Dirk Gently

Dirk Gently is a Personnage of fiction created by the English writer Douglas Adams, and hero of two novels, a horse in the bathroom ( Dirk Gently' S Holistic Detective Agency ) and Beau like an airport ( The Long Dark Tea-Time off the Soul ). He is also the hero of a third novel entitled the Saumon of the Doubt ( The Salmon off Doubt ) unfinished because of died of his author. It is a private detective, rather eccentric, embarked in generally absurd investigations (with the result that he is never regarded a true whodunnit although he has the bases of them, but as a science-fiction novel).

A holistic detective

Dirk Gently clamp being a " holistic detective " , which means by there that he believes in the fundamental interconnection of any thing " (a school of thought which approaches the Théorie of chaos). It consequently applies this way of thinking in its investigations for " to solve the entire crime, and to find the missings all entiers". No need to say that its methods of investigations then take often twisted and absurd turnings, incomprehensible except for itself, because each element which exists, even if it does not have any relationship with the business in progress, in has one paradoxically inevitably. What gives him the very good ones pretexts to raise the price of its invoices (to find a cat, it needs to go on a journey to Bermuda), and certain people find it a little swindler on the edges. Dirk denies these allegations by retorting that one cannot say that it exploits people, since nobody never pays it. Indeed, all the events which arrive to him unroll in such way that it is never paid.

Description and Profession

Dirk Gently is a man of ripe age rather enigmatic, often vêtu of a large leather overcoat, and capped with an eternal rather ugly hat. It is an inveterate smoker and who has certain leaning for the pizza pies. It is eccentric in any point, and it is proud: it has a way of speaking often bombastic, rout people by its often absurd logical routes, chooses to spin people or cars randomly… Moreover, one certain nonchalance characterizes it: whereas these businesses are not what there is of more lucrative, it continues to live from day to day, seeking each time combine to avoid paying the newspaper, or its hysterical secretary, Janice Pearce, which will resign several times of its work (because in particular of a sordid history of calendar). Its " Arranges Holistiques" Detectives; is in an apartment seedy character, if poor that it does not even have a chair so that its customers can sit down - notwithstanding, it has a very beautiful plate with its name at the entry. Dirk Gently receives relatively little customers, and its investigations do not have anything very ambitious: its publicity clamp that " the disappeared cats and the difficult divorces are the speciality of the agence". Always it is that in spite of this environment little glittering, Dirk always ends up being found vis-a-vis extraordinary events, going for example until the rescue of all the existence of planet.

A detective of exception

Dirk Gently, even if it has all the air of the perfect eccentric, and seems with half disturbed with its illogical reflections and its strange methods, is in fact a good detective: whatever the solution which it offers to a enigma, however improbable is it, still does not finish appearing exact. Its deductions follow a rather inclined way of thought to accept the impossible one, with the result that only the solution holds to him, because indeed something of impossible often takes place when he inquires. It finds that the quotation of Sherlock Holmes " Once one eliminated impossible, then what remains, even the most improbable, must be the solution " have a weakness: Dirk does not like to eliminate the impossible one. Dirk Gently seems to attract only the supernatural one - a fact enough irritating for him which does not like the idea inevitably to be always mingled with paranormaux events. It is however invariably what it attracts, the more so as it seems to have a curious gift of clairvoyance (a fact that he denies absolutely and that he puts on the account of unhappy coincidence). It has one day bet of the money with people that it would manage to provide under hypnosis the questions of a future examination. HE studied simply, to be so much is not very credible, the type of questions put during preceding examinations. The result was that it was taken along in prison for cheating, because it proved that what it had revealed was exactly the same questions which fell the day from the examination, except for the comma.

Other remarks

Dirk Gently is not exactly the true name of the hero, it is a pseudonym. Its true patronym would be " Svald Cjelli" (it would have a Rumanian ascent, even vampires in its family, a rumor which it made run on him). It is also possible that it is not the true name either of the detective, it is only under this name there that it was known with the Saint-Cedd College, because its former youth is unknown for us. Dirk likes to bear this name, on the one hand to be detached from a not very glorious past and on the other hand avoids that it has a " small Scottish side tranchant" it likes who.

We will never have the end of the Romance third which puts it in scene in the Salmon of the Doubt, available in the collection " Bottom of the barrel " in France. It would seem that the person that Dirk slips by at one time would be Ford Prefect, a character of the other series of Douglas Adams, the Guide of the Galactic Traveller, which is very probable considering Dirk lives in the same city as the protagonists of this series, Islington. Nevertheless, it may be that the novel is never appeared in this form so Douglas Adams was not deceased: the author had entrusted in an interview which it was not satisfied with this history, that something did not function with Dirk, and that the elements of this volume would be reinstated in a sixth volume of the Guide of the Galactic Traveller, that we will never have either.

This character of novel was already incarnated on several occasions: by Michael Bywater during an emission of South Bank Show devoted to Douglas Adams (let us note that Michael Bywater is a friend of the author, and according to this last the character would be mainly inspired by it), by Scot Burklin for the theatrical adaptation of the first novel, and finally by Harry Enfield which currently lends to him its voice for the radiophonic adaptation of the Radio operator BBC 4 of 2007.

Random links: