That whooshing noise

Some writers need a deadline. Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, needed a babysitter. M.J. Simpson, author of Hitchhiker, the 2003 biography of Adams, says this writer needed someone in the same room preventing him from playing his guitar, playing games or going for a walk. Under these conditions, Adams could write a book in lightening speed.

One observer described Adams writing a novel as a spectator sport. He required an audience, someone to watch him write. Yet as his fame and income grew, fewer people were willing to discipline him in this way, and like Truman Capote he became known more for talking about what he planned to write than actually writing anything.

Another problem was that Adams was given advances for books he was supposed to write. Having already been paid, he had less reason to actually write the books. He joked about deadlines. "I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by," he said.

Thus this writer's output was disappointingly small, even considering his disappointedly short life. Even much of what he did write was a rehash of something he had written before. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a novelization of the radio series he wrote. One of his Dirk Gently novels was a rewrite of two of his Doctor Who stories.

The Hitchhiker phenomenon, however, made so much money that Adams really didn't have to work. First came the radio show, then the novel, then the follow-up novels, then an LP, a TV show, a play and a game. Although there was much talk about a movie, and he made trips to Hollywood, the movie was not actually made until after his death.

In his youth Adams was besotted with both the Beatles and Monty Python, and he managed to get close to both groups, working closely, for example, with John Cleese, Terry Jones and Graham Chapman.

Simpson may bury his readers in detail about this life, yet he manages to reveal a wonderfully witty, creative and talented man whose weaknesses almost, but not quite, defeated him.