You're right, Pratchett is becoming increasingly ideologically dated, but most of the humor still stands up, at least for the first 17 or so (of ~34 IIRC) Discworld books. After that, I think a combination of aging (including incipient Alzheimers) and increasingly doctrinaire conventional woke attitudes in the world after the turn of the millennium combined to make the books more and more stale.
Pratchett subverts many woke dogmas and shibboleths, too, though. Reg is a literal zombie leftist. The Hogfather bringing everyone sausages is a jab at vegetarians. I don't think the imps painting fast in the cameras ever get freed. Veternari has a scorpion pit and torturers, I believe. He also keeps the da Vinci-like character who keeps innocently inventing superweapons incommunicado for everyone's safety. Trolls really are almost always stupid, and their class is immutable depending on what stone they're made of. Cheery Littlebottom of the Watch rebels agaist dwarf unisex norms to dress as her biological sex. There's at least one problematic Earth stereotype in nearly all the books that is more played up than subverted, e.g. Jewish Hollywood executives in *Moving Pictures*, or all the other nations on Discworld that have obvious Earth-equivalents. Most of all, Ankh Morpork is an eternal cesspool filled with criminals and entertainingly awful people who are in no way role models until after the series jumps the shark. (Vimes being an exception, but he starts off flawed, too. Carrot is more complicated, though wholly good and heroic, he's not a fool, and as rightful king he has to keep his head down to keep it on his neck. He's a foil for contrast, but Pratchett doesn't do anything too bad to him, the way a real evil leftist author would have.)
Besides the characters being entertainingly awful, not role models, another point is that there's no way to make unflawed, intelligent, all-good protagonists who are on the side of right and do no wrong and are funny. At least I can't think of anyone who's pulled it off. Douglas Adams' Krikkiters, maybe, but they did try to kill off the rest of the universe. Which is the thing the right hasn't yet fully come to terms with: when you really are the best, and everybody else is trying to erase your people, you have to let go of the schoolmarmish / churchian false morality and actually mass-genocide your enemies without any hand-wringing. Impotent spite isn't going to cut it (or them), nor can we empathize or treat them as "us", like the men of Krikkit going outside their home nebula and seeing the galaxy for the first time, and calmly saying: "it'll have to go", then proceeding without any angst, that's the sort of attitude needed. If we can laugh after doing it, so much the better, maybe. But I think we have to get serious first before we can find total war humorous.
Interesting thoughts. I just read Hogfather for the first time after watching the miniseries last year. I get some of your criticisms, but I think it's important to keep in mind that in the Discworld, belief really does create things. That's why Susan is informed that if the Hogfather dies, the sun won't come up. It's the whole conceit of the magic system in that world. Yes, it does bear an uncanny resemblance to the "Man creates God" concept beloved of atheists like me as well, so I can see why that's uncomfortable -- but I think it's safe to enjoy the books and just go with it as a plot conceit as well.
For a more realistic take on the world and its social conflicts, I prefer Malazan Book of the Fallen, but that's a whole different barrel of eels.
Interesting essay. I must admit I've never read Discworld but this essay has me thinking once more about the values, ideas and philosophical notions in my books. I hope they stand the test of time.
The themes are usually of family, nationhood and chivalry as integral to the world.
I did feel similarly immediately after my rightward shift (and after speaking to too many fans who deify Pterry), but after taking a couple years break and re-reading it, it honestly holds up - although yes, it's a book written when post-war order was dominant and leftist ascendance has not yet happened (Pratchett snubs e.g. Campaign of Equal Heights seems almost cute given that about 10 years later you could have been crucified for such jokes).
Take _Jingo_. People often describe it as a book about how easy it is to make a man kill his fellow man. Which it is. But it also is about the fragility of the liberal world order - when challenged by muscular imperialists, libs: 1) suspect themselves to be both racist and to blame (Vimes is sure that the provocation is by Ankh-Morpork) 2) Refuse to pay to actually re-arm 3) Sell opponents state-of-art tech 4) appoint incompetent generals 5) in the alternative universe, get overrun in days. Which is on point, isn't it?
It's a book, so I'm not against happy endings, I have real life to be depressed. Still, I think Pratchett's fault lines in the books often do highlight the real issue that had been much more devastating in real life. If the only way to save liberalism is for two ultra-intelligent guys to use the never-seen tech to exploit a rare nature phenomena to provoke the enemy's opposition into the coup, we might be in trouble.
