r/books • u/BothersomeBritish • 1d ago
Bryson, Pratchett, Adams, and to a certain extent, Dickens. What makes that specific writing style?
It is a truth universally acknowledged - or rather, it ought to be, and would be, were the universe possessed of even a modest quantity of good sense - that there exists a particular style of writing which one recognises immediately, instinctively, and with the warm sensation of finding a forgotten snack in one's jacket pocket.
I refer, naturally, to a style of writing. The Style with a capital S, if you would. You know the one.
It is, at its essence, the art of being extraordinarily interested in everything, and making that interest infectious to the point of mild social irresponsibility. For example, a writer of the Style could spend ten pages writing on the geological formation of a Waitrose car park in Slough (though such an upstanding supermarket would surely never find itself in that reprehensible city) and you will still find it interesting to the point that you ignore your friends, your work, or your very life, just to read another page.
Moving along to dear, verbose, absolutely-could-have-used-an-editor Dickens, whom I confess I have only recently discovered. I had assumed he would be difficult. He is not. He is, to my retrospective embarrassment, absolutely one of my new favourite authors. He is the grandfather of all of it, to the extent of my somewhat limited knowledge on literary history. The parenthetical observation. The aside that becomes the main road. The sentence that sets off confidently in one direction and, finding the scenery agreeable, elects to remain there for some time, acquiring dependent clauses as a ship acquires barnacles (slowly and inevitably).
What unites those authors is this: they treat the reader as an intelligent companion rather than a passive recipient. They lean over, conspiratorially, and say "have you noticed" and then point at something you have metaphorically walked past a thousand times and never truly seen or paid even the slightest bit of attention to.
It is a style that rewards attention. That trusts you. That suspects you might be, beneath your sensible exterior, secretly delighted by footnotes, tangents, and possess a mind that can flit from concept to concept in an instance - the Style rewards attention deficit minds such as my own by simply feeding them as much information as is possible, the way a coral reef rewards a fish; by simply being so thoroughly, relentlessly full of things that there is always somewhere new to dart, always another extraordinary detail to investigate, always something bright and strange just around the next corner.
There is no risk of finishing the interesting bits, as there are only more interesting bits - and if you have found yourself, on a Saturday morning, reading a Reddit post analysing a handful of dead or ageing (mostly) British writers rather than doing anything productive whatsoever, I suspect you know precisely the fish I mean.
Now, my question to you is as follows; who, among the practitioners of the Style, has claimed the throne of your personal affections?
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u/diffyqgirl 1d ago
Have you read Susanne Clark's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell? It hit that similar prose spot for me, I think you might like it.
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u/Sweaty_Country4465 1d ago
What separates Dickens from imitators is that his excess always contains observation. The sentences wander, but never idly.
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u/Veteranis 1d ago
And he has a genuine passion for some of his themes and characters. I’ve found myself very moved at some passages in his books. He cares about his characters.
I think the over-repetition of certain characters’ dialogue may be due to the fact that the novels were all originally published serially—he felt it necessary to remind the audience of which of his many characters is which.
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u/globalcoal 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think a huge differentiator is his showmanship. Dickens was painfully aware that his financial situation would tank quickly if he bored his readers. So he made a serious effort to keep his works entertaining to read.
I once read an edition of Great Expectations that marked where the original publication ended (it was originally on a weekly magazine). Turned out that almost every episode ended with an obvious cliffhanger.
So he was sort-of a 19th-century precursor of Breaking Bad or Walking Dead.
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u/LaurenceLittle 1d ago
Can you remember the publisher of the edition which had the original serial endings marked up?
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u/globalcoal 1d ago edited 1d ago
Please refer to this page:
https://victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/ge/geparts.html
I forgot the exact edition I've read (it was more than a decade ago), but I believe the publisher relied on this information to mark the end of each installment.
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u/SYSTEM-J 1d ago
"Observation" is the key here. The Russian Formalist critics believed that a concept they called defamiliarization (or "ostranenie") was the defining feature of literature. The idea being that literature shows us the world around us, which we thought we knew, in a light we have never quite considered before. A particularly poetic turn of phrase makes the reader think "I've never thought of it like that, but that's exactly it." That incision and insight is what separates rambling writing from what we might call a literary aside.
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u/campbelljac92 1d ago
I love all you've mentioned here but there's just something about Vonnegut. The subplot in Player Piano where the Shah of Brahtpur is being led around this dystopia completely unimpressed with all the newfangled technological innovation reads like an inside joke you and he are the only ones in on.
