Special Delivery
Jul. 9th, 2005 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvessel14 May 2005
Going Postal - Terry Pratchett - Doubleday 2004
* * * * *
All right, Ms Clarke, Mr Mieville, listen up - this is how to create a convincing and likeable fantasy world. First, spend over twenty years doing it. Second, be prolific (this is the 33rd Discworld book). Third, make it funny. Fourth, when it starts to go stale, liven it up by letting technology and social institutions evolve. Fifth, think through the way in which said institutions work so that they can model and satirise their real-world equivalents. Sixth, have a wise and humane view of human nature that recognises both its nice and its nasty aspects. Seventh, make sure it has a postal system.
Okay okay, I'm overstating the case - as a real place the discworld is not particularly convincing, though it is extremely likeable. But as a third generation member of a Post Office family (my grandfather was co-inventor of the speaking clock and brought television to the Midlands, my father was an assistant director in charge of capital expenditure and my brother, though now outsourced, still helps to maintain its IT infrastructure), there was no way that I wasn't going to like this book. Though it helps that this is one of the better recent Discworld comic novels (which have tended to the novelistic than the comical), and that its theme, which is how to be a good Captain of Industry, is both interesting in itself and ripe for satire.
The hero, if you can call him that, is Moist von Lipwig, a con artist and forger. We first encounter him in a cell in Ankh Morpork, condemned to death for a crime he most certainly did commit. He is reprieved (after he was hanged - this is Lord Vetinari we are talking about here) and offered a choice between certain death and becoming head of Ankh Morpork's defunct Post Office. Moist naturally does what anyone of his intelligence and background would do. He accepts the offer, and then gets out of town as fast as he can con a nag off a mark to carry him. Unfortunately, he reckons without the golem probation officer that Lord Vetinari sends after him. Forced into fulfilling his role, our initially reluctant hero sets about revitalising the institution, and in so doing, taking on the might of the monopolistic Grand Trunk semaphore company and its grasping cabal of directors led by the evil Reacher Gilt.
Going Postal continues Pratchett's interest in the nuts and bolts of society, simultaneously satirising and celebrating both high technology (represented by the Clacks, a continent-spanning signalling system that corresponds roughly to the internet) and big business. His central conceit - that the personality traits which make for a good leader of a multinational corporation are also those which make for a good swindler or embezzler - has been expressed before, but never as well as here. As they themselves realise, Moist and Reacher are cut from the same cloth - they both use words to achieve their ends, but whereas Moist straightforwardly lies, giving the impression that he has a plan when he's actually making it up as he goes along, Reacher hides behind the weaselly vaguenesses of management-speak, where the words sound meaningful but are in fact empty abstractions. Pratchett's moral position here is interesting. He implies that mendacity can be a good thing when its empowering, when it encourages people to try things they wouldn't otherwise try, but not when it's used for selfish purposes. Telling a lie isn't in itself wrong, but the reasons why you are telling it can be (I suppose that as an author you have to think that).
This emphasis on empowerment ties in of course to the American Dream, which perhaps goes some way to explaining why the plot has such a classic Hollywood arc. The run-down and seedy Post Office building, clogged with undelivered letters and manned by two hopeless deadbeats, is transformed by one man's genius into a bustling and functional edifice staffed by a team that works together. The institution is threatened and almost destroyed by the baddies, but by dint of cleverness and energy the hero manages to overcome them. Even the romantic sub-plot is Hollywood by numbers - Adora Dearheart is an engaging chain-smoking femme fatale with a nice line in sarcastic dialogue, but does nothing to move or shake the plot. In fact, the book's major flaw is its lack of decent female characters. Apart from Miss Dearheart, the only woman with a speaking role is Mrs Maccalariat, a crude caricature of a Victorian prude with an obsession about gender segregation in privies (difficult to police when your male and female dwarf workers both have beards).
In fact, this book is so American in its outlook that I wonder if Pratchett was trying to ingratiate himself with his audience across the pond. Moist is good because he is trying to free people from thralldom to a big business monopoly owned by banks. But in the classic having-your-cake-and-eat-it manner of Hollywood, Pratchett implies that big business and finance are not in themselves bad - rather, the problem is lack of healthy competition. To which I can only say, hmm. Tell that to the long-suffering passengers of the privatised British railway system.
To be fair, though, Pratchett is fair. His satire of the rather strange inbred traditions of the post office workers is affectionate rather than savage, as is his portrayal of the geeky engineers who actually run the Clacks. He clearly does believe in public service, the importance of craft and not second-guessing an expert, and appreciates that the vision of freedom that the American Dream offers is in fact a mirage. Adapting this book into a Hollywood film would on the whole be a pretty straightforward affair, but I think the scriptwriters would take a blue pencil to the ending in a big way. After all, you can't have a climax where the hero wins through words and cleverness rather than violent action, can you?
One particularly pleasing thing about this book was the return, albeit briefly, of Mustrum Ridcully and the wizards of Unseen University, my favourite recurring characters after Death and his daughter Susan. Ridcully is always good value and he comes up with my Quote of the Book: "Oh please sue the University! We've got a pond full of people who tried to sue the University."