P.S. I think it's made clear in the later books that though Thud! events had important symbolic meaning, there is still plenty of violence and terrorism going on. I also don't agree on Assassin's guild, but that would require too long to elaborate.
I used to think if he only wrote 5 books then he'd already be out of print, the weight of the whole back catalogue has a momentum of its own. But recently I read a Gladys Mitchell novel. She was known in her day and wrote nearly 80 novels and almost none of them are still in print. So that's not a reason in itself.
Whatever you think of the plots (rarely his strong point) or the politics (in later life as he joined the establishment the books became significantly more pro-establishment – Snuff was dire), on the sentence level he is very funny and clever and I suspect that wit will keep bringing people back to him in the decades to come.
I don’t view the claim “Man makes God in his own image” as leftist or liberal. Camille Paglia – who, last I checked, is a conservative – is well known for making that statement.
My view as a Christian is that false gods exist and, being imperfect, are influenced by the people who worship them. The concept I believe Pratchett used for Small Gods’ metaphysics – the egregore – is plausible to me in pagan contexts. It’s certainly not a leftist idea.
There exist two types of 'gods'. The kind that only exist due to human belief in them, and the kind that exist independently of human belief. And you really don't want to confuse the two.
What a waste of potential. You had something when discussing how the endless optimism of the boomers might age poorly and instead of following that interesting line of reasoning as it relates to Discworld you whine. You whine that an author known for his silly, light-hearted writing style and atheism writes cheery endings and doesn't share your views on religion. What masterful insight.
I couldn't tell you how long the writing of the hippie boomers will hold up, but I certainly know it will last longer than yours
> In the real world, this self-definition of reality leads to all sorts of problems, which I’m not going go expound on again here. We know what they are. But over all, it leads to a disintegration of shared values that make a high-trust society difficult.
This attitude is still incorrect. It's merely cultural relativism instead of individual relativism. It ultimately leads to increasingly totalitarian attempts to enforce a shared "consensus".
You're right, Pratchett is becoming increasingly ideologically dated, but most of the humor still stands up, at least for the first 17 or so (of ~34 IIRC) Discworld books. After that, I think a combination of aging (including incipient Alzheimers) and increasingly doctrinaire conventional woke attitudes in the world after the turn of the millennium combined to make the books more and more stale.
Pratchett subverts many woke dogmas and shibboleths, too, though. Reg is a literal zombie leftist. The Hogfather bringing everyone sausages is a jab at vegetarians. I don't think the imps painting fast in the cameras ever get freed. Veternari has a scorpion pit and torturers, I believe. He also keeps the da Vinci-like character who keeps innocently inventing superweapons incommunicado for everyone's safety. Trolls really are almost always stupid, and their class is immutable depending on what stone they're made of. Cheery Littlebottom of the Watch rebels agaist dwarf unisex norms to dress as her biological sex. There's at least one problematic Earth stereotype in nearly all the books that is more played up than subverted, e.g. Jewish Hollywood executives in *Moving Pictures*, or all the other nations on Discworld that have obvious Earth-equivalents. Most of all, Ankh Morpork is an eternal cesspool filled with criminals and entertainingly awful people who are in no way role models until after the series jumps the shark. (Vimes being an exception, but he starts off flawed, too. Carrot is more complicated, though wholly good and heroic, he's not a fool, and as rightful king he has to keep his head down to keep it on his neck. He's a foil for contrast, but Pratchett doesn't do anything too bad to him, the way a real evil leftist author would have.)
Besides the characters being entertainingly awful, not role models, another point is that there's no way to make unflawed, intelligent, all-good protagonists who are on the side of right and do no wrong and are funny. At least I can't think of anyone who's pulled it off. Douglas Adams' Krikkiters, maybe, but they did try to kill off the rest of the universe. Which is the thing the right hasn't yet fully come to terms with: when you really are the best, and everybody else is trying to erase your people, you have to let go of the schoolmarmish / churchian false morality and actually mass-genocide your enemies without any hand-wringing. Impotent spite isn't going to cut it (or them), nor can we empathize or treat them as "us", like the men of Krikkit going outside their home nebula and seeing the galaxy for the first time, and calmly saying: "it'll have to go", then proceeding without any angst, that's the sort of attitude needed. If we can laugh after doing it, so much the better, maybe. But I think we have to get serious first before we can find total war humorous.
