Жизнь как творчество

Второй роман из серии «Автостопом по галактике» — те же персонажи, та же сюжетная линия и тот же восхитительный стиль. Во всяком случае, таковы ожидания, когда открываешь эту книгу.

В реальности несмотря на все вышеперечисленное «Ресторан в конце вселенной» оставляет гораздо менее яркие ощущения по сравнению с первой книгой. Да, здесь есть отдельные яркие места, оригинальные лингвистические находки и потрясающий юмор.

It is one of the most remarkable, certainly the most successful, books ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor—more popular than Life Begins at Five Hundred and Fifty, better selling than The Big Bang Theory—A Personal View by Eccentrica Gallumbits (the triple breasted whore of Eroticon Six) and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid’s latest blockbusting title Everything You Never Wanted To Know About Sex But Have Been Forced To Find Out.

Или еще один чудесный фрагмент, перечитав который я, наконец, понял, кого мне все это напоминает — конечно же, Вуди Аллена! 🙂

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet-or more frequently around a completely different planet.

Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath a silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.

Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band’s public address system contravenes local strategic arms limitations treaties.

This has not, however, stopped their earnings from pushing back the boundaries of pure hypermathematics, and their chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and his Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent.

Несмотря на отдельные яркие моменты, сюжет в целом развивается довольно вяло. Персонажи (и даже мой любимый Марвин) раскрыты слабо, настолько, что порой сливаются друг с другом. Вместо единой канвы и стройной концепции мы видим ряд слабо связанных эпизодов, и это разочаровывает.

Посмотрим, что будет дальше )