As they say - never meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Particularly if they haven't had their dinner yet.
Going Postal - Terry Pratchett - Doubleday 2004
* * * * *
All right, Ms Clarke, Mr Mieville, listen up - this is how to create a convincing and likeable fantasy world. First, spend over twenty years doing it. Second, be prolific (this is the 33rd Discworld book). Third, make it funny. Fourth, when it starts to go stale, liven it up by letting technology and social institutions evolve. Fifth, think through the way in which said institutions work so that they can model and satirise their real-world equivalents. Sixth, have a wise and humane view of human nature that recognises both its nice and its nasty aspects. Seventh, make sure it has a postal system.
Okay okay, I'm overstating the case - as a real place the discworld is not particularly convincing, though it is extremely likeable. But as a third generation member of a Post Office family (my grandfather was co-inventor of the speaking clock and brought television to the Midlands, my father was an assistant director in charge of capital expenditure and my brother, though now outsourced, still helps to maintain its IT infrastructure), there was no way that I wasn't going to like this book. Though it helps that this is one of the better recent Discworld comic novels (which have tended to the novelistic than the comical), and that its theme, which is how to be a good Captain of Industry, is both interesting in itself and ripe for satire.
The hero, if you can call him that, is Moist von Lipwig, a con artist and forger. We first encounter him in a cell in Ankh Morpork, condemned to death for a crime he most certainly did commit. He is reprieved (after he was hanged - this is Lord Vetinari we are talking about here) and offered a choice between certain death and becoming head of Ankh Morpork's defunct Post Office. Moist naturally does what anyone of his intelligence and background would do. He accepts the offer, and then gets out of town as fast as he can con a nag off a mark to carry him. Unfortunately, he reckons without the golem probation officer that Lord Vetinari sends after him. Forced into fulfilling his role, our initially reluctant hero sets about revitalising the institution, and in so doing, taking on the might of the monopolistic Grand Trunk semaphore company and its grasping cabal of directors led by the evil Reacher Gilt.
Going Postal continues Pratchett's interest in the nuts and bolts of society, simultaneously satirising and celebrating both high technology (represented by the Clacks, a continent-spanning signalling system that corresponds roughly to the internet) and big business. His central conceit - that the personality traits which make for a good leader of a multinational corporation are also those which make for a good swindler or embezzler - has been expressed before, but never as well as here. As they themselves realise, Moist and Reacher are cut from the same cloth - they both use words to achieve their ends, but whereas Moist straightforwardly lies, giving the impression that he has a plan when he's actually making it up as he goes along, Reacher hides behind the weaselly vaguenesses of management-speak, where the words sound meaningful but are in fact empty abstractions. Pratchett's moral position here is interesting. He implies that mendacity can be a good thing when its empowering, when it encourages people to try things they wouldn't otherwise try, but not when it's used for selfish purposes. Telling a lie isn't in itself wrong, but the reasons why you are telling it can be (I suppose that as an author you have to think that).
This emphasis on empowerment ties in of course to the American Dream, which perhaps goes some way to explaining why the plot has such a classic Hollywood arc. The run-down and seedy Post Office building, clogged with undelivered letters and manned by two hopeless deadbeats, is transformed by one man's genius into a bustling and functional edifice staffed by a team that works together. The institution is threatened and almost destroyed by the baddies, but by dint of cleverness and energy the hero manages to overcome them. Even the romantic sub-plot is Hollywood by numbers - Adora Dearheart is an engaging chain-smoking femme fatale with a nice line in sarcastic dialogue, but does nothing to move or shake the plot. In fact, the book's major flaw is its lack of decent female characters. Apart from Miss Dearheart, the only woman with a speaking role is Mrs Maccalariat, a crude caricature of a Victorian prude with an obsession about gender segregation in privies (difficult to police when your male and female dwarf workers both have beards).
In fact, this book is so American in its outlook that I wonder if Pratchett was trying to ingratiate himself with his audience across the pond. Moist is good because he is trying to free people from thralldom to a big business monopoly owned by banks. But in the classic having-your-cake-and-eat-it manner of Hollywood, Pratchett implies that big business and finance are not in themselves bad - rather, the problem is lack of healthy competition. To which I can only say, hmm. Tell that to the long-suffering passengers of the privatised British railway system.
To be fair, though, Pratchett is fair. His satire of the rather strange inbred traditions of the post office workers is affectionate rather than savage, as is his portrayal of the geeky engineers who actually run the Clacks. He clearly does believe in public service, the importance of craft and not second-guessing an expert, and appreciates that the vision of freedom that the American Dream offers is in fact a mirage. Adapting this book into a Hollywood film would on the whole be a pretty straightforward affair, but I think the scriptwriters would take a blue pencil to the ending in a big way. After all, you can't have a climax where the hero wins through words and cleverness rather than violent action, can you?
One particularly pleasing thing about this book was the return, albeit briefly, of Mustrum Ridcully and the wizards of Unseen University, my favourite recurring characters after Death and his daughter Susan. Ridcully is always good value and he comes up with my Quote of the Book: "Oh please sue the University! We've got a pond full of people who tried to sue the University."
As they say - never meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. Particularly if they haven't had their dinner yet.