Much as I disagreed with the premise of small gods, it's still a great book about the space that often grows between a religion and its institutions.
The Assassins Guild are not the good guys, in Hogfather or any other book. Lord Downey literally took a contract to kill Santa Claus!
Interesting thoughts. I just read Hogfather for the first time after watching the miniseries last year. I get some of your criticisms, but I think it's important to keep in mind that in the Discworld, belief really does create things. That's why Susan is informed that if the Hogfather dies, the sun won't come up. It's the whole conceit of the magic system in that world. Yes, it does bear an uncanny resemblance to the "Man creates God" concept beloved of atheists like me as well, so I can see why that's uncomfortable -- but I think it's safe to enjoy the books and just go with it as a plot conceit as well.
For a more realistic take on the world and its social conflicts, I prefer Malazan Book of the Fallen, but that's a whole different barrel of eels.
Interesting essay. I must admit I've never read Discworld but this essay has me thinking once more about the values, ideas and philosophical notions in my books. I hope they stand the test of time.
The themes are usually of family, nationhood and chivalry as integral to the world.
I did feel similarly immediately after my rightward shift (and after speaking to too many fans who deify Pterry), but after taking a couple years break and re-reading it, it honestly holds up - although yes, it's a book written when post-war order was dominant and leftist ascendance has not yet happened (Pratchett snubs e.g. Campaign of Equal Heights seems almost cute given that about 10 years later you could have been crucified for such jokes).
Take _Jingo_. People often describe it as a book about how easy it is to make a man kill his fellow man. Which it is. But it also is about the fragility of the liberal world order - when challenged by muscular imperialists, libs: 1) suspect themselves to be both racist and to blame (Vimes is sure that the provocation is by Ankh-Morpork) 2) Refuse to pay to actually re-arm 3) Sell opponents state-of-art tech 4) appoint incompetent generals 5) in the alternative universe, get overrun in days. Which is on point, isn't it?
It's a book, so I'm not against happy endings, I have real life to be depressed. Still, I think Pratchett's fault lines in the books often do highlight the real issue that had been much more devastating in real life. If the only way to save liberalism is for two ultra-intelligent guys to use the never-seen tech to exploit a rare nature phenomena to provoke the enemy's opposition into the coup, we might be in trouble.
P.S. I think it's made clear in the later books that though Thud! events had important symbolic meaning, there is still plenty of violence and terrorism going on. I also don't agree on Assassin's guild, but that would require too long to elaborate.
I used to think if he only wrote 5 books then he'd already be out of print, the weight of the whole back catalogue has a momentum of its own. But recently I read a Gladys Mitchell novel. She was known in her day and wrote nearly 80 novels and almost none of them are still in print. So that's not a reason in itself.
Whatever you think of the plots (rarely his strong point) or the politics (in later life as he joined the establishment the books became significantly more pro-establishment – Snuff was dire), on the sentence level he is very funny and clever and I suspect that wit will keep bringing people back to him in the decades to come.
I don’t view the claim “Man makes God in his own image” as leftist or liberal. Camille Paglia – who, last I checked, is a conservative – is well known for making that statement.
My view as a Christian is that false gods exist and, being imperfect, are influenced by the people who worship them. The concept I believe Pratchett used for Small Gods’ metaphysics – the egregore – is plausible to me in pagan contexts. It’s certainly not a leftist idea.
There exist two types of 'gods'. The kind that only exist due to human belief in them, and the kind that exist independently of human belief. And you really don't want to confuse the two.
https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_copybook.htm
Fair points all. But you skipped the bits where most of the male characters are castrati, and the females are yaas queens.
What a waste of potential. You had something when discussing how the endless optimism of the boomers might age poorly and instead of following that interesting line of reasoning as it relates to Discworld you whine. You whine that an author known for his silly, light-hearted writing style and atheism writes cheery endings and doesn't share your views on religion. What masterful insight.
I couldn't tell you how long the writing of the hippie boomers will hold up, but I certainly know it will last longer than yours
> In the real world, this self-definition of reality leads to all sorts of problems, which I’m not going go expound on again here. We know what they are. But over all, it leads to a disintegration of shared values that make a high-trust society difficult.
This attitude is still incorrect. It's merely cultural relativism instead of individual relativism. It ultimately leads to increasingly totalitarian attempts to enforce a shared "consensus".
Really appreciate this reading of Pratchet. Thank you! A lot to ponder here.
This sounds intriguing, can’t wait to see more!