Remembering the Satire

Yesterday I was looking for quotes from Cicero when I ran across a list of quotes from Douglas Adams, the English writer who came to fame with The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

It has been over twenty years since I first read the book and to this day images from it keep making me smile. The destruction of the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass, the spaceship powered by an Improbability Drive, the depressed android Marvin 'with a brain the size of a planet,' as he so languidly reminds his fellow travelers: all making fun of our times, our governments, our gods and our puny concepts of existence in a universe that is 'really big.'

Another great book for satire is The Information, by Martin Amis, which puts an unsuccessful writer on book tour with a successful one. Amis's writing is darker than Adams's and perhaps more disturbing on a visceral level, but still written with dry humor.

There is a difference between writing about interesting characters who do mundane things and mundane characters who do extra-ordinary things, especially when it's much to their surprise. The great writers of satire seem to do the latter and remind us not to take ourselves or our characters too seriously.

Amy