by Neil Gaiman
Another project of theirs was rather better known in Britain, but for some reason not a success in the US: a curious book entitled The Meaning of Liff.
It began during the holiday in Corfu, which John and Douglas had booked to write The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but during which, for reasons already chronicled, only Douglas wrote the book. They were sitting in a tavern, playing charades and drinking retsina with a few friends. They had been drinking retsina all afternoon, and after a while decided they needed a game to play that did not require as much standing up.
Douglas remembered an English exercise he had been set at school, fifteen years earlier, and suggested it as a game.
The rules were fairly simple: someone would say the name of a town, and someone else would say what the word meant.
As John Lloyd explained, “It was a fantastically enjoyable holiday. For a month we got drunk, and we’d stay up all night playing these incredibly long games of charades.
“Then we began playing this placenames game. Near the end of the holiday, I started writing them down, not having very much else to do. By the end of the holiday, we had about twenty of these things, some of the best ones in The Meaning of Liff, like ‘Ely’—the first, tiniest inkling that something has gone terribly wrong.
“Many of them were to do with Greece, sitting in wickerwork chairs and so on. And we kept doing them after the holiday was over.”
Douglas clarified the concept on a press release for The Meaning of Liff:
We rapidly discovered there were an awful lot of experiences, ideas and situations that everybody knew and recognised, but which never got properly identified simply because there wasn’t a word for them. They were all of the, “Do you ever have the situation where…?” or, “You know what feeling you get when…?” “You know, I always thought it was just me…” All it takes is a word, and the thing is identified.
The vaguely uncomfortable feeling you get from sitting in a seat which is warm from somebody else’s bottom is just as real a feeling as the one you get when a rogue giant elephant charges out of the bush at you, but hitherto only the latter has actually had a word for it. Now they both have words. The first one is ‘shoeburyness’, and the second, of course, is ‘fear’.
We started to collect more and more of these words and concepts, and began to realise what an arbitrarily selective work the Oxford English Dictionary is. It simply doesn’t recognise huge wodges of human experience.
Like, for instance, standing in the kitchen wondering what you went in there for. Everybody does it, but because there isn’t—or wasn’t—a word for it, everybody thinks it’s something that only they do and that they are therefore more stupid than other people. It is reassuring to realise that everybody else is as stupid as you are and that all we are doing when we are standing in the kitchen wondering what we came in here for is ‘Woking’.
Following John Lloyd’s disappointment with the Hitchhiker’s book, he was similarly disappointed over a comedy series he was meant to have been co-writing, To the Manor Born, starring Penelope Keith. Instead he found himself producing a BBC 2 satire show, Not the Nine O’Clock News, starring Pamela Stephenson, Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones. After a while Not the Nine O’Clock News became a major success (which, according to Douglas, meant that John in his turn spent a while being as obnoxious as Douglas had been in the early days of the success of Hitchhiker’s), and spawned a number of records and books.
One of the books was the NOT 1982 calendar. Lloyd found himself stuck for material to fill in space at the bottoms of some pages, and at the tops of some pages, and in quite a few of the middles, so he dug out seventy of the best definitions (he had accumulated about 150) and inserted them into the book as extracts from The Oxtail English Dictionary.
Faber and Faber, John’s publisher, were very enthusiastic about the definitions.
“They said, ‘This is the best idea in the whole calendar—why don’t you do it as a book?’ This time it was the reverse situation: I hadn’t expected Douglas to be very interested in doing it as a book, so I expected to do it on my own. Then Douglas said, ‘Let’s do it together,’ and I said, ‘Yes!’ I can’t stand doing things on my own, which is one reason why I’m a producer and not a writer.”
The Meaning of Liff was written in September 1982, in a rented beach hut in Malibu. The two of them sat on the beach, watched the ocean, drank beer, thumbed through a gazetteer, and thought up definitions. Douglas also started learning to scuba dive at this time. (He finished learning to scuba dive in Australia two years later, and collected a number of wise sayings on the subject of sharks.) It was published in November 1983 by Pan (in a co-publishing deal with Faber and Faber) in a remarkable format (153mm by 82mm); a very small, very slim, very black book, with a bright orange sticker on the cover that proclaimed, “This Book Will Change Your Life!”
The ‘selling point summary’ that went out to reps included: “Small format for discreet consultation on retrieval from inside pocket”, “Authors expert in field” and “Possible early quote from John Cleese’s psychoanalyst” as selling points.
