Douglas Adams, Poet

"...I don't know where ideas come from, or even where to look for them. Nor does any writer. This is not quite true, in fact. If you were writing a book on the mating habits of pigs, you'd probably pick up a few goodish ideas by hanging around in a barnyard in a plastic mac, but if fiction is your line, then the only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn't collapse when you beat your head against it.

I exaggerate, of course. That's my job."

Douglas Adams was such a poetic purveyor of fiction, I feel perfectly at ease applying any of his comments to poetry. The only other writer whose prose approaches the poetic unpredictability of Adams', whose next word is so infrequently the one you thought it was going to be, is Woody Allen.

I'm reading The Salmon of Doubt right now, being reminded how brilliant Adams could be. Also recently completed Ron Koertge's Shakespeare Bats Cleanup - which deserves its own entry and Goodreads treatment, to come soon.