It's a great book, but ultimately I doubt I'll reread it. I love all of the ideas and there's something about how Douglas Adams constructs sentences that is just brilliant, but it's just missing something of the spark that Hitchhiker's has

Lots of hilarious moments, though the pacing's not quite up to the level set in the first Dirk Gently book. The ending especially feels rushed - he spends a long time building up this fantastic web of complexity, and then rips it down with a climax and ending that together are barely longer than "But it all worked out okay in the end."

But, as a math student working through too many proofs right now, I really love Dirk's way of thinking! ...especially his reversal of Sherlock-Holmes-style logic:

"What was the Sherlock Holmes principle? 'Once you have discounted the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' "
"I reject that entirely," said Dirk sharply. "The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something that works in all respects other than one, which is just that it is hopelessly improbable? Your instinct is to say, 'Yes, but he or she simply wouldn't do that.' "
"Well, it happened to me today, in fact," replied Kate.
"Ah, yes," said Dirk, slapping the table and making the glasses jump, "your girl in the wheelchair--a perfect example. The idea that she is somehow receiving yesterday's stock market prices apparently out of thin air is merely impossible, and therefore must be the case, because the idea that she is maintaining an immensely complex and laborious hoax of no benefit to herself is hopelessly improbable. The first idea merely supposes that there is something we don't know about, and God knows there are enough of those. The second, however, runs contrary to something fundamental and human which we do know about. We should therefore be very suspicious of it and all its specious rationality."

Words to live by. Stay open-minded, because there's a lot we don't know about.

1 Jan 1988
The travails of trying to order a pizza, Valhalla in London, and unexpected encounters with Thor. I loved it.

16 September, 2012
Tash talked me into watching Thor, which I enjoyed enormously. And it reminded me of Adams' Thor, committing an Act of (a) God, when he can't catch a flight to Oslo. More than thirty years later air travel has only become more annoying.It's still fantastically funny, but I'm aware of a sadness to it that I didn't notice on previous readings. The heroine is a widow, the gods are bewildered, homeless and aimless, the yuppies are as annoying as ever. Adams has trouble with plot, so even after reading this at least three times, I'm not exactly clear on what happened at the climax. But with age I seem to have acquired some acceptance: it doesn't bother me that I don't know the details, since the crux is apparent.I wonder what I'll think of it in another thirty years?

27 November, 2016
I'm kind of astounded at what I remembered and what I didn't (the bath, but not the eagle). This time I'm amazed by all the threads connecting it to newer works and authors I enjoy. I don't suppose I'll ever stop imaging what else he might have done if he'd lived longer.

Sai quanti sassi ci sono nel Galles?

Leggere Douglas Adams per me è un po' come tornare a casa: è caotico e confortante, come una stanza disordinata ma familiare.
I personaggi sono assurdi e caricaturali, impossibile immedesimarsi davvero. Gli avvenimenti surreali e paradossali: aquile che svolazzano nel cielo di Londra, Dei nordici fissati con le lenzuola di lino, pizze che proprio non ne vogliono sapere di farsi consegnare a domicilio.
Proprio quello che mi serviva, questa rilettura, per ritrovare il giusto ritmo del respiro e un po' di leggerezza.

I’ve read this book before. I love Douglas Adams’s work, but I had always remembered this one as being lesser Adams. Rereading it, I was reminded of just how incredibly funny he was as an author. And while I will always rank Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency among my favorite books of all time, this follow up novel deserves more credit than I had given it in the past. It made me laugh continuously throughout, even if I find the story to be less complex than the first in the series.

Sarò subito sincero: se avessi letto questo libro in solitaria, molto probabilmente il voto sarebbe stato un 2 (e quindi grazie Chiara).

Ma la verve e l'assurdo umorismo di Adams ben si prestano a una lettura in compagnia: ci vuole una spalla all'altezza, per apprezzare appieno le tante insensatezze che costellano questo strampalatissimo romanzo.
Sono inoltre ragionevolmente certo che l'incomprensibilità di quasi tutto ciò che è scritto qua dentro può condurre a voli pindarici più o meno costruttivi. Affrontare in due tali cervellotiche elucubrazioni, con buona probabilità concorrerà a limitare l'emicrania derivante dalla lettura. Siete avvisati.

Il talento di Adams nel piazzare scene completamente slegate tra loro senza soluzione di continuità, per poi ricollegare tutti i fili, è sicuramente unico. Purtroppo ho trovato che in questo caso l'autore si sia fatto prendere troppo la mano, lasciando il lettore totalmente spaesato fino alle ultimissime pagine (anzi, anche oltre...). Per riuscire a cogliere tutti i rimandi e le scene apparentemente senza senso, questo libro necessiterebbe probabilmente di ben più di una lettura. Ma questo ha reso la prima un po' troppo ostica, per essere considerata totalmente piacevole.

Io adoro l'umorismo e l'inventiva scatenata di questo scrittore (la Guida Galattica è probabilmente uno dei miei libri preferiti), ma in questo caso (come nei capitoli meno ispirati della saga principale) ho notato notevoli alti e bassi, con capitoli riuscitissimi ed estremamente gradevoli, alternati ad altri decisamente sottotono e forzati, sia come comicità che come lunghezza.

Un punto a favore è segnato grazie ai personaggi: Dirk Gently e compagnia (fino ai personaggi più marginali e secondari) sono caratterizzati in maniera originale e godibile. Dal protagonista fino all'ultima delle "comparse", ognuno è a suo modo memorabile e inserito in scene e dialoghi davvero surreali e spassosi.