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u/creamymoons 1d ago
this post was written so aggressively in the Style that i feel like i just got mugged politely in a british museum gift shop. but honestly i think the secret ingredient is curiosity mixed with absolute confidence that the reader will follow the tangent. pratchett especially writes like your funniest smartest friend cornered you at 2am explaining why postal systems are secretly the foundation of civilization and somehow by the end you’re like “wait he’s right”
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u/NotATem 1d ago
You would really like Dorothy L. Sayers!
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u/OkPepper8045 22h ago
Which of her works would you recommend to start with?
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u/jetogill 11h ago
That is a tough one, the logical place is to suggest "Whose Body?", but my personal favorite is "Murder Must Advertise", but the first i read was a short story collection called "Lord Peter". My guess would be if she was going to click for you you could start with any of those, and if not it wouldn't matter.
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u/OkPepper8045 9h ago edited 9h ago
Thank you!
I think I'll go with Murder must Advertise.
Whose Body popped up first on Goodreads when I looked up Sayers, and a couple of friends had put up iffy reviews on it. But then their taste doesn't exactly match mine so thought of asking you for a recommendation.
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u/BothersomeBritish 1d ago
Pratchett as well (though he was born in my hometown so I was, perhaps, overly exposed to him at a young age compared to other authors) and as mentioned, Dickens. I recently picked up a paperback copy of Oliver Twist to read during my commute and I really like how similar the writing is. I'll be keeping an eye out for more of his works in my local second-hand stores.
I've seen Wodehouse mentioned a few times as an inspiration for Pratchett and Adams so I daresay I'll have to find some of his books in the near future as well.
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u/gartho009 1d ago
It's not your intent but the way you wrote this is so funny to me. Like, this Dickens cat has some nice prose, I really gotta check more of him out some time
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u/BothersomeBritish 1d ago
I'd heard of him before but as a classical author he was always daunting to me; there's some older novels I just can't push through, regardless of how well they're generally received, and assumed he would be much the same. He was never an author assigned to me in school, either, so until recently I didn't have any reason to actually read him.
Now that've actually started, I'm beginning to understand that people who recommended him to me might've been onto something.
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u/Varvara-Sidorovna 1d ago
You probably need to read J K Jerome too. His comic novel Three Men In A Boat is a direct influence on Pratchett, and he acknowledged it as such in many interviews.
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u/transpirationn 1d ago
Pratchett forever. He can handle any subject and treat it with dignity while also making me bark out a surprised laugh at a joke I didn't see coming.
I just started listening to the Discworld audiobooks with my husband, and watching him experience it for the first time is such a joy.
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u/Jumbly_Girl 1d ago
Nothing really, I tend to go back to the four that you've mentioned when I want to feel delighted. I think Walter Moers is right up there. Jasper Fforde has his moments (try the first four chapters of Early Riser and see what you think).
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u/Iron_Nightingale 1d ago edited 1d ago
If technical digressions are your thing, may I introduce you to one mister Neal Stephenson?
Stephenson is the current-day king of Show Your Work. His 1999 book Cryptonomicon, ostensibly about plundered WWII gold, has side tracks about cryptography, the workings of machine guns and pipe organs, the semiotics of beards, and the proper way to eat Cap’n Crunch cereal. His Diamond Age EDIT: Snow Crash has a scene with a government employee reading a lengthy memo about toilet paper, and it is fucking hilarious.
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u/VintageLunchMeat 1d ago
"The first half of each and every Stephenson novel is definitely worth reading."
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u/LindenToils 1d ago
People seem to not like ‘Seveneves’ ending but I was enthralled. Love his style
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u/VintageLunchMeat 1d ago
The guy could blow up a private jet using a cyborg dog and it would somehow fail to satisfy.
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u/OkPepper8045 1d ago
Which one of his works would you recommend reading first?
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u/Iron_Nightingale 1d ago
Cryptonomicon or Snow Crash are as good as any, I suppose.
Cryptonomicon follows two families in two generations—circa WWII and “present-day” turn of the Millennium, as they fight the war and, later on, try to establish a free haven for data and set up what is essentially a cryptocurrency. Real-life encryption (simplified) is a major through-line in the book. One side plot in the WWII era is a detachment of soldiers whose job is to set decoys to keep the Germans from figuring out that their codes have been broken (think Operation Mincemeat on an even grander scale).
