Feeding our destruction

Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh, was my favorite book from the time I read it at age 10 until, I don’t know, forever. A couple years ago, I gave it to my stepdaughter when she was about 12 and she couldn’t be bothered with it. Well, I thought, maybe she was too old for it; every book needs to hit you at the right time. I mean, I was not unique in loving this book. My friend and I were both obsessed with it, modeling ourselves after Harriet, walking around with composition books, taking notes on all the people at school, learning, in fact, how to be keen observers and competent writers. I read somewhere that in a town where this book was taught in the school, there was a sudden rash of children caught snooping around, spying in people’s windows. So it has been popular and a great influence on generations. Ok, getting kids to snoop doesn’t sound like a great influence, but what’s behind that is the curiosity about what it’s like to be inside someone else’s skin: it encourages that curiosity which is a precursor to compassion. So when my second stepdaughter hit 11, I handed her a copy. She has to be the perfect age. She even looks a little bit like the girl on the cover. So I waited a couple weeks, then asked her how she liked the book so far. “Boring,” she said. Boring: today’s kid’s greatest condemnation.

Perhaps it is simply that they have been ruined by the page-turning excitement of Harry Potter and its ilk, books which I too enjoy, but which I recognize as being relatively shallow and much more plot than character driven, as Harriet the Spy is. The generation growing up now may be avid readers, consuming novels like they were candy, but they are reading passively. However, the reason Harriet the Spy is no longer attracting readers is darker and sadder than that. This is why I have decided there is no hope for the future. These children are not able to identify with a character who is imaginative because they have not been permitted to develop their imaginations; they are too busy being driven around from one competitive sporting event to another. They cannot even fathom what is going on when she sits down with a friend and plays “town,” a game of simply imagining, because they have never been given a moment’s free time in which to invent something for themselves. Thus, unlike those of us who emulated Harriet, they will be impaired in their ability to understand what it is like to be inside someone else’s skin. I rest my case. The world ain’t getting any better on account of our kids. We have given birth to our destruction (well, I haven’t, I have allowed my womb to remain unused) but in the collective sense… our destruction has been born and we are feeding it.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

After leaving The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, belting the great theme song, "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" into the parking lot (I must get that for my MP3 player) Mr. Crackles remarked that he thought it seemed a bit dated, kind of '60s. "Why," I asked, "because it asks about the meaning of life, and not just who has the biggest weapons?" Instead of being all about saving the earth, the earth is destroyed in the first few minutes, exploding along with it the whole concept that 99% of all the movies around are based on. Let's go somewhere else, it insists. Further, the film is funny without all that self-conscious parody that the humor of most recent movies relies on. In fact, I think it may be devoid of any pop culture references. Hooray!

What is truly entertaining about The Hitchhiker's Guide is verbal: puns and witty language. They do a good job with the Guide itself, but that may be the only thing that is really enhanced by the medium. The Hitchhiker's Guide began as a book, and enjoyed success as a radio play, (or was it the other way around? --I'm sure someone can tell me) but in either case, those are both media that emphasize language. So while the effects are there, they aren't anything you won't see in all the other space movies: the pleasure lies in old fashioned good lines.

The folks on the ASLE list had noted the film's ecological awareness. Indeed, it portrays the earth as a wonderfully amazing planet ("this fragile earth, our island home" as the Book of Common Prayer has it) and of course England may well be the most beautiful place of all. I was reminded of the elegiac quality of The Lord of the Rings' portrayal of hobbiton, which is of course really England. And it is also similar in that while there is this desire to get back to home, he finds he enjoys travel and decides to go off in search of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, just as Frodo finally chooses to go off to the Gray Havens. Adams and Tolkien seem to share a love for their homeland that is energized by the awareness that one must ultimately leave it, and that its beauty is pointing to something even Greater. Adams idea that the Earth is a computer calculating the meaning of life is, to me a wonderful way of understanding Creation.