Customer Reviews

Monty Python's Flying Circus: An Utterly Complete, Thoroughly Unillustrated, Absolutely Unauthorized Guide to Possibly All the References From Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson to Zambesi

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This book, per the title, purports to be a "guide," not an "encyclopedia." I had mulled over this purchase for many months, balking at the hefty price tag, but finally decided to buy it for myself as a holiday gift. I was encouraged by the knowledge that this guide split its references up by episode. The idea I had in mind was to revisit each episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus in turn, using this book in its titular capacity as a guide for the kind of topical and elaborative information it promised to provide.

The information is certainly there. Here is the problem: The author elected to provide each episode's list of references in alphabetical order, rather than chronological. Consider this for a moment. In this book, each episode is allowed, on average, ten pages full of references and tidbits of information. Episode 1 is twenty pages long, with over 140 entries. If the scope of this disaster is not already apparent, then let me offer the titles of some of the entries for episode 1: "Awful," "caption," "Gilliam's wonderfully visual mind," "Man," "squawk," and even "Episode 1." All of these entries are dutifully arranged in alphabetical order. It is easy to see how hopeless this system is. The only contextual relevance each entry retains is its association with the single episode in question, and therefore the only possible use any of the entries can serve is to someone who has recently watched the full episode and remembers every last detail, especially including the various obscurities which this book was meant to help with. How else could one be expected to make use of episode 1's entry on "Miro," for example?

Let's consider what purpose was meant to be served by using the contextually bankrupt alphabet as an organizational tool. There is only one answer: Reference. So the author was seeking to make it easy for the reader to find specific items, per specific episode. It is undeniably a good idea to permit some means of reference in a book such as this. However, it doesn't need to be pointed out that for such specific cases, an index at the back of the book suffices nicely, and indeed, this book has such an index. Meanwhile, how does one justify entries such as "Episode 1" or "Gilliam's wonderfully visual mind" in terms of reference? Such entries only make sense as contextual information, to be presented, one would hope, within a chronology, at appropriate moments, e.g. with "Episode 1" near the very beginning of the list, and "Gilliam's wonderfully visual mind" at around the point in the episode, relative to the other entries, when we first witness Terry Gilliam's handiwork.

As impressed as I am with how thorough and erudite the actual entries are, I must stress how deeply disappointing it is that I cannot use this rather pricey book in its intended capacity as a guide to the television series. I have tried. Too much time was spent wondering whether or not there might be something I could look up - and indeed being confounded by the entries' titles themselves. For example, "Man" is in fact an entry providing information on "the 'It's' Man," and I completely overlooked this entry until the episode was over and I read the entire chapter to see what I missed. Can one imagine how much more useful that entry would have been had it been placed near the front of the chapter (as the 'It's' Man appears at the very beginning of episode 1), perhaps even with a timecode helper (00h 00m 00s)?

I recommend that this book be updated to present all information chronologically. The index already exists. If the author had some purpose beyond reference for organizing everything alphabetically, I submit that the advantages of chronological order far outweigh whatever nebulous intent was behind the redundant and confounding structure the book currently uses, and would make the book very accessible and useful, which it currently is not.