IP: Douglas Adams [1952 -2001];LAMENT FOR DOUGLAS by R. Dawkins

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 01:45:11 -0400
> To: 3culture () edge org (Third Culture Mail List)
> From: John Brockman <brockman () edge org>
>
>
> "Nobody knows, and you can't find out."
>
> Edge 85 - May 14, 2001
>
> http://www.edge.org
>
> (1550 words)
>
> ------------------------
> THE THIRD CULTURE
> ------------------------
>
> Douglas Adams
> [1952 - 2001]
>
> [Image: "The Digital Planet": Douglas Adams at the Muffathalle in Munich, 
> November, 1998]
>
> LAMENT FOR DOUGLAS
> By Richard Dawkins
>
> This is not an obituary, there'll be time enough for them. It is not a 
> tribute, not a considered assessment of a brilliant life, not a eulogy. It 
> is a keening lament, written too soon to be balanced, too soon to be 
> carefully thought through. Douglas, you cannot be dead.
>
> ------------------------
> ------------------------
>
> THE THIRD CULTURE
>
> ------------------------
> Douglas Adams
> [1952 - 2001]
>
> LAMENT FOR DOUGLAS
> By Richard Dawkins
>
> [Image: "The Digital Planet": Douglas Adams at the Muffathalle in Munich, 
> November, 1998]
>
> This is not an obituary, there'll be time enough for them. It is not a 
> tribute, not a considered assessment of a brilliant life, not a eulogy. It 
> is a keening lament, written too soon to be balanced, too soon to be 
> carefully thought through. Douglas, you cannot be dead.
>
> A sunny Saturday morning in May, ten past seven, shuffle out of bed, log 
> in to e-mail as usual. The usual blue bold headings drop into place, 
> mostly junk, some expected, and my gaze absently follows them down the 
> page. The name Douglas Adams catches my eye and I smile. That one, at 
> least, will be good for a laugh. Then I do the classic double-take, back 
> up the screen. WHAT did that heading actually say? DOUGLAS ADAMS DIED OF A 
> HEART ATTACK A FEW HOURS AGO. Then that other cliché, the words swelling 
> before my eyes. It must be part of the joke. It must be some other Douglas 
> Adams. This is too ridiculous to be true. I must still be asleep. I open 
> the message, from a well-known German software designer. It is no joke, I 
> am fully awake. And it is the right - or rather the wrong - Douglas Adams. 
> A sudden heart attack, in the gym in Santa Barbara. "Man, man, man, man oh 
> man," the message concludes,
>
> Man indeed, what a man. A giant of a man, surely nearer seven foot than 
> six, broad-shouldered, and he did not stoop like some very tall men who 
> feel uncomfortable with their height. But nor did he swagger with the 
> macho assertiveness that can be intimidating in a big man. He neither 
> apologised for his height, nor flaunted it. It was part of the joke 
> against himself.
>
> One of the great wits of our age, his sophisticated humour was founded in 
> a deep, amalgamated knowledge of literature and science, two of my great 
> loves. And he introduced me to my wife - at his fortieth birthday party. 
> He was exactly her age, they had worked together on Dr Who. Should I tell 
> her now, or let her sleep a bit longer before shattering her day? He 
> initiated our togetherness and was a recurrently important part of it. I 
> must tell her now.
>
> Douglas and I met because I sent him an unsolicited fan letter - I think 
> it is the only time I have ever written one. I had adored THE HITCHHIKER'S 
> GUIDE TO THE GALAXY. Then I read DIRK GENTLY'S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY. 
> As soon as I finished it I turned back to page one and read it straight 
> through again - the only I time I have ever done that, and I wrote to tell 
> him so. He replied that he was a fan of my books, and he invited me to his 
> house in London. I have seldom met a more congenial spirit. Obviously I 
> knew he would be funny. What I didn't know was how deeply read he was in 
> science. I should have guessed, for you can't understand many of the jokes 
> in HITCHHIKER if you don't know a lot of advanced science. And in modern 
> electronic technology he was a real expert. We talked science a lot, in 
> private, and even in public at literary festivals and on the wireless or 
> television. And he became my guru on all technical problems. Rather than 
> struggle with some ill-written and incomprehensible manual in Pacific Rim 
> English, I would fire off an e-mail to Douglas. He would reply, often 
> within minutes, whether in London or Santa Barbara, or some hotel room 
> anywhere in the world. Unlike most staffers of professional help lines, 
> Douglas understood EXACTLY my problem, knew EXACTLY why it was troubling 
> me, and always had the solution ready, lucidly and amusingly explained. 
