General Discussion

Then at a certain point I realized that while I’d been chuckling along at some bit of humor, the bottom would drop out and there would be tears. The bit between Death and Susan gets me every damn time.

The first time I read it was a bust. A friend handed it to me one Christmas and said that I would enjoy it because I was in a grad school Myth program. I never could figure out this supercilious friend, and I ended up reading the surface, mentally checking off boxes. By the time I came back to it several years and several books later, it was a different experience entirely.

Pratchett had a reputation as a humorist from his first 2 Discworld novels, which were light fare, and at some public function (probably a book signing) a bit later in his career a woman said to him that he must be such a jolly soul, and so happy. To that he said later that no, he was a very angry man.

You can see the anger underneath in a scene from Small Gods, where the torturers of the Inquisition are taking a tea break — the kettle is heating up on the rack next to the instruments of torture and the tea mugs have, variously, a teddy bear decoration or an inscription to World’s Best Daddy. It’s just a fricking job, right?

It can be kind of breathtaking to know that he sees humanity without any rose-colored glasses whatsoever, but it never gets in the way of the stories — and it never gets in the way of his belief in self-determination. His very best characters, like Sam Vimes of the City Watch, are angry to the bone at the injustice of the world, and have to decide every day to not become what they despise. How the unlikely pair Sam Vimes and Lady Sybil fall in love at 40-ish has always struck me as the best love story I’ve ever read.

A flat world with dragons and wizards is not to everyone’s taste — but my gods, did Pratchett ever see humanity in the whole.