Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

By -
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams

The Brits did a TV show based on this book, so of course I had to re-read it before I watch!  This doesn't count as a vintage SF title, but I read it in January anyway.  It is so long since I read Dirk Gently that I had forgotten pretty well everything, except the Electric Monk was slightly familiar.  And there was a bonus!

Richard, computer programmer and basic hapless fellow (in the tradition of Arthur Dent) gets caught up in some really strange events; a horse is in his old professor's bathroom, he finds himself climbing a dangerous wall for no particular reason, and his boss is found dead -- extra dead, in fact.  Richard turns to his old sketchy college acquaintance, currently known as Dirk Gently, holistic detective.  Through a long series of very odd occurrences, Dirk figures out what's going on.

It's all very fun and Adamsy, and I had a good time re-reading it.  Since I am now a good deal older and more widely-read than I was last time, I discovered an Easter egg bonus on this round.  Adams lifted his own old Doctor Who storylines for this novel; there is some of City of Death, and some of Shada.  Everybody knows this but me, so it's not exactly a great discovery; in fact, soon after I finished the book I started noticing ads all over Facebook for a free streaming of City of Death to go with the new Dirk Gently TV show.


Adams was a bit ahead of his time with the 'holistic' thing; at least, it seems to me that holistic wasn't a trendy word back then, but it sure got to be one about 15 or 20 years later!  I'm sure it was current in some circles back then, though.  Nowadays we have holistic approaches to health and all sorts of things.  A couple of years ago in the car, my older daughter asked me what holistic meant and I tried to explain, but it didn't make any sense to her because she was looking at a shop that sold 'holistic water.'  We had to go home and look it up, and found out that holistic water is very, very pricey water with maybe some extra minerals thrown in.  It makes some really wild claims, but they're all expensive nonsense.  Ever since, she's been dying to go into the holistic water store and argue with the people there.

If you've never read Dirk Gently, it really is fun and you should.  I still haven't watched the show, so I hope it's pretty good too.

Comments

  1. Nancy LeekJanuary 18, 2017 at 8:58 PM

    I remember reading Dirk Gently. I always thought The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul was a great title.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kristen M.January 19, 2017 at 10:12 PM

    As I was reading Shada and City of Death, I definitely thought about Dirk Gently but haven't gotten around to rereading this again (for what will probably be my 5th or 6th time?). I do love this story. It was actually my first Douglas Adams because future-hubby recommended it to me from his shelves in college. It, of course, led to me reading everything else possible by Adams and so it will always be a special book to me!
    Now, the show has NOTHING to do with the book and doesn't even feel like it really but it was fun in its own way. I just kind of wish they had just called it something different and someday made a truly good Dirk Gently show where we finally get to regard the simple salt cellar.

    ReplyDelete
  3. JeanJanuary 20, 2017 at 8:56 AM

    Aw, dang, but thanks for the heads-up. Now I won't be too disappointed and will try to enjoy the show on its own merits.

    Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul is indeed a great title.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousJanuary 23, 2017 at 4:23 PM

    Keep me posted about the show! Even if it isn't faithful to the book, it could be fun. I read this for podcast late last year and enjoyed it way more than I expected to. Douglas Adams is a fun guy, it turns out, when you're not expecting him to be the Second Coming of All Hilarity, as I was when I first read Hitchhiker's Guide. :p

    ReplyDelete
  5. JeanJanuary 23, 2017 at 5:41 PM

    Sure thing. I've got to get to it soon!

    ReplyDelete
  6. JoyJanuary 25, 2017 at 12:07 PM

    I read this so long ago that I'm sure I've forgotten it, too.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more