The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Adams’ descriptions are clever and unexpected, and he strings together a series of events even more bizarre and unexpected than his descriptions. Sometimes I felt exhausted on behalf of his poor protagonists, bounced from one mishap to another, but I was impressed by Adams’ ability to turn this madness into such a coherent story.

She passed the time quietly in a world of her own in which she was surrounded as far as the eye could see with old cabin trunks full of past memories in which she rummaged with great curiosity, and sometimes bewilderment. Or, at least, about a tenth of the cabin trunks were full of vivid and often painful or uncomfortable memories of her past life; the other nine tenths were full of penguins, which surprised show more her. Insofar as she recognised at all that she was dreaming, she realised that she must be exploring her subconscious mind. She had heard it said that humans are supposed only to use about a tenth of their brains, and that no one was really clear what the other nine tenths were for, but she had certainly never heard it suggested that they were used for storing penguins. show less

I had to re-read this because I'm insane but I'm happy to be so because I still loved it.

Total truth time: it's not quite as funny or as sharp in the individual zinger lines as [b:Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency|365|Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Dirk Gently #1)|Douglas Adams|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1404697381s/365.jpg|1042123], but the long-running story gags are fantastically wicked and cruel and even profoundly sad.

It's also more of an adventure tale for Dirk later on, but primarily, it's all a mystery. Sometimes, the plot is as much of a mystery, too, but I don't care. :) After the rising of new gods in Asgard and the fate of soooo many pebbles, and the dark, dark fate of a Coke machine, who really cares? show more The novel is brilliant and creative and so darkly funny. It's enough to make me despair for modern literature, and this came out in '88!

Here's another awesome tidbit. It's the novel that I first thought of when I first read [b:American Gods|30165203|American Gods (American Gods, #1)|Neil Gaiman|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1492065360s/30165203.jpg|1970226]. All the greatness of seeing Odin on the page or Thor blowing up an airport is all here and the characterizations are brilliant.

Can I even say that it's even more brilliant after knowing the legends much better? You bet I can! I read this when I was 14 years old the first time and let's be frank... I didn't know crap. I learned most of what I knew about Thor from this book and the fact that there was some silly Marvel comic that I wasn't even tempted to read was about it. And now? Soooooo Nice! :) Even the little In-Jokes about the gods are all here. It's a bit more erudite than I expected it to be. :)

But it's also so funny! Do I love eagles even more now? You bet! Am I even more annoyed with Yuppies? You bet! Do I want to run out and get some 300 count sheets and snuggle in them, perhaps get an eyepatch and avoid big strapping men with hammers? You bet!

Poor Dirk. I have to admit that his Horoscope is always dead-on. :)

My one complaint is that there wasn't a whole series made out of this. I still wonder just how amazingly cool it could have been to have a full bookcase full of these and point to it as the most amazing thing EVAH.

*sigh*

Some authors just overflow with goodness. Douglas Adams was one of them. *sigh* show less

The whole idea of holistic detecting works against any conventional idea of plot. After all, if everything is connected, if the universe really is a mass of tangled coincidences, then order and reason doesn't matter at all. But hey, it doesn't matter as long as it's funny.

And it mostly is funny. Adams has a beautiful way of describing the friction of England: the impossibility of getting a pizza to go or a packet of cigarettes, mono-maniacal psychiatrists, traffic in London, hygiene chicken over a refrigerator. He also has an eye for the absurd. Dirk Gently's arrival at the murder scene of his former client, with a severed head on a turn table, is quite moving (don't pick it up, don't pick it up, don't pick it up). Likewise, the whole show more sequence with him getting attacked in his apartment by an eagle is also hilarious.

But the overall plot, about Norse gods, conflict between Odin and Thor, corporate types signing contracts for divine power, and so on, just sort of sit there. It's funny, but not that funny. show less

Rewarding in much the same ways as my re-read of the first, and for much the same reasons. There are broad parallels in premise, but for me it was a consistent style rather than formulaic. (It's worth acknowledging, his Gently books are distinct from his Hitchhiker books, by no means a given.)

Rather than Coleridge and time travel, here Gently is caught in the repercussions of an enduring squabble between Odin & Thor, a conflict spilling into the mortal world and slowly worsening as the gods become ever less relevant to humanity.

And in place of the world of corporate software design, the age-old business of music publishing.

Continuing in the vein set by the first novel, Adams deploys an armada of off-kilter concepts:
- penguins and show more memories in cabin trunks (memory palace)
- a commercial contract between Odin & an advertising lawyer
- not so much parallel worlds as overlapping worlds -- one location in Midgard does not substitute for another in Asgard, rather the building we know as Saint Pancras Station is Valhalla [227]
- instead of a sofa stuck on a stair, a fridge spawns a new god (but a Coca-Cola machine briefly sits on a stair)
- hiding behind a molecule; shifting universe allows passage between
- the serious side of "holistic detection": free association leading to insights, such as "words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through"; in this way, Gently surmises that immortals are behind elsewise inexplicable events [191]
- the shyster side of "holistic detection" continues, with everything Gently does potentially billable to the client

Adams takes good-natured swipes at the private eye genre, here; repeating the first book's joke about the "first rule of detection" -- that detectives should dress in such a way as to not resemble private detectives -- and then expanding on it; also, in homage to Sherlock Holmes: "If it could not possibly be done, then obviously it had been done impossibly." [272] show less

This is not one of Adams’ best. I sincerely hope it’s his worst because if there is a worse novel by him out there, it must be atrocious.

An explosion at an airport leads to the involvement of the world’s unfunniest detective on a barely coherent case that consists, as usual with Dirk Gently, of him doing absolutely nothing. I was going to write “and the inevitable solution of the case” but I can’t even remember there being a solution. I didn’t even care by the end.

By this point in the author’s life, it seems Adams had used up all his humour. Much of what passes as humorous is fairly banal. I think I saw something funny once but I’ve now forgotten which page it was on so you’ll just have to dig for it yourself.

I think show more this is such a shame. Adams was a comic genius and one of the most original comic thinkers that the UK produced in the 20th century. The original Dirk Gently novel had some memorable moments, but the sequel is, as sequels so often are, only useful insofar as it makes the original look good. Knowing Adams, that may have been the point.

If you’re not an Adams fan, I wouldn’t bother with this. There are a lot of better books out there. If you are an Adams fan, I wouldn’t bother either. There are a lot of better books by Adams out there. show less

This book is what I wanted American Gods to be. You’re dealing with silly material, allow the story to be silly. The gods themselves certainly won’t be.

Dirk Gently is a most interesting detective: smart and bumbling, he recognizes connections but doesn’t know why. The first three-quarters are fantastic, but it falls apart a bit toward the end. Adams seems to have remembered he needs to publish this book and he doesn’t care much for books over 300 pages. I felt a bit like Dirk at the end: seeing the connections but not quite understanding why they were there.

But what a brilliant gags are the Coke machine and fridge.

Though I preferred the plot and concept of the first Dirk Gently book this one perhaps has the stronger ending. I advise reading them in order — connect them as Dirk would do. Well worth a read and to be forever haunted by an ominous fridge.