Terry Pratchett
Dec. 7th, 2002 12:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI like Terry Pratchett's writing very much. He combines, I find, the comic with the mordant. And this article--originally taken from the Washington Post should, hopefully, signal the American critical realization of his literary excellence:
Michael Dirda
'Night Watch' by Terry Pratchett
By Michael Dirda
Sunday, November 24, 2002; Page BW15
NIGHT WATCH
By Terry Pratchett
HarperCollins. 338 pp. $24.95
Though he is arguably the leading comic novelist of our time, as well as a master of contemporary fantasy, Terry Pratchett hasn't been content with those enviable laurels. Until the advent of J.K. Rowling, he was also the bestselling author in Britain. The dust jacket on his previous novel Thief of Time -- published in 2001 -- notes that more than 21 million copies of his books have been sold worldwide. The jacket on Night Watch ups that figure to 27 million, meaning -- if I retain my fifth-grade math skills -- that he sold 6 million books in the last year or two. Recently, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents was awarded the Carnegie Medal as the best children's book of the year. His admirers, who are obviously legion, include such superb popular storytellers as Barbara Mertz (a k a Elizabeth Peters) and Neil Gaiman, creator of The Sandman graphic novels (as well as Pratchett's collaborator on Good Omens, a comic fantasy about the end of the world). Not least, even highly browed intellectuals such as A.S. Byatt have called him "truly original" and "brilliant."
For some reason, though, Pratchett hasn't attracted the right attention in the United States. His work is seldom reviewed at length, and even the well-read haven't heard of him, or, if they have, their brains have lodged the Discworld series in the pigeonhole labeled "cutesy fantasy" and then dismissed it. In truth, Pratchett's work is almost impossible to describe without making it sound childish, sickly sweet or twee. But there's nothing soft and cuddly about it: Think Monty Python or "The Simpsons" rather than Harry Potter; satirical rather than silly.
The novels, approaching 30 at this point, take place on an Earthlike planet called the Discworld, where civilization, such as it is, blends the medieval and the modern (with touches of the Victorian) -- i.e., swords and magic, robes and armor, but also a bustling, crowded capital (Ankh-Morpork) plagued by racial, religious and political issues that we all recognize. Pratchett's various titles usually hint, often punningly, at their subtexts: Jingo is about political jingoism and war fever, The Truth about the role of the press in society, Mort about Death's new, rather bumbling understudy.
As the creator of an entire world, Pratchett has room to move about, to explore any theme that interests him, to call upon several different stock companies. There are novels in which Granny Weatherwax and various witches take center stage, others about the inept wizard Rincewind or the decrepit Cohen the Barbarian. Recently, Thief of Time introduced the Monks of History, a sect of Buddhist-like priests who seem harmless and dopey but are actually responsible for the temporal stability of the universe: They make sure that tomorrow happens. Night Watch itself slots into Pratchett's ongoing history of the metropolitan police force, the City Watch, a profession in the forefront of social change, since its coppers include trolls and dwarves, a werewolf and even a zombie, as well as the rightful king of Ankh-Morpork (though no one quite realizes this). The force is headed by Sam Vimes, a onetime street urchin, whose leadership, courage and urban-smarts have won him the love of the aristocratic Lady Sybil, a fortune and a ducal title.
The book opens with Sam awaiting the birth of his first child on, as it happens, a mysterious day of remembrance: Several members of the Watch, including Sam, have pinned a sprig of lilac to their uniforms, as have the notorious Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler (purveyor of street snacks you never want to touch, let alone eat) and the Patrician, Lord Vetinari, the courtly former Assassin responsible for the city's government. All of them, one gradually realizes, shared some great, doomed adventure 30 years ago, centering on a revered figure named John Keel, who lies buried in the cemetery of Small Gods:
"This cemetery of Small Gods was for the people who didn't know what happened next. They didn't know what they believed in or if there was life after death and, often, they didn't know what hit them. They'd gone through life being amiably uncertain, until the ultimate certainty had claimed them at the last. Among the city's bone orchards, the cemetery was the equivalent of the drawer marked MISC, where people were interred in the glorious expectation of nothing very much."
Just as the reader is growing tantalized about the lilac blossoms and John Keel, the Watch is called out to track a sociopathic killer named Carcer. When Sam and the vicious, sweet-talking murderer start to grapple on the rooftop of the Unseen University's great library of magic, an electrical storm strikes, and they are both catapulted back in time. Carcer escapes, and Sam awakens to find himself being patched up by Doctor Mossy Lawn, a good-hearted medico who usually treats the city's "seamstresses," i.e., prostitutes.
To hide his true identity, Sam gives a phony name. John Keel has been on his mind all day, and so it naturally comes tripping to his lips. At this point, nearly any reader will have guessed what's bound to happen next. As Sam later remarks to Lu-Tze, a Monk of History usually known as The Sweeper, "I'm probably going to end up being the sergeant that teaches me all I know, right?"
