything that is about something, whatever that means, is therefore less valuable.
Adams's introduction to Sunset at Blandings stood out, partly because it was an introduction to an unfinished work, so supremely appropriate to this collection, but mostly because it wasn't so much an introduction as a paean to Wodehouse. I have read hardly anything by Wodehouse, and nothing at all within the last few years, because of an early assumption that the books were humiliation comedy - that the humour grew solely out of a character being stupid, in a sort of upper-class version of Frank Spencer. I've realised over time that this assumption was wrong (and in fact I now have no idea what caused it in the first place), but it took this introduction to get me to resolve to read some. To which end I have borrowed Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit from the library. Adams does go off on a few interesting tangents, though.
One of Adams's main points in his praise of Wodehouse is evidently a defence of Wodehouse's subject matter against readers who claim that Wodehouse is unimportant because he does not appear to deal with subjects that they consider to be important. Adams says that Wodehouse's work is "... pure word music", that it isn't 'about' anything and shouldn't have to be. And at this point he digresses rapidly into another argument altogether. "... music isn't about anything - unless it's not very good music. Film music is about something. 'The Dam Busters' March' is about something. A Bach fugue, on the other hand, is pure form, beauty and playfulness ..." Now, hold on a minute. Film music is generally 'about' something, although it may not be identical to the film's plot or themes. It is also music that is intended to form a part of a larger artistic work. Some film music may stand on its own, and some may not, but that's beside the point really, because there are better examples. 'Don Giovanni' is about something. Montiverdi's madrigals are about something. Berlioz's 'Symphonie Fantastique' is about something. Mozart's Requiem is about something. The St. Matthew Passion is about something, and if you're going to start wiping out Bach's cantatas and church music wholesale, then you might just as well go home and listen to your local death watch beetles. I'm sure that that's not entirely what Adams meant, but the problem is that I'm not sure what he did mean, beyond an exasperated rejection of the arguments of people demanding that all art must have a deep, solemn and obvious meaning. What does it mean for a piece of music to be 'about something'? Does it refer to a narrative structure? An attempt to evoke a specific scene or atmosphere? A particular goal (which might well include the goal of 'demonstrating an exciting new tuning system', in which case there go the Bach fugues as well)? "Beauty doesn't have to be about anything," says Adams. Yes, possibly, but that doesn't mean that anything that is about something, whatever that means, is therefore less valuable.
