Readers beware: The Salmon of Doubt is not a single novel, but rather a collection of goods pulled from Adams' computer after his death--including a draft of the first few chapters of his next Dirk Gently story (also titled The Salmon of Doubt, thus the larger part of this collection's title). Also enclosed in this volume are a series of short stories, essays, travelogues, and other random snippets, some of which date back over a decade, and most of which have little to do with the next entry, except they were all written by Adams.How, then, to review this book? How does one go about commenting on a collection of miscellanea the author never intended to exist in single-volume form? How does one offer criticism on a draft of an unfinished novel? Indeed, how does one offer any insight into a bricolage of material that, pessimistically, smacks of the publishing industry's frantic attempts to make one last posthumous dollar off of a popular writer?I answer through a personal narrative. Any review ever published is, of course, subjective. This one is more so than even most. There's your grain of salt.My wife bought me this book for my birthday, and I took it with me when I flew home (alone; my wife wasn't able to accompany me) the next week to visit my parents. I read the entire book in one day as I shuffled between airplanes and ticket counters, fast-food stands and uncomfortable plastic seats. Much of what appeared in Salmon... was completely new to me, as I'd somehow never read Adams' shorter works--only his novels. But in short, I was both entranced and maddened: the former at the brilliant intelligence and humor that marble-streaked its way through the pages; the latter at the frustratingly incomplete Dirk Gently novel (imagine if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had only written the first half of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" before suddenly perishing, or if Shakespeare had never completed "Romeo and Juliet"). I saw in Salmon... sides of Adams both familiar to me, as in his intelligent satire, and unfamiliar, as in the extemporaneous and atheistic speech he delivered at Cambridge, sections of which forced me to close the cover temporarily while I pondered my own thoughts about the nature of God. Most importantly, through all of these scattered scribblings I saw the inner workings of a man who truly, admirably loved life. And as I turned the last page and stared helplessly at the blank sheet before me, and realized that I had just read the last "book" Adams would ever "publish," I was overcome with a sadness so deep and painful that I've never yet been able to even pull Salmon... off of the shelf again, much less read it.Douglas Adams never knew I existed: we never met, exchanged correspondence, or even caught a glimpse of one another in a crowded airport. Yet I consider this man one of my dearest mentors, a man whose writing has shaped the last fifteen years of my life in areas too varied and extensive to number. How then to review a book like this? Simply put, I can't. I'm too close. Even now, five years after the only time I managed to read Salmon..., and six years after Adams' death, I'm too close.Why, then, do I give this book five stars?How could I not?
Finals are coming. I say this in the vaguely ominous way I can imagine GoT followers and the phrase, “Winter is coming”. Of course, there’s nothing more to do than sit around and postpone studying. Because why stress, because everything ought to turn out more or less okay in the end, and putting yourself through all that isn’t really worth it.And So I look around trying to find a way to not feel unproductive in the nearcoming future, and my shelf of unread books stares back at me, somewhat accusatorially [not one picked up through the year, it feels] or disdainfully but mostly just with a sort of pity. But there’s no sense in embarking on a long journey [brothers karamazov, idiot, beckett trilogy] or something that’ll make me feel all out of sorts afterward [beckett, camus, kafka arguably, gravity’s rainbow] — no, I only want a piecewise read that goes quickly and has me looking up at the end with a smile — rereads are always good candidates. I here long for my hitchhiker’s at home, or something, but I do see this book I picked up somewhere for free. And so I jump in not knowing what to expect.And so about the book itself. It comes with various introductions, explaining what this actually is [or isn’t]. I myself didn’t know. More dent? I’d rather wait to reread the whole trilogy in five parts before this continuation…but to my pleasant surprise the unfinished titular work was but a portion at the end. The rest seemed a scrapbook of autobiographical compilations, brief memories from Adam’s life and body of work for us readers to delight in. And that I did. Short and sweet and — I never got the feeling he was trying to hard, because indeed, he wasn’t trying at all. I mean, he didn’t intend for this to be published thus. So I enjoyed it as a nice break from studying [okay, as another distraction before I begin working] and it gave me a few small laughs on occasion, and it’s quite a positive — but not in a cheesy way — read. An entertaining way to pass the time, with short sections from his columns or interviews that one can read at leisure. I don’t actually want to read the “Salmon of Doubt” part yet. I haven’t read the preceding two Dirk Gently novels, so I will put this book as unread til then. It’s not actually necessarily a third one of those. Adams was purportedly going to try to make it possibly a sixth hitchhiker. But it’s hard to say and certainly not in either form completely, unfinished as it is. Maybe another time. For now, finals.
What do You think about The Salmon Of Doubt (2005)?
An enjoyable but utterly pointless book.I'm a huge Douglas Adams fan but sadly this book doesn't deserve his name. It's not that it's filth, or worthless. In fact this is has some lovely moments in the book and that's what gets it 2 stars from me.But the issue is it's a book that shouldn't exist. This should be free on the internet, or some other format. You get a large amount of articles, a few random chapters from a book, a book that no one even knows what series it belongs to exactly, and that's about it. The only author I felt worse about passing was Micheal Crichton, and his posthumous book was an almost finished manuscript, this unfortunately is just the building blocks.The worst book in the world would be one you talk about with the author, read all the chapters out of order, and piecemeal, read a rough draft, read an almost final version, and read the final copy. This is just the second step by itself, and because we all know there won't be a final book, it feels like a hollow last hurrah in my mind. I'll always miss Douglas Adams, but I'll honor him with his classics. Not what probably should have remained unpublished and unnecessary tidbits of his life.
—Frank
When i first heard about this book, I went very quickly from exitement, through confusion and ended up in serious doubt. I was exited at the prospect of a book by my favorite author that I had not yet read, confused as to how that had happened, and finally in serious doubt if I should when i learned what it was about. This is an unfinished Dirk Gently #3, and mabye some other stuff(Or so I thought, it turns out that the DG#3 is only about 80 pages out of 280). I was scared that it would be really obviously unfinished, that it would be nothing like the other books I love so deerly, and that reading the start of it would make me horribly sad and depressed about never being able to read the whole thing. I was right about the last one, it is a bittersweet read. It startes of with all the wonderful Douglassy Adamsness that i wanted from it, but then it just ends, leaving me exactly where I feared it would when I happened upon it in the library and thought something along the lines of "fuck it, its Douglas Adams, I can't not read it".However. That is only true for the Dirk Gently part of the book. The other parts are thoughtprovoking, easy to read, fun brilliance. Some of it will be familliar to those who has already read Last Chance to See, or watched his talk at University of California just before his death.Even though I am now quite sad I don't regret reading it, and I'd recommend it to any and all fans of Douglas Adams.
—Zaru
This was a fascinating book. It took me forever to read it as I only picked it up a few pages at a time, but that allowed me to savor the enjoyment. I hD never read any of Adams' essays or interviews that I can recall, only the fiction, so it was interesting to get another look at the way he thought. Reading things he wrote about computers in the '90s was especially fun, because we're living a lot of his predictions now. In the end the book has an appropriately unfinished feeling; you don't want it to end, yet it does, on a peculiar note and too soon.
—DDog