On its release it went to number four in the Sunday Times bestseller lists. However, overall it didn’t do as well as a Hitchhiker’s book or, for that matter, a Not the Nine O’Clock News book.
As Douglas said at the time, “Normally I don’t enjoy writing at all, but it was a real pleasure doing this book. But what’s really nice is that my family and so on, who say, ‘Yes dear, it’s nice about Hitchhiker’s’—John’s say the same about Not the Nine O’Clock News—love this book. My kid brother and sister like it.
“It’s selling briskly, but not as well as it could do. I think that’s because people have no idea what it is—it’s totally enigmatic and anonymous, unless you happen to recognise our names. In both cases the product is more famous than the names—but on the other hand it has terrific word-of-mouth.
“But I enjoy it. I can reread it, whereas normally I cringe when I read my stuff.”
The Meaning of Liff also kicked off a minor controversy in the newspapers. Although it was well, and extensively, reviewed (primarily because it was so easily quotable—despite the presence of the word ‘Ripon’, described in The Meaning of Liff as: [of literary critics] ‘To include all the best jokes from the book in the review to make it look as if the critic had thought of them’), there were also accusations of plagiarism.
Having just undergone a traumatic time trying to get a certain advertising agency to pay up for having stolen the idea for an ad campaign using the phrase The Oxtail English Dictionary (see ‘Cannock Chase’ in The Meaning of Liff), Adams and Lloyd were rather put out when it was widely pointed out that the idea had originated in an essay written by Paul Jennings, called Ware, Wye and Watford published in the late 1950s.
Douglas suggested that the teacher who gave him the exercise had probably got the idea from the Jennings book, and sent Jennings a note of apology.
(Miles Kington in The Times rushed to Adams’s and Lloyd’s defence, pointing out the essential difference between the two: that while Jennings had been primarily interested in the sound and flavour of the placename (he suggested that ‘Rickmansworth’—as in “a small café in…”—was really the nominal rent paid to the Lord of the Manor for hay; it sounds right, but isn’t particularly funny), Lloyd-Adams had been far more concerned in amassing meanings for which there were no words previously in existence, the actual word or placename they picked being less than important.)
An additional coincidence (although certain devoted fans have woven intricate conspiracy theories around it) was its release at almost exactly the same time as Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. The film’s title sequence shows the title, carved, in classically modest Terry Gilliam fashion, into a huge slab of rock; initially reading THE MEANING OF LIFF, a lightning bolt adds the bottom bar of the final E. It was a meaningless coincidence, discovered by Douglas and Terry Jones slightly before the release of eith
er of their products, but too late for anything to be changed. It was a coincidence but if you wish to concoct conspiracy theories (and what does happen in the forty-second minute of the film?) then go right ahead.
Although The Meaning of Liff was published in the US in a different format and with some extra words, it is the least known of Douglas’s books there.
“I did some college readings in America. You would think that a high concentration of people who knew what I had written would be in those audiences, yet hardly anybody there had heard of The Meaning of Liff. I read sections, and they went over well. People kept asking me where they could find the book. No one could find it. I think it suffered from nobody knowing what to do with it.”
‘Liff’, incidentally, is a town in Scotland. Its meaning? A book, the contents of which are totally belied by its cover. For instance, any book the dust jacket of which bears the words, “This book will change your life!”
Postscript: Adams and Lloyd, assisted by Stephen Fry, returned to Liff in their work for The Utterly Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book, co-edited by Douglas Adams, and in 1990 an expanded version, The Deeper Meaning of Liff, was published—even in America. In addition, The Meaning of Liff has been successfully translated into Dutch and Finnish editions, despite the fact that this is clearly impossible.
19
SLATFAT FISH
CUT TO A BLURRY CLOSE-UP OF ZAPHOD LYING ASLEEP ON THE GROUND.
FORD: Zaphod! Wake up!
ZAPHOD: Mmmmmmmwwerrrr?
TRILLIAN: Hey come on, wake up.
SLOWLY THE PICTURE FOCUSES.
ZAPHOD: Just let me stick to what I’m good at, yeah?
HE GOES BACK TO SLEEP.
FORD: You want me to kick you?
ZAPHOD: Would it give you a lot of pleasure?
FORD: No.
ZAPHOD: Nor me. So what’s the point? Stop bugging me.
TRILLIAN: He got a double dose of the gas. Two windpipes.
