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marlan's review
informative
slow-paced
2.0
This book is dull. Really dull. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly dull it is. I mean, you may think Anna Karenina's endless grass-cutting scene was dull, but that's just peanuts to this book.
This is less a biography and more of a CV in narrative form. You'll get almost nothing on Adams's childhood and family, but lengthy descriptions of every single unremarkable stage skit that Adams wrote in his twenties. I've been racking my brain to think of anyone who could use or be interested by this information. A grad student writing their thesis on a comparative analysis of comedy writers' careers? Douglas Adams's ghost?
The later chapters get a bit better as they describe the creation of the Hitchhiker story, but somehow it's still written in an uninteresting style that's a struggle to get through. I suppose it's good that someone wrote up a detailed record of the career of one of the best comedy writers of all time. But I feel like this would have been better as a bullet list in a Hitchhiker's wiki somewhere.
This is less a biography and more of a CV in narrative form. You'll get almost nothing on Adams's childhood and family, but lengthy descriptions of every single unremarkable stage skit that Adams wrote in his twenties. I've been racking my brain to think of anyone who could use or be interested by this information. A grad student writing their thesis on a comparative analysis of comedy writers' careers? Douglas Adams's ghost?
The later chapters get a bit better as they describe the creation of the Hitchhiker story, but somehow it's still written in an uninteresting style that's a struggle to get through. I suppose it's good that someone wrote up a detailed record of the career of one of the best comedy writers of all time. But I feel like this would have been better as a bullet list in a Hitchhiker's wiki somewhere.
markyon's review
4.0
“Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.”
(Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
As I type this, and after reading The Frood, there is a realisation that there has been a major passage of time since I first encountered The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The publication of this biography, fully authorised by the Adams’ estate and Douglas’ family, is a fully formed thing of loveliness, released to indicate that it is 35 years ago Hitchhiker appeared as a BBC Radio 4 series, and then as a book. In 2014 it is known globally and still going strong, despite Douglas’s death at the criminally short age of 49 in 2001. Fans include scientist Richard Dawkins, actor and raconteur Stephen Fry, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, and various members of Monty Python, amongst many others.
This book puts the complex events of Douglas’ writing career into a chronological perspective. In five sections it tells of Douglas’s background, his family, his academic path and his early work in comedy before, almost by accident, working for the BBC and then creating Hitchhiker. It then deals with the now-legendary difficulties that Douglas experienced creating the series, and when the radio series became an international success.* Throughout all of this, The Frood also tells of his friendships, mainly with the New Wave of British comedians in the 1980s – John Lloyd, Stephen Fry, Ben Elton, Peter Cook, the Monty Python group, and then with scientists, conservationists, computer companies and fellow scriptwriters.
His success on Hitchhiker led to other things – work on Doctor Who scripts, a friendship with Pink Floyd and travel around the world with Stephen Fry to see nearly extinct animals for a book and TV series, Last Chance to See. Despite all of this, The Frood shows that his family kept Douglas grounded, it seems, both his sister Susan and his wife Jane, not to mention his daughter Polly (now at university).
For fans of Hitchhiker and the Dirk Gently series, there’s a lot of reminiscing here that will keep them amused, with anecdotes and bon mots a-plenty. The book includes material based on many new interviews with friends and colleagues to fill in some of the gaps that fans will no doubt be wanting to read.
And, perhaps most importantly, the book’s appendices have previously unpublished material from Douglas’s archive in Cambridge, including removed extracts from Hitchhiker, short stories and notes. The Introduction here is something Douglas wrote as self-parody circa 1985 based on his use of an automatic author-interview writing machine. It is rather typical of the man.
As biographies go, it must be said that there have been a few since Douglas’ death. The author himself has pointed out that the biographies by Neil Gaiman, Nick Webb and MJ Simpson were reference points to start with, not to further mention the website fanclub ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, still going strong. The Frood is one of the most detailed and interesting accounts, and Jem’s Acknowledgements towards the back of the book show how much work and care has gone into this biography.
Whilst it could so easily have veered off into hagiography, The Frood shows, perhaps more than ever before, the man’s interests, drives and insecurities in an entertainingly affectionate manner. I enjoyed reading it a lot, even if only to realise at the end how much Douglas would have loved to be here in 2014.
