OPINION (AN COLÚN): A great book which tickles the funny bone

THE Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is one of a number of acclaimed books which was long on my 'to read' list but I never got round to. It was very popular when I was in secondary school in the '80s, with many of my friends comparing it to Monty Python.
I finally opened a copy recently and massively enjoyed it. The book is certainly Pythonesque. There's a famous moment near the end when a giant computer finally reveals the meaning of life. Everyone has been waiting for this great announcement by the computer for seven million years. The computer is called “Deep Thought”:-
“ 'All right,' said the computer and settled into silence again. The two men fidgeted. The tension was unbearable.
'You're really not going to like it,' observed Deep Thought.
'Tell us!'
'All right,' said Deep Thought. 'The Answer to the Great Question...'
'Yes...!'
'Of Life, the Universe and Everything...' said Deep Thought.
'Yes...!'
'Is...' said Deep Thought, and paused.
'Yes...!'
'Is...'
'Yes...!!!...?'
'Forty-two,' said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.”
One of the famous characters in Adams' book is Marvin, the depressed robot, who is perpetually gloomy. In one conversation the main character, Arthur Dent, waxes lyrical about two suns setting magnificently over a planet called Magrathea. 'Look, robot, the stars are coming out,' says Arthur. 'I know,' says Marvin. 'Wretched, isn't it?'
'But that sunset!' continues Arthur. 'I've never seen anything like it in my wildest dreams...the two suns! It was like mountains of fire boiling into space.'
'I've seen it,' replies Arthur. 'It's rubbish.'
'We only ever had the one sun at home,' perseveres Arthur. 'I came from a planet called Earth, you know.'
'I know. You keep going on about it. It sounds awful.'
'Ah no, it was a beautiful place.'
'Did it have oceans?'
'Oh yes,' answers Arthur with a sigh, 'great wide rolling blue oceans...'
'Can't bear oceans.'
'Tell me,' enquires Arthur, 'Do you get on well with other robots?'
'Hate them.'
There's a long line of depressives in literature. Eeyore the donkey in Winnie-the-Pooh, is one example. Eeyore lives in the southeast corner of the Hundred Acre Wood, in an area labelled on the map as 'Eeyore's gloomy place; rather boggy and sad'. His favourite food is thistles and he has a poor opinion of most of the other animals in the forest. When someone says 'good morning' to him, Eeyore replies, 'If it is a good morning, which I doubt.' On another occasion he says, 'Don't blame me if it rains.' Here's another famous Eeyore passage: “Eeyore, the old grey donkey, stood by the side of the stream, and looked at himself in the water. 'Pathetic,' he said. 'That's what it is. Pathetic.' He turned and walked slowly down the stream for twenty yards, splashed across it, and walked slowly back on the other side. Then he looked at himself in the water again. 'As I thought,' he said. 'No better from this side. Pathetic, that's what it is'.”
Another famous depressive in literature is Jaques in Shakespeare's “As You Like It,” who says in Act 2, Scene V, 'I can suck melancholy out of a song as a weasel sucks eggs.' Jaques looks with a wry smile upon all the comings and goings of the others around him. He enjoys idling and thinking philosophically. He utters one of Shakespeare's most famous passages – 'All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages...' The seventh and final stage is 'second childishiness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, says eyes, sans taste, sans everything.'
Adams himself could sometimes be a depressive character. It was in fact during one depressive and drunken period, while lying in a field in Austria (during a trip around Europe) and looking at the stars that he came up with the idea of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. 'Somebody ought to write a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,' he thought, because the universe out there in the night sky looked a lot more attractive than the people and countries around him.
Hitchhiker's opens with the destruction of Arthur Dent's house by the local Council to make way for a bypass. Adams is obviously on the side of Arthur and sentiment for one's homeplace, and against so-called progress, bureaucrats, and workers following orders despite the orders being morally unsound. Hitchhiker's was written in the late 1970s when life in the UK was pretty tense and gloomy, and there was a considerable amount of anti-authority feeling. Strikes were common and while many of the workers were low-paid, badly treated, and therefore correct in going on strike, many others, such as oil-tanker drivers and power workers, were not and their actions added to the inflationary pressures on the poorer employees. Striking dustmen meant that putrid rubbish bins were not collected and emptied, children were kept out of school by striking school care-takers, hospital wards were closed by striking health workers and patients died. In Liverpool grave-diggers went out on strike.
The 1970s in Ireland was equally dramatic with much economic, industrial and political unrest here as well. There were queues for petrol; strikes: sharp debates about religion, equality and the status of women; and brooding over everything, the Troubles.
In his book “Ambiguous Republic – Ireland in the 1970s” Diarmaid Ferriter points out that it wasn't all doom, gloom, unrest and lack of financial liquidity. Far from it. “There was festival fever, people had more money at certain times. There was a very young population (50% were under 26). You've got the beginnings of Hot Press, which reflects that burgeoning youth culture. You've got Bob Geldof being really lippy and going on The Late Late Show saying this country is a shithole. The Irish music scene was really impressive...Christy Moore talks about these festivals that were supposed to last for a day or two but could go on for a week. There was a great social scene. Even looking at the music listings and the cinema listings, you get the real sense that there was a hell of a lot going on.”
Having emerged from the awful period that was the Pandemic some of us were hoping for things to detensify and life to get better. Instead, we have a very dangerous, Russian psychopath brooding menacingly over us, a fuel crisis, cost of living crisis and the neverending housing crisis. It feels like we have been catapulted back to the 1970s.