ZAPHOD: Hey, lose the talk, will you? It’s hard enough trying to sleep anyway. What’s the matter with the ground? It’s all cold and hard.
FORD: It’s gold.
PULL BACK RAPIDLY AS ZAPHOD LEAPS TO HIS FEET. WE SEE THAT THEY APPEAR TO BE STANDING ON A VAST SHINING PLAIN OF SOLID GOLD.
ZAPHOD: Hey, who put all that there?
FORD: It’s nothing.
ZAPHOD: Nothing? Gold by the square mile nothing?
TRILLIAN: This world is an illusion.
ZAPHOD: You pick now to become Buddhists?
FORD: It’s just a catalogue.
ZAPHOD: A who?
FORD: A catalogue. It’s not real. Just a projection.
ZAPHOD: How can you say that?
HE DROPS TO HIS KNEES AND STARTS FEELING THE “GROUND”.
TRILLIAN: We both came round a while ago. We shouted and yelled till somebody came…
FORD: And then carried on shouting and yelling till they put us in their planet catalogue. They said they’d deal with us later. This is all Sens-O-Tape.
HE POINTS UP INTO THE SKY.
WE SEE THERE ARE SOME WORDS. THEY SAY:
“MAGRATHEAN PLANET CATALOGUE BK THREE. DESIGN 35/C/6b. ‘ULTRASULTAN’S ECSTASY’.
LANDFORMATION: GOLD.
OPTIONAL EXTRAS: SILVER MOON. ZAN-TEQUILA OCEANS.
ALL ORDERS PAYABLE IN ADVANCE.”
ZAPHOD: Ah, fetid photons, you wake me from my own perfectly good dream to show me somebody else’s?
TRILLIAN: We didn’t wake you earlier. The last planet was kneedeep in fish.
ZAPHOD: Fish?
FORD: Fish.
ZAPHOD: Well, tell them to turn it off. Get us out of here!
HE YELLS UP AT THE SKY.
ZAPHOD: Get us out of here!
IN THE SKY THE WRITING CHANGES. IT NOW SAYS:
“MAGRATHEAN PLANET CATALOGUE BK THREE. DESIGN 35/C/7. ‘LEATHERLAND’.
LANDFORMATION: FINEST ARCTURAN MEGA-OX HIDE.
OPTIONAL EXTRAS: STEEL MOUNTAIN STUDS.”
WE SEE THAT THEY ARE NOW STANDING ON A PLAIN OF SHINING BLACK LEATHER WHICH UNDULATES AWAY INTO THE DISTANCE. GIANT STRAPS AND BUCKLES ARE ALSO VISIBLE.
ZAPHOD: Get us out of here!
THE SKY WRITING CHANGES AGAIN. (I’M GIVING THE DETAILS IN FULL, THOUGH IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO DWELL ON THEM LONG ENOUGH TO READ THEM ALL.)
“MAGRATHEAN PLANET CATALOGUE BK THREE. DESIGN 35/C/8. ‘WORLD OF PLAYBEING’.
LANDFORMATION: EPIDERMITEX.
OPTIONAL EXTRAS: ASK FOR SPECIAL CATALOGUE.” WE SEE THAT THE NEW LANDSCAPE THAT HAS MATERIALISED AROUND THEM IS SOFT AND PINK AND CURIOUSLY UNDULATING. THERE ARE HILLS AROUND THEM WHICH ARE GENTLY ROUNDED WITH RED PEAKS.
ZAPHOD: Get us… hey, I think I could learn to like it here. What do you think Ford?
FORD: I think it’s a mistake to mix geography with pleasure.
ZAPHOD: What’s that meant to mean?
FORD: Nothing. It’s just a form of mouth exercise. Ask Trillian.
ZAPHOD: Ask her what?
FORD: Anything you like. (HE WANDERS OFF ENIGMATICALLY.)
ZAPHOD
(TO TRILLIAN): Is he trying to drive me mad?
TRILLIAN: Yes.
ZAPHOD: Why?
TRILLIAN: To stop all this driving us insane.
MEANWHILE A SLOGAN HAS RISEN ABOVE THE HORIZON. IT SAYS IN LARGE LETTERS:
“WHATEVER YOUR TASTES, MAGRATHEA CAN CATER FOR THEM. WE ARE NOT PROUD.”
— Unused scene from early draft of TV series script, Episode Four.
