The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
"The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul" is a novel by Douglas Adams that serves as a sequel to "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency." The narrative follows Dirk Gently, a holistic detective who believes in the interconnectedness of all things, leading him to unconventional investigative methods. Unlike traditional detectives, Gently embraces seemingly impossible possibilities in his quest for truth. The story also introduces Kate Schechter, whose travel plans are thwarted by a mysterious Norse man at the airport, who turns out to be the god Thor. As Gently navigates bizarre circumstances involving a severed head and a green man with a scythe, Kate assists Thor with personal troubles exacerbated by his father's actions. The plot intertwines their paths as they confront issues of divine power and human folly, ultimately leading to a resolution that highlights the absurdity of both gods and humans. Blending humor, mythology, and detective fiction, Adams explores themes of fate, destiny, and the chaos of life.
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The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of World Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1988
Type of work: Novel
The Work
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul is a sequel to the original Dirk Gently novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Gently makes his living as a “holistic” detective, basing his detective work on “the absolute interconnectedness” of all things. This leads to interesting investigative strategies. Gently rejects Sherlock Holmes’s idea that whatever is left after ruling out all impossibilities must be the truth. Instead, Gently insists on not rejecting a possibility merely because of its complete impossibility. His faith in the impossible proves a remarkably successful detection strategy.
Kate Schechter is on her way to Norway to visit a friend. Kate gets delayed in line at the airport behind a large Norse-looking man who has no passport, credit card, or birth certificate. This disregard for red tape makes the bureaucratic check-in girl increasingly inflexible and rude. Kate ends up missing her flight and on her way out of the airport gets rocked by an explosion that causes the check-in girl to vanish mysteriously.
Meanwhile, Dirk Gently has just remembered an appointment. His morning to this point has featured luxurious sleeping, a protracted staring contest with his refrigerator, and wishing he had a rich client—a wish which finally reminds him of his appointment. He hurries, five hours late, to the client who has complained of death threats from a green man with a scythe. When Dirk at long last arrives at his client’s house, he finds police cars surrounding the home and his client sitting in a chair, his severed head spinning on a record turntable. The green man with the scythe appears to have gotten to Dirk’s client before Dirk did.
In the meantime, Kate visits an unusual medical institution, where she looks for the large Norse man who thwarted her plans for a holiday in Norway. She meets a number of patients with strange ailments but cannot locate the man, whom she ultimately discovers to be Thor, the Norse god of thunder. On the way from the hospital, Kate’s car is rear-ended by Dirk, who is following her because he is lost. Dirk gets lost so often he has devised a system in which he follows anyone who seems to know where he or she is going. Dirk maintains that this counterintuitive process usually gets him where he needs to be, though seldom where he thought he was going.
Dirk and Kate realize that their paths have led them both on a collision course with Thor. Kate drives home to find Thor waiting for her; Thor found her house because she had given him her address at the airport in an attempt to help him make his flight. She aids him again, removing floorboards embedded in his back from his father’s recent punishment. They fly off together, clinging to Thor’s thrown hammer, toward Valhalla, where Thor plans to confront his father about some vast, vague injustice.
Dirk makes it home to discover an angry eagle on his doorstep who seems to be trying to tell him something. When the eagle threatens him, Dirk escapes from the house on a quest for a cigarette, a pursuit which leads him eventually to follow a group of beggars through a secret passageway into Valhalla. There he meets the Draycotts, a couple who have drafted a contract which exchanges the gods’ powers for cash. Odin, canny but sleepy leader of the gods, signed the contract against the will of his son Thor, triggering the thunder god’s angry reaction.
The book ends with the deaths of the Draycotts in a freak accident with a fighter jet, annulling their contract. Thor manages to straighten out most of the problems that he has created. Dirk, having experienced difficulties with a sofa impossibly stuck on his staircase and a saltcellar that cannot possibly work the way it does, returns home to his shiny new fridge.