Lately I’ve been reading some of the books from the BBC big read top 22. I read the ‘His dark Materials’ trilogy (hard to put down, hard to let go - emotionally) then I read ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’.
When I finished 1984 I picked up the Discworld book that I had began at about the time HDM arrived. The first thing that struck me was how mundane the story is. While TP is a very talented writer and the books are well written I got the feeling that I was reading the book-equivalent of a sit-com (HDM and 1984 being the book equivalents of great, memorable films).
I wonder if Terry should take a break from Discworld and write a more epic, less cheap-laughs book?
Eh, I don’t know. Phillip Pullman is good at “epic” writing - as well as HDM, he has the Ruby in the Smoke trilogy (sorry, I don’t know if the trilogy itself has a name). Orwell has other social commentary-type books - Animal Farm comes to mind - and it’s clear that those are the books he is good at writing. I’m sorry if I’m reducing great works of literature to “oh, those kind of books” - that is definitely not the intention. I loved HDM and was moderately fond of 1984.
Pratchett, on the other hand, doesn’t do epics. He does Discworld. And the Johnny Maxwell trilogy. And the Bromeliad. The books are written in similar styles - all funny and clever and well-written as you say. But I would disagree with “cheap laughs” - some of the jokes are beautifully convoluted (the name “Newton Pulsifer” in Good Omens comes to mind) and are clearly meant for an intelligent audience.
Discworld may be mundane, for a given value of mundane, but it’s good mundane. I don’t think it ought to be judged alongside the other books mentioned.
Guards Guards, I think. I am near the beginning so I probably shouldn’t mouth-off, But having read many of the books now (mostly the newer ones) I get the same feeling that they are ‘episodes’ in some (very interesting and unique and funny) sit-com.
Perhaps mundane was a bad choice of words. I chose that word because when I picked up the Discword book (having put down 1984 just moments before) I felt like the ‘level’ of interest was going to stay about the same throughout the book, as opposed to the ‘gripping’ feeling from reading 1984 and HDM (getting drawn-in, attached, immersed) I can’t quite immerse myself in a Discworld book, I can only maintain my interest because it is funny. Which is why I think the film vs sit-com analogy is a good one. I felt like I had just finished watching Lord of the Rings and had switched over to an episode of Friends.
Well, not so much “sit-com”, I definitely read Pratchett’s stuff like they’re well done mini-series. They may be silly and a bit trite at times, but there are some definitely profound and deep moments in many of them. Guards, Guards isn’t really one of them, though. That’s a more fun and enjoyable one that sets up the storyarch for the Night Watch series, but I’m currently reading Night Watch and find it anything but mundane.
If you want something a bit more “epic” from him, read Small Gods. That should change your mind.
I read Pterry and enjoy his writing for the same reason I enjoy Buffy or Angel. The surface might be one thing, but the subtext can be very, very profound. In fact, I find that books like ‘Night Watch’ or ‘Jingo’ has a lot more to say about the times we’re living in, than Orwell ever managed.
TP is sneaky and can spin a very good story. The read grabs me and pulls me in, and without realizing it, I’m a hundred pages into a book.
So while the surface might set up for godawful puns and jokes, TP’s slight of hand, when sketching characters and writing gialogue lures me into a world that’s completely real, where I’m all suspension of disbelief and suddenly realize that we’re not on DiscWorld at all, but right here, right now.
I’m glad he’s leaving off all efforts to make DW make sense. It’s not needed for the story. In ‘Maurice’, which might be one of his most profound works, there is hardly any mention of Disc World as a disc at all.
Terry Pratchett is a character and situation humourist - therefore comparison to a sitcom is not unfounded. However, he goes on a much deeper level than you think on first read. Certainly his earliest books are pretty superficial, but that was because they were intended as direct parodies of Fantasy. It wasn’t until he had established Death, the Watch, and the Witches well enough that he started to tread deeper into their lives and gave us richer stories.
As others have said, he doesn’t do Epics, he does more personal introspective tales in a world that reflects our own in a distorted FunHouse mirror. With some silly jokes and zipzappy magic thrown in to make it funny and exciting.
If you read them in order, instead of all out of sequence, you’ll understand him a lot better.
Having said that, he’s no genius. I find him entertaining, and mostly consistent in quality, and that’s why I look forward to his tales each year.