Having written one Hitchhiker’s book he had been unsatisfied with—Life, the Universe and Everything—and having sworn “never again” on the Hitchhiker’s saga, why did Douglas Adams sign a contract to write the fourth book in the trilogy?
Firstly, he was under a great deal of pressure to write it, both from his agent and his publishers. On his return from the US, he explained, “I felt so disoriented being in Los Angeles, and so keen to be home and just sort of grab hold of things I knew again, it became very easy to give in to the temptation of sort of re-establishing what I knew I could do, by doing another Hitchhiker’s book.”
Secondly, he did have God’s Final Message to His Creation; and since he was never going to tell people what the Ultimate Question was, he felt that that was something he should reveal.
Thirdly, the advance he was offered topped £600,000.
He signed the contract.
I asked him about the book in November 1983: “I can tell you more about the working title than what it’s actually going to be about. The working title is So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. It’s about something left hanging at the end of the third book, which is Arthur’s quest to find God’s final message to His creation.
“My agent thinks So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish isn’t the right title for the book, since the first three all have ‘Galaxy’ or ‘Universe’ in the title, so he wants me to call it God’s Final Message to His Creation. I don’t know, but I don’t think that has the ironical ring to it, in the way that that most modest of titles Life, the Universe and Everything does. Or doesn’t. However that sentence started. Also I do want it to be a quotation from the first book, as the titles of the other two books were.”
While Ed Victor, Douglas’s agent, was not too keen on So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish as a title, everyone else was—especially Douglas’s American publisher (and five-sixths of the advance money had come from America). At this point Douglas had a title and a contract. And an idea, but not much of one.
DEEP
THOUGHT: It occurs to me that running a programme like this is bound to create considerable interest in the whole area of popular philosophy, yes?
MAJIKTHISE: Keep talking…
DEEP
THOUGHT: Everyone’s going to have their own theories about what answer I’m eventually going to come up with, and who better to capitalise on that media market than you yourselves?
BY THIS TIME WE ARE QUITE CLOSE IN ON ONE OF
DEEP THOUGHT’S TV SCREENS. A NEW SCENE COMES UP ON IT: A TV PROGRAMME CALLED “DEEP THOUGHT SPECIAL”. AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SCREEN FLASHES THE WORD “SIMULATION” WHICH ALTERNATES WITH THE WORDS “MERELY A SUGGESTION”. THOUGH NO SOUND COMES WITH THE PROGRAMME WE SEE THAT IT FEATURES BOTH VROOMFONDEL AND MAJIKTHISE AS IMPORTANT-LOOKING PUNDITS ON A DISCUSSION PROGRAMME. THEY APPEAR TO BE ARGUING ON EITHER SIDE OF A SWINGOMETER WHICH IS LABELLED “ANSWER PREDICTOR”. AS THEY ARGUE THE SWINGOMETER NEEDLE MOVES BACKWARDS AND FORWARDS BETWEEN TWO EXTREMES MARKED “LIFE AFFIRMATION” AND “HOPELESSNESS AND FUTILITY”. THESE DETAILS ARE NOT PARTICULARLY IMPORTANT IN THEMSELVES IF WE CAN’T MAKE THEM OUT. THE IMPORTANT THING TO ESTABLISH IS THAT IT LOOKS IMPORTANT. THE REAL VROOMFONDEL AND MAJIKTHISE ARE CLEARLY FASCINATED BY THIS PICTURE.
DEEP
THOUGHT: So long as you can keep violently disagreeing with each other and slagging each other off in the popular press, and so long as you have clever agents, you can keep yourselves on the gravy train for life.
— From early draft of TV series script, Episode Four.
Life, the Universe and Everything had given Douglas the problem of trying to force jokes onto a carefully worked-out plot. This time he would just follow the story wherever it led him. For the first time, the book was to be released in the UK in a hardback edition first (rather than a later library and book-club hardback). The presses were booked. The deadlines were agreed. The final-final deadlines were agreed. The extensions-beyond-which-one-could-not-extend were agreed.
Douglas was late.
Although he had made a number of notes on the book, had toyed with various ideas, including pulling in some of the weirder stuff from the second radio series, and getting a computer spreadsheet programme to organise his ideas for him, he had not written it in his Islington home (incidentally, Life, the Universe and Everything is the only Hitchhiker’s book Douglas wrote at home, as opposed to somewhere else. It has been suggested that this was because he had only just moved in there, and it seemed like somewhere else).
He had gone down to the West Country, where earlier books had been written, but did not write it there.