> Our frequent e-mail exchanges brimmed with literary and scientific jokes 
> and affectionately sardonic little asides. His technophilia shone through, 
> but so did his rich sense of the absurd. The whole world was one big Monty 
> Python sketch, and the follies of humanity are as comic in the world's 
> silicon valleys as anywhere else.
>
> He laughed at himself with equal good humour. At, for example, his epic 
> bouts of writer's block ("I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise 
> they make as they go by") when, according to legend, his publisher and 
> book agent would literally lock him in a hotel room, with no telephone, 
> and nothing to do but write, releasing him only for supervised walks. If 
> his enthusiasm ran away with him and he advanced a biological theory too 
> eccentric for my professional scepticism to let pass, his mien at my 
> dismissal of it would always be more humorously self-mocking than 
> genuinely crestfallen. And he would have another go.
>
> He laughed at his own jokes, which good comedians are supposed not to, but 
> he did it with such charm that the jokes became even funnier. He was 
> gently able to poke fun without wounding, and it would be aimed not at 
> individuals but at their absurd ideas. To illustrate the vain conceit that 
> the universe must be somehow pre-ordained for us, because we are so 
> well-suited to live in it, he mimed a wonderfully funny imitation of a 
> puddle of water, fitting itself snugly into a depression in the ground, 
> THE DEPRESSION UNCANNILY BEING EXACTLY THE SAME SHAPE AS THE PUDDLE. Or 
> there's this parable, which he told with huge enjoyment, whose moral leaps 
> out with no further explanation. A man didn't understand how televisions 
> work, and was convinced that there must be lots of little men inside the 
> box. manipulating images at high speed. An engineer explained to him about 
> high frequency modulations of the electromagnetic spectrum, about 
> transmitters and receivers, about amplifiers and cathode ray tubes, about 
> scan lines moving across and down a phosphorescent screen. The man 
> listened to the engineer with careful attention, nodding his head at every 
> step of the argument. At the end he pronounced himself satisfied. He 
> really did now understand how televisions work. "But I expect there are 
> just a few little men in there, aren't there?"
>
> Science has lost a friend, literature has lost a luminary, the mountain 
> gorilla and the black rhino have lost a gallant defender (he once climbed 
> Kilimanjaro in a rhino suit to raise money to fight the cretinous trade in 
> rhino horn), Apple Computer has lost its most eloquent apologist. And I 
> have lost an irreplaceable intellectual companion and one of the kindest 
> and funniest men I ever met. I officially received a happy piece of news 
> yesterday, which would have delighted him. I wasn't allowed to tell anyone 
> during the weeks I have secretly known about it, and now that I am allowed 
> to it is too late.
>
> [Image:Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Douglas Adams, Jared Diamond, 
> Steven Pinker]
>
> The sun is shining, life must go on, seize the day and all those clichés. 
> We shall plant a tree this very day: a Douglas Fir, tall, upright, 
> evergreen. It is the wrong time of year, but we'll give it our best shot. 
> Off to the arboretum.
>
>                                    -----
>
> The tree is planted, and this article completed, all within 24 hours of 
> his death. Was it cathartic? No, but it was worth a try.
>
>
> ---
>
> It was announced today that RICHARD DAWKINS has been elected a Fellow of 
> the Royal Society. Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and the Charles 
> Simonyi Professor For The Understanding Of Science at Oxford University; 
> Fellow of New College; author of THE SELFISH GENE,THE EXTENDED 
> PHENOTYPE,THE BLIND WATCHMAKER, RIVER OUT OF EDEN (Science Masters 
> Series), CLIMBING MOUNT IMPROBABLE, AND UNWEAVING THE RAINBOW.
>
> [Also appearing today in THE GUARDIAN and FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG.]
>
> ------------------------
> ------------------------
> EDGE
> John Brockman, Editor and Publisher
>
> Copyright © 2001 by Edge Foundation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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