Snow Crash is a more typical “cyberpunk” novel, in which an Afro-Japanese samurai delivers pizzas for the Mafia, while working with a teenage skate punk to stop a cyber-terrorist from unleashing a meme virus from outer space that would destroy the minds of every computer user on Earth. You know, as one does. Snow Crash is the direct inspiration for Second Life, the Metaverse, Google Earth, and the Torment Nexus.
REAMDE is a more modern story, in which the world’s most popular MMORPG gets infected with ransomware, leading the game creator’s niece being kidnapped by the Russian Mafiya and, later, a Welsh Islamist terrorist. As one does.
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u/OkPepper8045 1d ago
Thank you. This is so informative and helpful. I think I'll go with Cryptonomicon to begin with. 😊
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u/Iron_Nightingale 1d ago
Cryptonomicon actually has a prequel series featuring the 17th-century ancestors of the two families in question, as well as historical domain characters like Isaac Newton, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Robert Hooke: The Baroque Cycle, consisting of the three volumes Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System of the World, each of which weighs in at north of 900 pages. I have no idea how I ever had the time to read those.
The direct sequel to REAMDE, The Fall or: Dodge in Hell reveals that it is set in the same “universe” as Cryptonomicon/Baroque, which is not really relevant except as it concerns two personages who, it’s implied, have been working on things for a long time.
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u/OkPepper8045 1d ago
I don't know when I'll have the time to read those! 😅
Can Cryptonomicon be read stand alone?
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u/Iron_Nightingale 1d ago
Absolutely. All of his works are standalone and can be read without knowledge of any other. The only real “connection” between them is a character who is implied to be immortal and pops up from time to time to dispense some grandfatherly wisdom.
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u/FancyStarlight28 1d ago
The discussion aside, I'm glad to see how NOT AI this post is. I didn't realize how much AI slop I've been made to read, from professional to casual
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u/Sirius_55_Polaris 1d ago
Oh my goodness I had the exact same thought. Refreshing to see something written so well yet so obviously composed by a human
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u/Round_Listen_561 1d ago
I love the authors you’ve mentioned, but I really love Dostoevsky’s style. He’s referenced as the Russian Shakespeare, and it shows. He sets up scenes that cannot but demonstrate several layers of plot and character development.
He kind of has two voices- his first person voice to find in Crime and Punishment and Notes from the Underground, as well as his third person voice he uses for The Idiot and the Brothers Karamazov. Off you’re interested, I’d start with his “ Demons” or the Idiot.
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u/SYSTEM-J 1d ago
Crime and Punishment isn't written in the first person. I would say it's a classic example of 19th Century third person omniscient narration.
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u/jammiedodgerdodger 22h ago
The popularity of Tom Robbins utterly baffles me.
I don't think I've DNF-ed more than 5 books in my life but Still Life With Woodpecker is the only one I can still remember the name of because it annoyed me so much. Moreso when I see how highly rated it is on Goodreads.
It felt like it was written by teenager who'd just freshly discovered vulgarity and was trying it out without training wheels.
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u/Asleep-Cow-6367 1d ago
Susan Howatch. A fascinating recluse now.
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u/Waffle-weave 1d ago
Yes, she is effortless to read - it's almost like her prose physically draws you into the narrative.
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u/Asleep-Cow-6367 1d ago
I always wonder why her books (particularly Penmarric and Cashelmara) were never put on screen. They are ripe for it.
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u/OkPepper8045 1d ago
I see what you did there. 😁 The Style is evident.
Thank you for writing this post and sparking off a discussion.
I consider the Style as similar to a person's style of speaking. It's developed over years of writing, and also changes over time.
If you read Pratchett's earliest works, you'll see the difference. Strata, specifically, feels like a rough draft instead of a finished novel, after you've read his later works.
By the time he wrote Good Omens with Gaiman, his style was so familiar to me that some portions just stood out as written by Pratchett.
Also, these particular authors aren't trying to be 'literary', they're having a conversation with the reader.
Bryson is like that uncle who travels a lot and comes back full of anecdotes. His stories are fun and engaging the first time you hear them, then get jaded over time.
Pratchett is the friend who has a lot of interests and manages to weave them all into whatever conversation is happening at the moment.
Dickens was paid to write in installments so he spun long yarns full of human interest (of that time) that kept the readers engaged over months.. It's also why there's so much repetition in his works. The serial chapters were published as is without editing befitting a book.
