About book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1991)
I am a firm believer that a bit of British humor is good for the soul...And I am quite American, in case you did not know... “Don’t you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn’t developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don’t expect to see?” Douglas Adams has a highly quotable, laugh out loud writing style which I adore; I seem to remember a blurb describing this book as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with significantly fewer spaceships (I apologize that my memory fails on whom I heard this from) I can't think of a better description myself.This book will forever be on my list of favorite books of all time.There's really not much more I can say about it which could express my love. Some of My Favorite Moments:(view spoiler)[“Hello, Michael? Yes, it’s Susan. Susan Way. You said I shouldcall you if I was free this evening and I said I’d rather be dead in aditch, remember? Well, I suddenly discover that I am free, absolutely,completely and utterly free, and there isn’t a decent ditch for milesaround. Make your move while you’ve got your chance is my advice toyou. I’ll be at the Tangiers Club in half an hour.”“The teacher usually learns morethan the pupil. Isn’t that true?”“It would be hard to learn much less than my pupils,” came a lowgrowl from somewhere on the table, “without undergoing a pre-frontallobotomy.”...he walked a little like an affrontedheron.The other was small, roundish, and moved with an ungainlyrestlessness, like a number of elderly squirrels trying to escape froma sack.“It seems odd,don’t you think, that the quality of the food should vary inverselywith the brightness of the lighting. Makes you wonder what culinaryheights the kitchen staff could rise to if you confined them to perpetual darkness.”“Well,” said Reg, in a loudly confidential whisper, as if introducing the subject of nipple-piercing in a nunnery, “I hear you’vesuddenly done very well for yourself, at last, hmmm?”“Did you know, young lady,” said Watkin to her, “that the Book of Revelation was written on Patmos? It was indeed. By Saint John the Divine, as you know. To me it shows very clear signs of having been written while waiting for a ferry. Oh, yes, I think so. It starts off, doesn’t it, with that kind of dreaminess you get when you’re killing time, getting bored, you know, just making things up, and then gradually grows to a sort of climax of hallucinatory despair. I find that very suggestive.”Pink valleys, hermaphrodite tables, these were all natural stages through which one had to pass on the path to true enlightenment.The door was the way to…to…The Door was The Way.Good.Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn’t have a good answer to.By means of an ingenious series of strategically deployed denials of the most exciting and exotic things, he was able to create the myth that he was a psychic, mystic, telepathic, fey, clairvoyant, psychosassic vampire bat.What did “psychosassic” mean?It was his own word and he vigorously denied that it meantanything at all.“Or maybe she decided that an evening with your old tutor would be blisteringly dull and opted for the more exhilarating course of washing her hair instead. Dear me, I know what I would have done. It’s only lack of hair that forces me to pursue such a hectic social round these days.”Gordon Way was dead, but he simply hadn’t the slightest idea whathe was meant to do about it. It wasn’t a situation he had encountered before."...I bet that even the very lowest form of dysentery amoeba shows up to take its girlfriend out for a quick trot around the stomach lining once in a while...”Richard reflected that Dirk’s was a face into which too much had already been put. What with that and the amount he talked, the traffic through his mouth was almost incessant. His ears, on the other hand, remained almost totally unused in normal conversation.“Exploiting?” asked Dirk. “Well, I suppose it would be if any body ever paid me, but I do assure you, my dear Richard, that there never seems to be the remotest danger of that...”“Let us go. Let us leave this festering hell hole. Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not effit after all.”“Don’t you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn’t developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don’t expect to see?”“Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coinand the catflap!”“The what?” said Richard.“The catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a…”“Yes,” said Richard, “there was also the small matter of gravity.”“Gravity,” said Dirk with a slightly dismissive shrug, “yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely adiscovery. It was there to be discovered.”He took a penny out of his pocket and tossed it casually on to the pebbles that ran alongside the paved pathway.“You see?” he said, “They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap…ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention.”“...If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.”“Now. Having saved the entire human race from extinction I could do with a pizza...” (hide spoiler)]
I’ll be honest with you, I’m not particularly fond of ‘The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ novel. The first radio series I love, but the novel fails for me because the best bits in it are just taken from the radio series (which, of course, the novel is an adaptation of) and it doesn’t have a proper bloody ending. As a teen I greatly preferred the world of Dirk Gently, and on re-reading the first of those novels – having forgotten pretty much everything which takes place between its covers – I have to say I was a smart old teenager.Firstly the flaws: plotting was never Adams’ strong point, and undoubtedly that’s the case here. Suffice to say there’s a murder, an eccentric don, an electronic monk and a number of ghosts – all of which come together with varying degrees of success towards the end. The biggest problem with the plotting though is how long it takes Dirk Gently himself to get involved in the action. This novel is nearly half over by the time he appears, which is a great shame as he is by far the most interesting and entertaining character. A private detective who doesn’t agree with Sherlock Holmes that once you eliminate the impossible whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth; simply because he doesn’t like to eliminate the impossible.(Thank God – whoever He might be – that there’s a sequel.)However, despite those problems, this is a highly funny, entertaining and intelligent read. (One, incidentally, which seems to draw on Adams’ past as scriptwriter for ‘Doctor Who’ – a very old man with well hidden time machine does appear). A lot of the characters are vaguely drawn and trying to describe what it’s all about afterwards is quite hard, but if you like smart and absurdist humour which will make you think, then this is definitely recommended.
