I was reading through the Penguin edition of John Bunyan’s classic, The Pilgrim’s Progress, and saw something I hadn’t come across before – one of Bunyan’s influences was The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven, written by preacher Arthur Dent and published in 1601. His wife owned a copy.
Of course, Arthur Dent is the protagonist in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchikers’ Guide to the Universe and its sequels, which is probably much more familiar to denizens of this Board. I hadn’t known about the earlier Dent, but it’s altogether appropriate that he wrote a guide for Pilgrims, essentially, and Adams was probably familiar with this. Otherwise the choice of that particular name is Too Good To Be True. It’s kinda like when I learned that MST3K stole the name “Clayton Forrester” from the George Pal movie War of the Worlds, which made up that name for the character who was the originally nameless narrator in H.G. Wells’ novel.
I’ve long said that it looks as if Adams got a big chunk of inspiration for THHGttG from Robert Sheckley’s novel Dimension of Miracles, but I hadn’t known about Arthur Dent at all before this.*
*Adams, although he admitted to being a Shecklrey fan, claims that he hadn’t read Dimension before he wrote THHGttG, and some folks on this Board claim there’s no similatrity. But consider – both books are about an Everyman who is suddenly pluxcked from his ordinary everyday existence and abruptly set in an interstellar culture that is remarkably like his own earth culture, writ large, with comically inept bureaucracies and aliens he can understand the language of. With his guide, he goes from place to place, often without a spaceship, encountering intelligent mouse-appearing beings, creatures who unexpectedly quote poetry (although Sheckley’s orithi are very good poets, in contrast to Adams’ Vogons), and ultimately ends up at the planet of world-building aliens, talking to one of the ones who designed and built the Earth (and is inordinately proud of his contribution). (There’s no Deep Thought in the book, but there’s a very similar all-answering computer in another Sheckley short story. )That’s not just happenstance – it looks too much like influence to me. (How many SF books have you read where the hero talks to the Guy who Bult Part of the Earth?) If Adams didn’t read Sheckley, somebody mentioned elements of the plot to Adams.
No cites, but I read somewhere that the character name was a coincidence. Adams stated that he hadn’t heard of the real Arthur Dent till after the Hitchhiker books were published.
It fits too well, and, like the Sheckley connection (which other folks have noted, as well), Adams denies it.
I’m beginning to suspect that either a.) Douglas Adams was lying; or b.) Douglas Adams had an unusually retentive subconscious mind that didn’t tell his conscious mind where it got its ideas.
I believe Adams denies knowing about the previous Dent and his work in the published version of the original radio play scripts (will have to check my copy when I get home). I’ve always wanted to get a copy of the Dent and just let it sit on my bookshelf to blow people’s minds.
I doubt Zaphod was interested in purveying the ramblings of a talking monkey man to others.
(I’ve always wondered about that particular insult. Zaphod refers to Dent as a monkey man often in the books as an obvious slur against his evolutionary heritage. Zaphod’s not human so he clearly doesn’t share that heritage but he’s humanoid. His evolutionary heritage must bear some passing resemblance to Arthur’s even if just by chance, no? And why didn’t Arthur ever query Eddie about Zaphod’s history so that he could make his own, “Tough talk from a walking flirr!” or whatever?)
Really? I don’t really see much similarity between the two Dents? The names are the same, and they both are involved in books where the main character is on some sort of journey, but half the books in the English language involve some sort of journey. And Douglas’s Dent isn’t on any sort of spiritual journey or pilgrimage, he’s a refugee unwillingly forced to travel from place to place by events.
And so far as I can tell, the 17th century Dent’s book isn’t even about a journey, its a dialogue about theological issues.
If there isn’t any more specific similarity, I don’t really see any reason to doubt Douglas about the origins of the name. The connection between the two Dents seems so tenuous it doesn’t even seem like that good of a coincidence.