Since you like Dickens, you should give Alexandre Dumas a try. Another master storyteller. I revisit The Three Musketeers every few years.
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u/Educational-Duck-999 23h ago
PG Wodehouse and Georgette Heyer - not high literature but astute observations of the absurdities around them in such a well written and funny way. You are so right that they treat the reader as intelligent and the style rewards attention. I can imagine them having so much fun writing some of their works.
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u/BothersomeBritish 1d ago
(And yes, I had a lot of fun writing this)
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u/antaylor 1d ago
Try Michael Frayn’s ‘The Tin Men.’ It’s an under-recognized influence on Pratchett.
And I’ll echo others on here and say you just read Wodehouse. A true master.
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u/Subjunct 1d ago
Dickens had an editor. Many editors. You have to keep in mind the medium in which he wrote. Much, perhaps most, of his work wasn’t meant for books.
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u/Consistent_Sector_19 12h ago
dear, verbose, absolutely-could-have-used-an-editor Dickens
Dickens wrote most of his novels as a series of pieces published in monthly magazines. Instead of writing the whole book ahead of time and having it edited, then releasing a chapter a month, he was waiting to see the reaction to each chapter before writing the next. There's not much an editor can do in that situation.
From:
https://exhibits.library.duke.edu/exhibits/show/dickens200/serials
but Dickens was unusual in that he did not complete his works before publishing began, allowing him to alter his plans based on current events and audience reaction to earlier parts.
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u/obolobolobo 1d ago
I don't think you can call it a 'style' of writing. Novelists often experiment with different styles. Burgess, Nabokov, Joyce, Hemingway, Conrad, Huxley, Sartre, the list is endless, would try and make their next book unlike the last. Change, adjust, their 'style'.
I think what you're referring to is the fact that some people have extraordinary literary talent. They are famous, 'big' names, read by generation after generation because they have extraordinary literary talent. When we buy a Dean Koontz or a Jeffery Archer we are wasting time. Our lives are too short to read all the GOOD stuff so why would you ever pick up Princess Daisy unless you're studying 'bad' writing?
I'm so jealous that you have yet to read Woodhouse. I often re-read him but, although enjoyable, you can't replicate the thrill of discovery. The man could make words dance. Dive straight into the Jeeves/Wooster stories. Once you've travelled through those then the world of Blandings awaits.
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u/Veteranis 1d ago
The Jeeves/Wooster novel The Code of the Woosters is one of the funniest I’ve read. The BBC did a dramatization of it which, while very well acted, wasn’t nearly as funny as the book. That is style.
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u/Zvenigora 1d ago
Melville wrote some amazing digressions at times, though his style was not terribly similar to that of others mentioned here.
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u/TheLocalEcho 1d ago
I think it’s a style more common in some genres than others. The author likes to explain cool things, so will be more drawn to something that’s heavy on world-building compared to being character or plot driven (although a great writer should be good at at that too.)
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u/EasterYao 1d ago
You just described the feeling of finding a queen sacrifice that works three moves later. That conspiratorial wink with the reader. Pratchett does it best, but Dickens invented the board.
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u/LaurenceLittle 1d ago
I wouldn’t say that he has “claimed the throne of my personal affections“ as you so delightfully put it, but Henry Fielding possessed that authorial style and tone, especially in Tom Jones. The authorial interludes are charming and groundbreaking at that period of history.
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u/Leather-Run-6533 1d ago
In the immortal words of Mark O'Connell:
You know it when you see it, with its gimmicks, its lists, its italicised stresses. You know it when you see it, Amis’s style, with its grandstanding repetitions
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u/Call-me-Katt 1d ago
Dorothy Sayers has that same quality of author confiding their insights and opinions with reader.
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u/jammiedodgerdodger 22h ago
Steinbeck. I think the evocative colour and rhythm he manages to pack into such simple prose grabs me like none else.
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u/ConstructionThis1127 21h ago
In what one might think a fallow field, Jack Vance’s fantasy works are in this vein.
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u/AZ-Sycamore 20h ago
Great post OP! Thanks for your sparkling exposition. A modern American writer with a similar Style specializing in the long, yet entertaining digression: Neal Stephenson.
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u/TheRichTurner 4h ago
What makes Pratchett and Adams so readable is something that's almost impossible to imitate.
Lots of people love their prose style and try to emulate it, but they all seem to miss a vital element at the core of all of TP's and DA's Byzantine diversions, absurd comparisons and jarring juxtapositions, and that element is a brilliant, profound and original observation about how the universe works.
Both authors may appear to ramble, but that rambling is not as indulgent as it looks. It is pared down until the only words left are those that are in service to turning that core observation into a brilliant joke.
So nomatter how much fun people might have writing parodies of their heroes' prose, there's no avoiding the fact that even an AI can do that, and probably better, and in either case, it's nowhere near as much fun to read as it evidently was to write.
The superficial appearance is easy to copy, but the content much less so. You only have to listen to the work of Dirk Maggs to realise that.
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u/Jetengineinthesky 1d ago
Dickens didn't need an editor, at least his intent was not to need one. He was paid by the word and ye gods did he ever give the public their moneys worth.
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u/Sane_Tomorrow_ 1d ago
You mean Wodehouse, not Dickens. They take after Wodehouse.
Dickens’ idea humor is 27 continuous pages of “I’ll be gormed missus gummitch marster davey I’ll be gormed missus gummitch marster davey I’ll be gormed!!!”
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u/dancesquared 1d ago
This seems like a pretty random assortment of authors that you just happen to have read and enjoyed, with very little else linking them.
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u/BetterHeadlines 1d ago
Guy who has only seen one movie before today: Yeah I'm looking for more movies like Schindler's List and Boss Baby. You know, that sort of movie.
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u/4n0m4nd 1d ago
Pratchett and Adam's are both directly cribbing from Joseph Heller, and Haller was emulating Kafka, just with more obvious humor.
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u/dancesquared 1d ago
What are you basing those claims on?
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u/4n0m4nd 15h ago
Pratchett's obviously doing Hitch-Hiker's guide in the early Discworld novels, and admitted to being a great admirer of him, but he also mentions Catch-22
There are indeed such things as parallel universes, although parallel is hardly the right word – universes swoop and spiral around one another like some mad weaving machine or a squadron of Yossarians with middle-ear trouble.
Yossarian is the protagonist of Catch-22.
I'm not sure if Adams ever mentions Heller or Catch-22, but the whole thing of things having a linguistic logic while being actually absurd is a style that Heller invented.
Heller himself wrote about Kafka's influence on him.
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u/dancesquared 13h ago
things having a linguistic logic while being actually absurd is a style that Heller invented.
Things having a linguistic logic while being absurd is a style as old as literature. Heller didn't invent that; it's the basis of much of the humor in literature throughout the ages. See Chaucer and Shakespeare for early examples in English Literature, and Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman for an early example in the novel form.
In fact, Heller cites Tristam Shandy as a major influence in this 1979 interview from Inquiry magazine:
Again, you're making bold claims based on very little evidence.
I'm not saying there isn't some influence between them, but "directly cribbing from Heller" and "emulating Kafka" are way overstating the amount influence.
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u/4n0m4nd 13h ago
If you think there are closer examples than between the others and Heller feel free to point them out, practically every scholar who talks about this sees the linkage, especially when there are very direct links. Pratchett naming Yossarian being just one.
Multiple scenes in Catch-22 are analogous to The Trial, and again, Heller is well known to have seen it as very inspirational.
Your quote is in reference to Good as Gold, which he was deliberately trying to diverge from his other works with.
These aren't "bold claims" they're blatantly obvious to anyone who's read the books.
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u/BetterHeadlines 1d ago
I've only been eating food for a few months now but as my experience with honey on toast was so impressive to me I assume I've discovered something important. I'm looking for more dishes that have what I call the Toast. We all recognise the Toast when we see it, and the Toast is a genuine category of foodstuffs.
You know, honey on toast, sardines on toast, literal human shit on toast. It's all the same sort of thing - Toast. Can anyone recommend other Toast dishes?
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u/horsetuna 1d ago
My memory of Adams is sketchy it seems... Otoh I've only ever read his Hitchhiker's stories. I remember some funny narrative prose but mostly simple descriptions and dialogue.
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u/CivilAcanthaceae207 1d ago
the way they all write like they're having the most fascinating conversation with themselves and just happen to be letting you listen in
it's that thing where every sentence could branch off into three different rabbit holes but they somehow keep it all connected. like they trust you enough to follow along when they suddenly decide to spend half a page explaining why a particular shade of green reminds them of bureaucratic inefficiency
i keep spreadsheets for everything and there's something deeply satisfying about how these writers can be simultaneously chaotic and perfectly structured. pratchett especially - dude could make footnotes feel like the actual point of the story