2 out of 5

Last Chance to See is a relatively short book at just over 200 pages; for me, the time it took to get through those pages suggested something much longer – I had trouble getting through this one.

I’ve learned that I’m not necessarily keen on Douglas Adams’ writing. I understand why it appealed when I was younger (and I mean that without intending to cast it as immature), but as an adult, the way in which Adams beats around the subject of a scene, or even of a sentence, while waiting for his joke to fall into place is a bit too transparent for my tastes. I could more charitably cast the style as “British,” but I think that’s more consistently true in TV or radio, where that that type of wind-up joke format can be more effective, and that consideration makes a lot of sense now knowing that Adams’ most famed work started in the latter medium.

Last Chance to See also followed that path, but making this more of a chore to read versus a Hitchhiker’s-type distraction is that it never has the narrative patience / five-book opportunity to become its own thing – the book reads like a supplement, like you’ve tuned into the BBC, and now here’s your accompanying book for more color commentary by Adams. Sans the radio part, you’re just left with the commentary without enough Why Does This Exist? context. Is it funny? Sure, but it’s not very engaging.

Adams finally expresses some reason for the project (which involved the BBC sending him and wildlife photographer Mark Carwardine out and about over the years to document and bring awareness to expiring animal species) in the book’s literal last chapter; prior to this, his co-author Mark gets his own epilogue, which puts an even finer point on it: we need to learn about these creatures, unique or otherwise, to learn more about the world, and ourselves. It seems obvious, and maybe is the most general speaking point, but that the book never delivers this mission statement up until this point – Adams just has a little intro about being befuddled as to his inclusion, and most of the chapters are witty asides about the culture and the creatures – undermines that very obviousness; it unwittingly “proves” how destructive humans are as just curious beings, stumbling about and accidentally killing off all these things by letting the reader stumble about with their narrator. Yes, Adams roundabout pokes at how hard conservationists have to work to fight against that destructive human nature – very much in line with the themes of Hitchhiker’s, in which the nonsense of the world is combatted by the nonsense of man’s attempt to add logic to it – but we’re essentially waiting multiple chapters for the author to come around to this, and to find a balance between that awareness and cracking wise.

This isn’t metatextual. It’s baked in to the structure of the BBC program itself – funnyman accompanies serious man out into the wild to look at wild things! Here are some charities! – and even into the way the book is laid out, which bundles some lovely, color photos from Mark into random chunks in the book, disconnected from the chapters. The chapters don’t reference them; there are funny captions. It’s very offhand.

From a modern (~2020s) POV for this late 80s / early 90s book, there’s also some cultural sensitivity afoot. My radar is not great for this stuff, so I could be either over- (or under-) reacting, but Adams is very guilty of depicting areas / cultures by their stereotypes, for humorous effect. It’s not necessarily in a punching-down way – everyone, the UK included, are subject to this type of humor; all humans are bonkers to Adams – but still, we meet corrupt officials and a lack of culture in the areas Mark and Douglas visit, leading to routines that are, as stated above, games where we’re waiting for Adams to just get around to the punchline. Now, to be fair, the duo are traveling to some very remote locations, and this probably was the reality – no roads, no phones, etcetera – but it’s the tunnel-vision way of writing about it that lets (a late 80s / early 90s) reader assume / imagine that the whole of X country is like that. Notably, just as Douglas’ self-awareness of Why he might be writing this book increases later on, so to do his treatment of this cultures broaden.

Bearing in mind the time period in which it was written, then, those who’s enjoyed Adams’ early books will probably enjoy this – the trade dress pitch of it as an extension of Hitchhiker’s onto Earth is not a bad one; if that was the task from the BBC, to apply the same snarky irony to the various jungles and nature preserves he was visiting – well, task done. But considering how much more effective the later chapters feel, when Adams seems to acknowledge the work can be more than that, the book feels like a big miss. And so combine that with the tastes of someone who’s not especially keen on those early books, and… see above.