The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul: Difference between revisions

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''The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul'' is [[Douglas Adams]]'s 1988 sequel to ''[[Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency]]''. It deals with multiple dimensions, Norse Gods, refrigerators, murder and record company contracts.

 

Followed by ''[[The Salmon of Doubt]]'' [[Author Existence Failure|(unfinished)]].

 

* [[The Alleged Car]]: Kate's Citroën 2CV is the [[Trope Namer]] -- at one point she's in court for a traffic mishap (her car threw a wheel and nearly caused an accident) and a police officer refers to it as "the alleged car", and the name sticks.

* [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking]]:

* [[Baleful Polymorph]]: Thor does this by accident when he's angry, thus setting off the events of the novel. His many unfortunate victims include a lamp, an airline ticket clerk, and {{spoiler|a fighter jet}}.

* [[Bavarian Fire Drill]]: Dirk's favorite way of getting places he shouldn't be.

* [[Gods Need Prayer Badly]]

* [[A Good Name for a Rock Band]]: "Pugilism and the Third Autistic Cuckoo".

* [[Impossibly Mundane Explanation]]: When Dirk meets a girl who repeatedly recites the previous day's stock quotes, he rejects the assumption that she's just memorizing them somehow (after all, the information is out there!) in favor of some more mystical explanation, because nobody would ever go to that much trouble. It's a little different since he's arguing on the basis of general human nature, not specific character, but the principle is the same. Dirk sums this up by reversing [[Sherlock Holmes]]' usual maxim: Eliminate the improbable, and whatever remains, however impossible, must be the truth.

* [[It Came From the Fridge]]: Dirk and his cleaning lady absolutely refuse to open his fridge, and try to trick others into opening it. He eventually has to call a fence to take his fridge away and replace it with a brand new, stolen one, which he vows never to use. {{spoiler|The old one has a god of Guilt burst from it to resolve the plot, in a [[Deus Ex Machina]].}}

* [[Necktie Leash]]: Kate uses this one on Dirk, who subverts a repeated use by taking off his tie and handing it to her.

* [[Never Heard That One Before]]:

"No. What happens is that everybody looks very shifty for a moment, and you got that very well." }}

** Also, everyone and their dog keeps asking Dirk if he knows his nose is broken.

* [[90% of Your Brain]]: Kate, shortly before awakening from a coma in a hospital, has a dream in which her mind is represented by an infinite collection of cabin trunks, of which ten percent contain past memories, and the remaining ninety percent contain [[Everything's Better with Penguins|penguins]]. She assumes this trope is in effect.

* [[Norse Mythology]]

* [[Occult Detective]]

* [[Self-Deprecation]]: A minor character is a writer named Howard Bell. It is stated that his writing is absolutely horrible, but he remains wildly popular and successful for two reasons: he deliberately cultivates an air of freakish mystery, and his name is perfect for a book cover because the first name is long and the last name is short. On his books, his first name is written in a medium-sized blocky font followed by his last name in a larger font, so that his name fills out the cover and upstages the title. Bell is probably a [[No Celebrities Were Harmed]] version of [[Stephen King]], but still, it's funny to see that character created by someone named Douglas Adams.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Fantasy Literature]]

[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]