In definitiva ho trovato La lunga oscura pausa caffè dell'anima eccessivamente disorganico (per quanto questa mancanza di ordine sia assolutamente voluta e costruita sapientemente) e disomogeneo in quanto a qualità e a divertimento generato. Ciò non toglie che sia stata sicuramente un'esperienza interessante, nella sua completa e totalizzante follia.

Il mio consiglio è questo: se non conoscete Douglas Adams, provate prima di tutto  tGuida galattica per gli autostoppisti (Guida galattica per gli autostoppisti, #1)  o  Dirk Gently, agenzia investigativa olistica (Dirk Gently #1) . Se apprezzate quelli, potrete trovare qualcosa di positivo anche in questo libro. Altrimenti rivolgetevi altrove: ne va della vostra salute psicofisica!

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 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.

(See another version of this review on my blog: http://examinedworlds.blogspot.com/20...)

Typical inspired zaniness from Douglas Adams! While I still think the Hitchhiker's Guide books are my favorites, there are some great things about the Dirk Gently books. Dirk himself is an absent-minded savant versus the everyman ordinariness of Arthur Dent; funny things happen to Dent, but Gently is often the source of the humor in these books.

In this second book, we get more on the idea that all things are interconnected, which is a hilarious idea if you think about it. The new character, Kate, just wants to get a pizza delivered in London and makes some hilariously fortuitous bath soap purchases.

We also get the idea that the Norse gods have fallen on hard times since nobody believes in them anymore, which is perhaps a reflection of Adams's atheism in real life: if you think about it, who would really want to be a god when you can have clean linen? Perhaps the simple, mortal life isn't so bad, and you don't need to go on hankering after something more grandiose. The universe is a pretty grandiose place as it is, albeit somewhat less so with Adams's untimely passing in 2001.

AMAZE-BALLS. Douglas Adams's best work, hands down.

So last year I read all of The Hitchhiker's Guide books and loved them, though by the last one you could tell Adams didn't want to write them anymore. I adored Adams's humor and style, so I was excited to read the two Dirk Gently books. The first book suffered for me a little bit because over the first third of the book was very disconnected. But in this one you can see the connections through the various plotlines early on. In some of Adams's other books, the plot seems to jump around randomly, and while random-ness does abound here, it's much easier to see its greater purpose, and how everything fits together, which is why I found the story itself more engaging.

And then Adams brought in one of my favorite tropes- bringing fictional characters to life. Fictional characters from my favorite brand of mythology, Norse. And Thor was just SO Thor. I knew at that point I was going to love this.

Maybe the mystery itself wasn't as well built as the mystery in the last one, but honestly, I enjoyed the ride a hell of a lot more, the mystery didn't even matter that much. The characters were well-developed, and I liked Kate way more than any of Adams's other female characters. Dirk is still a jerk, of course, but a lot more sympathetic than in the last book, and I loved seeing his methods and the way he approached things.

Honestly the only complaint is that the ending is a bit rushed. In fact I went back a few pages to make sure I hadn't missed anything. Having heard things about how Adams approached deadlines, it makes me wonder if maybe he ran out of time, so just wrapped everything up quicker than originally planned. That or he felt the book was getting too long (it is longer than any of the Hitchhiker books, though on par with the first Dirk Gently). Or maybe he just wanted it to be like that. We'll never know.

Now I'm a million times sadder about him dying so young :( With this book being so original and so fun, I would have loved to see what else he could do, especially since he pretty much told everyone asking for more Hitchhiker's "fuck you" in Mostly Harmless. Douglas Adams's humor and style was such a gift and literature definitely needs more of it.

My partner insisted that I read this book. It isn't my usual cup of tea and it took a while for me to really get into the story. But in the end the whimsical and comedic writing of the late Douglas Adams won me over. Now I'm sad that Mr. Adams passed before he was able to finish the sequel. I would love to be able to accompany Dirk Gently on another impossible adventure, I might have to check out the first book to feature the holistic detective, although my partner has said it isn't as whimsical as this one. I like whimsy. Overall I enjoyed this book.

Unlike his “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series (a collection of humorous vignettes without much of a plot, continuity, or character development), Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently series (two novels and some sketches for a third one, included in the “Salmon of Doubt”) is in fact literature of the first degree. In the second novel, “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul,” Dirk Gently, a private “holistic” investigator (an eccentric slob, perpetually broke, capricious, silly, and wonderfully insightful), while minding his client’s (Kate, a somewhat confused gal from New York) interests, unravels a pseudo-conspiracy involving the Norse gods (all of them), in which the gods are the victims.

Employing his own special methods (which differ from Sherlock Holmes’ methods in that Dirk has a soft spot for the impossible and does not like to dismiss it), Dirk manages to a) side with the gods b) save them c) punish the guilty d) help his client e) end up broke again. The last bit is fine by him (in the previous novel, he sent a bill to a client of his, whose missing cat he was supposed to find, with just one item on it, “Saving the Universe. No charge”).

Laced with Adams’ trademark humor, this novel certainly puts its author in the same category with Mark Twain, Chekhov, and Maupassant. I’m not exaggerating.

I have yet to see or hear a coherent explanation why American Gods breaks records, whereas this gem, which even Gaiman himself I think would agree is in quite a higher league, never did make a splash. Just because it's not set in America? That would be pathetic.