*There is a now-apocryphal story, told again in this book, of Douglas being locked in a room with a typewriter by his editor, with no telephone or other means of communication, until he had sat down and written ‘something’. Pages were passed to the editor under the bottom of the locked door!
(Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
As I type this, and after reading The Frood, there is a realisation that there has been a major passage of time since I first encountered The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The publication of this biography, fully authorised by the Adams’ estate and Douglas’ family, is a fully formed thing of loveliness, released to indicate that it is 35 years ago Hitchhiker appeared as a BBC Radio 4 series, and then as a book. In 2014 it is known globally and still going strong, despite Douglas’s death at the criminally short age of 49 in 2001. Fans include scientist Richard Dawkins, actor and raconteur Stephen Fry, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, and various members of Monty Python, amongst many others.
This book puts the complex events of Douglas’ writing career into a chronological perspective. In five sections it tells of Douglas’s background, his family, his academic path and his early work in comedy before, almost by accident, working for the BBC and then creating Hitchhiker. It then deals with the now-legendary difficulties that Douglas experienced creating the series, and when the radio series became an international success.* Throughout all of this, The Frood also tells of his friendships, mainly with the New Wave of British comedians in the 1980s – John Lloyd, Stephen Fry, Ben Elton, Peter Cook, the Monty Python group, and then with scientists, conservationists, computer companies and fellow scriptwriters.
His success on Hitchhiker led to other things – work on Doctor Who scripts, a friendship with Pink Floyd and travel around the world with Stephen Fry to see nearly extinct animals for a book and TV series, Last Chance to See. Despite all of this, The Frood shows that his family kept Douglas grounded, it seems, both his sister Susan and his wife Jane, not to mention his daughter Polly (now at university).
For fans of Hitchhiker and the Dirk Gently series, there’s a lot of reminiscing here that will keep them amused, with anecdotes and bon mots a-plenty. The book includes material based on many new interviews with friends and colleagues to fill in some of the gaps that fans will no doubt be wanting to read.
And, perhaps most importantly, the book’s appendices have previously unpublished material from Douglas’s archive in Cambridge, including removed extracts from Hitchhiker, short stories and notes. The Introduction here is something Douglas wrote as self-parody circa 1985 based on his use of an automatic author-interview writing machine. It is rather typical of the man.
As biographies go, it must be said that there have been a few since Douglas’ death. The author himself has pointed out that the biographies by Neil Gaiman, Nick Webb and MJ Simpson were reference points to start with, not to further mention the website fanclub ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, still going strong. The Frood is one of the most detailed and interesting accounts, and Jem’s Acknowledgements towards the back of the book show how much work and care has gone into this biography.
Whilst it could so easily have veered off into hagiography, The Frood shows, perhaps more than ever before, the man’s interests, drives and insecurities in an entertainingly affectionate manner. I enjoyed reading it a lot, even if only to realise at the end how much Douglas would have loved to be here in 2014.
*There is a now-apocryphal story, told again in this book, of Douglas being locked in a room with a typewriter by his editor, with no telephone or other means of communication, until he had sat down and written ‘something’. Pages were passed to the editor under the bottom of the locked door!
violetturtledove's review
4.0
This is the only Adams biography I've ever read so I don't know how the others compare, but it's hard to imagine any others being as thorough as this one (although, as far as I'm aware this is the most recent so it has more to work with).
I found some of the details of radio/tv production a little tedious (as I'm sure the frood himself did) but luckily there's never a funny quote or interesting anecdote far off.
I found some of the details of radio/tv production a little tedious (as I'm sure the frood himself did) but luckily there's never a funny quote or interesting anecdote far off.
saras's review
4.0
I've been a major fan of Douglas Adams since 1980 or 1981 thanks to the older brother of my boyfriend at the time who introduced us to this totally radical and cool book. My iPhone case says "Don't Panic!" It was great to read about Adams's background and how the various versions came to be. I think you have to be British to recognize many of the names that are dropped, but no matter. This is a worthy and entertaining biography.
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