Well, I finally got to the part about the answer to life, the universe and everything.

Ever totally miss some really mainstream thing, like, I dunno, The Breakfast Club or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; never saw those; and it’s middle school and you’re terribly terribly concerned about fitting in; and all your middle-school classmates are gushing about these movies, and how awesome they are, but the more they gush about them and their awesomeness, the less you want to see them? And… you end up with this feeling like all these mainstream things, they’re not really for you, even though it’s not like you’ve really experienced all of them on their own terms. All that gushing kind of backfires.

That’s kind of how I felt about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Within certain circles, it’s terribly mainstream, and every time I heard someone talk about it or quote it I wanted to read it less.

So I finally got to the bit about life, the universe and everything and the significance of the number 42, and I was all like, oh, bother, here it comes.

And yeah, perhaps just because I knew it was coming, that part just kind of failed to grab me.

And then — so that’s the Answer to the whole life, the universe and everything stuff — and then they talk about the Question. And that… that was lovely. Touching, in that beautiful way that well-written absurdist comedies can blindside you with something that’s just perfectly blunt and honest and real. That, I didn’t see coming. And it’s one of those things where, once you’ve read it, you start to say hey, every previous scene in this story kind of had to be there for this to work, and it’s just beautiful and satisfying and exactly what I like in storytelling.

Now, I’m not suddenly going to start finding jokes about the Answer extraordinarily funny; I’m just not a big fan of random pop culture references. The point is, it’s pointless. Nothing to see here; there are, it seems, themes in this book far more worthy of my time.

I really, really hope they don’t ever reveal the new Question; I hope it’s not just a set-up for a bigger joke. Because right now, this here comedy is serious stuff.