THE LONG DARK TEA-TIME OF THE SOUL
Douglas Adams
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988
319 pp., $17.95
DIRK GENTLY'S HOLISTIC DETERCTIVE AGENCY
Douglas Adams
New York, Simon & Schuster, 1987
306 pp., $4.50 (paperback)
Infuriated by an airline clerk's unwillingness to supply him with a free ticket, Thor, Norse god of thunder, blasts the counter with a lightning bolt. So begins Douglas Adams' latest literary dash through an imaginative world that unites fantasy, philosophy, quantum mechanics, and mythology.
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, like its predecessor, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, explores the workings of the world via the form of comic murder mystery with a science fiction twist. Adams obviously has given much thought to modern science and philosophy, for his stories are surrounded with anecdotal allusions to some of the more esoteric and abstract ideas of the twentieth century. But his humorous pen prevents us from ever taking any of it too seriously.
Does Adams actually present a philosophy of any kind? Although his work is colored by a consistent outlook on the world (going back to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), it contains no single thread that could be considered a philosophy. Rather, he contemplates the miraculous and mundane aspects of the world and its inhabitants. Adams' work amounts to doing philosophy, rather than promoting a particular philosophical position. He animates his ideas by creating characters whose eccentricities and interests lead us to consider the world with fresh eyes. With this in mind, a good place to begin a discussion of Adams' work is with the main character of his most recent books--Dirk Gently.
Dirk Gently, holistic detective
Eccentric. Slovenly. Brilliant. Incompetent. Each adjective accurately describes Dirk Gently, a character unlike any other in detective fiction. In Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Adams invents a sleuth who rejects many of the traditional tenets of detective work. Whereas Sherlock Holmes, for instance, believed that if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains (no matter how improbable) must be true, Gently refuses to eliminate the impossible--in fact, the impossible forms the nucleus around which Gently's exploits revolve.
Suspicious of the causalistic philosophy of pre-twentieth-century physics, Gently approaches a mystery without concerning himself with, as he describes them, petty things like fingerprint powder and inane footprints. Instead, he works from the premise that "the solution to each problem [is] detectable in the pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with our rough and ready understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose."
As a "holistic" detective, Gently concerns himself with the "fundamental interconnectedness of all things." To Gently,
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