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I still don't really understand how the ending of this book worked, and trying to describe the plot would be like trying to build a submarine out of cheese. Instead, I'll just share some quotes from this book that I especially loved, because Douglas Adams is the only author in the history of the world who is capable of creating them."'A horse?' he said again. 'Yes, it is,' said the Professor. 'Wait - ' he motioned to Richard, who was about to go out again and investigate - 'Let it be. It won't be long.'Richard stared in disbelief. 'You say there's a horse in your bathroom, and all you can do is stand there naming Beatles songs?'""Richard stood transfixed for moment or two, wiped his forehead again, and gently replaced the phone as if it were an injured hamster. His brain began to buzz gently and suck its thumb. Lots of little synapses deep inside his cerebral cortex all joined hands and started dancing around and singing nursery rhymes." "On the wall was a Duran Duran poster on which someone had scrawled in fat red felt tip, 'Take this down please.'Beneath that another hand had scrawled, 'No.'Beneath that again the first hand had written, 'I insist that you take it down.'Beneath that the second hand had written, 'Won't!'Beneath that - 'You're fired!'Beneath that - 'Good!'And there the matter appeared to have rested.""'Welcome, by the way, to my offices.'He waved a vague hand around the tatty surroundings. 'The light works,' he said, indicating the window, 'the gravity works,' he said, dropping a pencil on the floor. 'Anything else we have to take our chances with.'""'Don't you listen to anything you say? The whole thing was obvious!' he exclaimed, thumping the table. 'So obvious that the only thing which prevented me from seeing the solution was the trifling fact that it was completely impossible. Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.'"
—Madeline
I got this book years ago as a birthday present because I am a big fan of Douglas Adams. I read it back then but didn't remember anything about it. I re-read it for the Time Travel group and now remember why I don't remember anything about it. It just isn't that memorable. There are a few clever bits in it and I would suggest reading The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridgebefore reading this but it won't help much. I know there is a sequel of sorts, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul which I have on my bookshelf and which I think may tie up the loose ends but not sure if it's worth reading again.
—Glynn
It's all about the couch.Allow me to elucidate. Doug Adams book. Funny? Sure. Satirical? Check. But would you have guessed intricately plotted?Adams, who practically invented the vein of British literary humor now being minted hand-over-fist by Terry Pratchett, is in fine form with this novel, his major work outside the Hitchhiker's universe. We get the same bumbling protaginsts, the gently affable quasi-villain, the apocalyptic-threat-which-is-not-a-threat, the deft one-sentence-paragraph narratorial asides. Check, check, and checkeroo.But we also get something we can't have gotten in Hitchhikers, which was written in sometimes lightning-round single drafts, sometimes mere minutes before the radio-plays would hit the air. Under those circumstances, there was no way for Adams to think too far in advance. It had to be joke, bang, plot, joke, action, joke, exposition...and it shows in the number of times he wrote himself into a corner and then had to pull a Deus-ex-Machina out of the sky to save the narrative.Not so in Dirk Gently, where tiny throw-away details become massively essential plot points late in the book, and all of the little details together topple into a eperfect, crystalline structure by the end of the story. The perfect example is the bit about the couch. At the beginning of the story, we see our poor schlepp of a protagonist working his way over a couch which has gotten wedged in his stairwell. Cute bit of physical humor, and in a lesser book, that would be the end of it. Instead, long about the penultimate chapter, the couch problem becomes a part of the solution to the whole messy apocalyptic threat mentioned earlier. It's a breathtaking bit of plotting, and I can't help but think Adams revelled in the chance to prove that his gift was not just the ability to make up rapid-fire absurdity, but to really master a novel, show it who'se boss, in a way which is entirely satisfying to the reader.
—P. Aaron Potter