Though Pratchett pays homage to many of the elements of time-paradox stories, at its heart Night Watch is less about the multiverse and metaphysical matters than about the nature of community, human rights and our obligations to others. Pratchett's political views are apparently those of any reasonable man: All ideologies tend to dehumanize people and distort reality. At best we should accept the task before us, or as the Omnian religion stresses: "We are here, and this is now." One improvises, muddles through. The privileged and the powerful, no matter what their professed allegiance, should almost never be trusted. "One of the hardest lessons of young Sam's life had been finding out that the people in charge weren't in charge. It had been finding out that governments were not, on the whole, staffed by people who had a grip, and that plans were what people made instead of thinking."
Ultimately, Night Watch builds to a grand climax during which revolution strikes the city, an assassin moves silently through the darkness of the Patrician's palace, and the working-class citizens of Ankh-Morpork barricade their streets and declare themselves "The People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road," their clarion calls "Truth! Justice! Freedom!" and "Reasonably Priced Love!" As violence and confusion escalate, Carcer finds himself in his element, but so does Sam Vimes, a k a John Keel, who desperately tries to keep the peace and save lives. For a while he seems to be coping pretty well. But then the military is called out, and a blood bath threatens, despite the best intentions of the earnest, if somewhat irresolute, Major Mountjoy-Standfast:
When the major "was a boy, he'd read books about great military campaigns, and visited museums and had looked with patriotic pride at the paintings of famous cavalry charges, last stands, and glorious victories. It had come as rather a shock, when he later began to participate in some of these, to find that the painters had unaccountably left out the intestines. Perhaps they just weren't very good at them."
There are laughs in Night Watch, much repartee and even observations borrowed from Sterne, Shaw and the aphorist Chamfort. The book's rapid, cinematic pace -- quick cutting, multiple plot lines slowly converging -- never flags. Yet few readers would regard Night Watch as zany or even particularly comic. Like earlier satirists, Pratchett is, at least in part, a moralist and, because of his vast readership, one with clout. More and more, he's using his wit and brilliant talent for characterization and dialogue to attack every kind of intolerance, especially the imbecilities and cruelties of the modern nation-state. His oeuvre has deepened, even as it's grown more tendentious and less sheerly funny. But Pratchett wants to make us feel and think as well as laugh.
As a result, Night Watch turns out to be an unexpectedly moving novel about sacrifice and responsibility, its final scenes leaving one near tears, as these sometime Keystone Kops, through simple humanity, metamorphose into the Seven Samurai. Terry Pratchett may still be pegged a comic novelist, but as Night Watch shows, he's a lot more. In his range of invented characters, his adroit storytelling and his clear-eyed acceptance of humankind's foibles, he reminds me of no one in English literature so much as Geoffrey Chaucer. No kidding.
Michael Dirda's e-mail address is dirdam@washpost.com.
Michael Dirda
'Night Watch' by Terry Pratchett
By Michael Dirda
Sunday, November 24, 2002; Page BW15
NIGHT WATCH
By Terry Pratchett
HarperCollins. 338 pp. $24.95
Though he is arguably the leading comic novelist of our time, as well as a master of contemporary fantasy, Terry Pratchett hasn't been content with those enviable laurels. Until the advent of J.K. Rowling, he was also the bestselling author in Britain. The dust jacket on his previous novel Thief of Time -- published in 2001 -- notes that more than 21 million copies of his books have been sold worldwide. The jacket on Night Watch ups that figure to 27 million, meaning -- if I retain my fifth-grade math skills -- that he sold 6 million books in the last year or two. Recently, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents was awarded the Carnegie Medal as the best children's book of the year. His admirers, who are obviously legion, include such superb popular storytellers as Barbara Mertz (a k a Elizabeth Peters) and Neil Gaiman, creator of The Sandman graphic novels (as well as Pratchett's collaborator on Good Omens, a comic fantasy about the end of the world). Not least, even highly browed intellectuals such as A.S. Byatt have called him "truly original" and "brilliant."
For some reason, though, Pratchett hasn't attracted the right attention in the United States. His work is seldom reviewed at length, and even the well-read haven't heard of him, or, if they have, their brains have lodged the Discworld series in the pigeonhole labeled "cutesy fantasy" and then dismissed it. In truth, Pratchett's work is almost impossible to describe without making it sound childish, sickly sweet or twee. But there's nothing soft and cuddly about it: Think Monty Python or "The Simpsons" rather than Harry Potter; satirical rather than silly.
The novels, approaching 30 at this point, take place on an Earthlike planet called the Discworld, where civilization, such as it is, blends the medieval and the modern (with touches of the Victorian) -- i.e., swords and magic, robes and armor, but also a bustling, crowded capital (Ankh-Morpork) plagued by racial, religious and political issues that we all recognize. Pratchett's various titles usually hint, often punningly, at their subtexts: Jingo is about political jingoism and war fever, The Truth about the role of the press in society, Mort about Death's new, rather bumbling understudy.
