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My mother, along with all the other damage she has done, sidelined me with Pratchett.
Pratchett and I have history, although I daresay I know it better than he does. When I was young in the ways of the Internet, I flamed him on his own Usenet board. This was, realistically, impolite. Some years later, on the first day of my Finals, Da. and I popped along to Blackwells to find a queue of people in hats and leather jackets winding back past Wendy News to the sandwich shop. Gaining ingress ahead of them by demonstrating that without headgear we could not possibly be seeking to cut in, we found that the buckskin stopped at the Pratch himself, hat off to reveal a lustrous skullcap of flesh, posing for a photograph with a man whose facial expression suggested that he was having warm epoxy massaged simultaneously into his every erogenous zone by an army of Eric Stanton nymphs with glue guns. The whole setup seemed vaguely pornographic. Da. and I clutched each other and sank to the ground, giggling hysterically. He's been a bit stand-offish ever since.
This would not be a problem, except that when a Terry Pratchett novel is placed among my possessions, as has occurred this weekend, I have to read it. It's like vampires and rice. Not, I hasten to add, vampires who have joined a temperance movement, as featured in The Truth, which I squeezed between family commitments over the weekend. If anyone wants a copy, give me a shout.
This involuntary bibliomancy has prepared me for what the modern Pratchett, as opposed to the precocious Pratchett of The Hades Business, the playful but specialist Pratchett of Strata and The Dark Side of the Sun, or the rangefinding Pratchett of The Colour of Magic or The Light Fantastic tends to favour as an angle of attack.
First, there is the premise. The premise, in essence, goes "what would happen if x were to be transplanted into a world with the social structures and physics of a generic fantasy world?". The answer, invariably, is "hilarity". So, rock music, movies, the printing press, women's rights - major plots are driven forward by the reactions of a familiar and much-loved cast of characters. The protagonist, usually a young man or woman, faces the implications of the main plot, and often a subsidiary plot rooted more firmly in the mechanisms of the fantasy world - a palace coup, an enterprise set up in the shadow of the main plot, or possibly a romance. This romance may be with a young woman of high standards who turns out to be surprisingly attractive, if possibly a touch zaftig. The bad guys are generally either misguided - often swept away by the possibilities of the introduction of the aforementioned innovation - or actively inhuman. So, The Truth features Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip. One is small and loquacious, one large, monosyllabic and incredibly violent. One has an unexpected appreciation of ancient art. They are Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar from Neil Gaiman's itself-underwhelming Neverwhere, and I claim my five pounds. I find it unlikely that Pratchett doesn't have Gaiman's phone number, and am not entirely sure why his readers should be forced to watch him waving hello through the kitchen window.
Still, great literature is full of such homages. Besides, given the sheer volume of text created by the Pratch, he is bound to reference absolutely everything at some point or other. I look forward to the Discworld treatment of Babylon 5, in which the floating wooden negotiating room set up by Lord Vetinari with the assistance of the wizards will be variously described as the last, best hope for peas, cheese, pease pudding, bees, knees, and 20 GOTO 10.
Anway, so "The Truth" (which is lazy to the point of being actively insulting to its readership) and then "The Wee Free Men" *(better - Pratchett is more comfortable writing utterly asexual characters. The mere knowledge that a character *could* use their genitalia seems to put him off his stroke. As it were). Then finally got to finish "Why do People Hate America", by Evans and Sardar. Patchy - some of their media analysis is interesting, and they do raise some interesting questions - like how and why American historiography has treated the Iroquois conference, but a lot of it felt like Chomsky for Beginners...
Just started "Pomosexuals", edited by Queen and Schimel. |
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