A crooked framed coastal picture hangs above a small shelf of pale objects on a blue wooden wall.

Original artwork, not a still

So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish · 1984

Douglas Adams

And somewhere on this good boffo stretch of coastline lay the house of this inconsolable man, a man whom many regarded as being insane. But this was only, as he would tell people, because he was.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

The narrator introduces a deeply unhappy man whom others consider insane, then reports his blunt agreement with them. The expected defence never arrives. That reversal turns an explanation of other people's judgment into a dry admission, giving the description its compact, self-confirming joke.

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