As the creator of an entire world, Pratchett has room to move about, to explore any theme that interests him, to call upon several different stock companies. There are novels in which Granny Weatherwax and various witches take center stage, others about the inept wizard Rincewind or the decrepit Cohen the Barbarian. Recently, Thief of Time introduced the Monks of History, a sect of Buddhist-like priests who seem harmless and dopey but are actually responsible for the temporal stability of the universe: They make sure that tomorrow happens. Night Watch itself slots into Pratchett's ongoing history of the metropolitan police force, the City Watch, a profession in the forefront of social change, since its coppers include trolls and dwarves, a werewolf and even a zombie, as well as the rightful king of Ankh-Morpork (though no one quite realizes this). The force is headed by Sam Vimes, a onetime street urchin, whose leadership, courage and urban-smarts have won him the love of the aristocratic Lady Sybil, a fortune and a ducal title.
The book opens with Sam awaiting the birth of his first child on, as it happens, a mysterious day of remembrance: Several members of the Watch, including Sam, have pinned a sprig of lilac to their uniforms, as have the notorious Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler (purveyor of street snacks you never want to touch, let alone eat) and the Patrician, Lord Vetinari, the courtly former Assassin responsible for the city's government. All of them, one gradually realizes, shared some great, doomed adventure 30 years ago, centering on a revered figure named John Keel, who lies buried in the cemetery of Small Gods:
"This cemetery of Small Gods was for the people who didn't know what happened next. They didn't know what they believed in or if there was life after death and, often, they didn't know what hit them. They'd gone through life being amiably uncertain, until the ultimate certainty had claimed them at the last. Among the city's bone orchards, the cemetery was the equivalent of the drawer marked MISC, where people were interred in the glorious expectation of nothing very much."
Just as the reader is growing tantalized about the lilac blossoms and John Keel, the Watch is called out to track a sociopathic killer named Carcer. When Sam and the vicious, sweet-talking murderer start to grapple on the rooftop of the Unseen University's great library of magic, an electrical storm strikes, and they are both catapulted back in time. Carcer escapes, and Sam awakens to find himself being patched up by Doctor Mossy Lawn, a good-hearted medico who usually treats the city's "seamstresses," i.e., prostitutes.
To hide his true identity, Sam gives a phony name. John Keel has been on his mind all day, and so it naturally comes tripping to his lips. At this point, nearly any reader will have guessed what's bound to happen next. As Sam later remarks to Lu-Tze, a Monk of History usually known as The Sweeper, "I'm probably going to end up being the sergeant that teaches me all I know, right?"
Though Pratchett pays homage to many of the elements of time-paradox stories, at its heart Night Watch is less about the multiverse and metaphysical matters than about the nature of community, human rights and our obligations to others. Pratchett's political views are apparently those of any reasonable man: All ideologies tend to dehumanize people and distort reality. At best we should accept the task before us, or as the Omnian religion stresses: "We are here, and this is now." One improvises, muddles through. The privileged and the powerful, no matter what their professed allegiance, should almost never be trusted. "One of the hardest lessons of young Sam's life had been finding out that the people in charge weren't in charge. It had been finding out that governments were not, on the whole, staffed by people who had a grip, and that plans were what people made instead of thinking."
Ultimately, Night Watch builds to a grand climax during which revolution strikes the city, an assassin moves silently through the darkness of the Patrician's palace, and the working-class citizens of Ankh-Morpork barricade their streets and declare themselves "The People's Republic of Treacle Mine Road," their clarion calls "Truth! Justice! Freedom!" and "Reasonably Priced Love!" As violence and confusion escalate, Carcer finds himself in his element, but so does Sam Vimes, a k a John Keel, who desperately tries to keep the peace and save lives. For a while he seems to be coping pretty well. But then the military is called out, and a blood bath threatens, despite the best intentions of the earnest, if somewhat irresolute, Major Mountjoy-Standfast:
When the major "was a boy, he'd read books about great military campaigns, and visited museums and had looked with patriotic pride at the paintings of famous cavalry charges, last stands, and glorious victories. It had come as rather a shock, when he later began to participate in some of these, to find that the painters had unaccountably left out the intestines. Perhaps they just weren't very good at them."
There are laughs in Night Watch, much repartee and even observations borrowed from Sterne, Shaw and the aphorist Chamfort. The book's rapid, cinematic pace -- quick cutting, multiple plot lines slowly converging -- never flags. Yet few readers would regard Night Watch as zany or even particularly comic. Like earlier satirists, Pratchett is, at least in part, a moralist and, because of his vast readership, one with clout. More and more, he's using his wit and brilliant talent for characterization and dialogue to attack every kind of intolerance, especially the imbecilities and cruelties of the modern nation-state. His oeuvre has deepened, even as it's grown more tendentious and less sheerly funny. But Pratchett wants to make us feel and think as well as laugh.
As a result, Night Watch turns out to be an unexpectedly moving novel about sacrifice and responsibility, its final scenes leaving one near tears, as these sometime Keystone Kops, through simple humanity, metamorphose into the Seven Samurai. Terry Pratchett may still be pegged a comic novelist, but as Night Watch shows, he's a lot more. In his range of invented characters, his adroit storytelling and his clear-eyed acceptance of humankind's foibles, he reminds me of no one in English literature so much as Geoffrey Chaucer. No kidding.
Michael Dirda's e-mail address is dirdam@washpost.com.
