(Pre-written to cover a trip.)
JS Bach. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The mathematics of music and movement. Ghosts. Time travel. Conjuring tricks. Ancient aliens. More. Much more. Electric Monks? Good grief. That's not even a comprehensive list of what goes on inside this novel. There hasn't even been a mention of the sofa paradox!
Reading 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency' (DGHDA) was one of the formative experiences of my life. Even now, many years later, this novel is still adored. It is one of the two best Adams novels, the other one being 'So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish', and is very difficult to describe. It's easier to describe it via questions, in fact. Why is technology guru and compulsive babbler Gordon Way shot to death by an Electric Monk that hitched a ride in a passing time machine to Earth? Why did the erratic Professor Chronitis feel the strange urge to make that trip in the first place? Why won't Gordon pass on, or why does he remain as a ghost? What does his employee, ace programmer Richard MacDuff, have to do with it, and why has he too been doing strange things? Does it all connect via Dirk Gently, the self-styled holistic detective? What exactly is a holistic detective anyway? Why are his professional expenses so eclectic? There are more questions than distinct answers, and it's goofy and rather intelligent in alternating fashions.
DGHDA is quietly awesome and unheralded. Yes, some people won't understand what on Earth is going on (and what NOT on Earth, too), and the short chapters which switch around so frequently might be disorienting, but to me it was and is excellent and brilliant. No-one else could have written it. It's a shame that the sequel, 'The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul', was so gloomy and laden with the doom of that last portion of Adams' life, as it could have been even better. DGHDA has jokes where you don't expect jokes, music where you don't expect music, and references to mathematics when no-one ever expects mathematics to be mentioned at all! Oh, it's wonderful. It's marvellous. How could so many disparate elements be incorporated into one novel? How?
This is about as close to fanatical raving as we get here in the Quirky Muffin. The novel is not without flaws, although I couldn't point any out in particular at the moment. Some people complain that the titular character doesn't appear for an extremely long time, but that's just how the story unravels. There could be complaints about all the references to 'Kublai Khan', Coleridge, and JS Bach, but those are easily remedied. You just have to look up the names, after all. No, I can't seriously think of anything wrong, apart from an entirely subjective and personal quibble over some unnecessary swearing. Maybe, just maybe, the final denouement is a little sudden and unexplained, but it works.
'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency' does a set of things that practically no other book does. For that, it is to be commended. It's also very funny, very original, and explains the word 'holistic'. Read it, enjoy it, but don't accept any expense claims for obscure leisure trips to Bermuda.
O.
PS No, I'm not going to clarify the sofa paradox. You will just to have to find out the hard way.
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