By Harriet Bartle
Current Literature and History student Harriet Bartle joins us for a ‘Monday Matters’ reflection on what it is like to study literature when you’re obsessed with Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.
In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.
At a meeting of blog contributors in an obscure room in De Grey, a good long while back now, there was thrown to the student bloggers a suggestion about someone writing a post about what being a fan of a large series of books is like as a literature student. Somewhat flippantly, I laughed and suggested that perhaps they were thinking along the lines of Discworld.
I was right.
The thing is, Sir Terry Pratchett’s fantasy comedy series isn’t a small undertaking. That’s why I was being flippant – how on earth will one student come to write about over forty books in one blog post? How would it work? Who would be interested in doing such a thing? Who has ever read all those books? I was asking myself these questions and answering them all at once. I could; somehow; me; me again. You see, I’ve been a fan of the Discworld series for a long time and, well, I don’t get to talk about it very much. It’s because I get started and I don’t stop – my friends and family start to roll their eyes and think up excuses to change the subject. To give an insight into my fandom membership, I have two of the t-shirts (if you see me about campus I’ve usually got something that’s Discworld related about my person) and Death’s own cloak pin. Just off the top of my head, I also have a notepad from the Discworld’s foremost site of academia, Unseen University, that I use for writing down to-do lists. I also find myself suffering from a bubbling amusement at thinking about a hard-boiled egg.
You see, I’ve started rattling on already; I need to back up the steam engine, as it were. Rebuild that flattened hard-drive. Here’s what you need to know before I go any further.
Discworld, as I have already mentioned, was written by Sir Terry Pratchett. Beginning in 1983 and ending with his death in 2015, forty-one books were published in the main series as well as a few others alongside; there are books that address the science of the Discworld itself, almanacs, “mapps”, graphic novels, art books… The list goes on. The books reference, sometimes subtly and sometimes as obviously as a smack in the face with a slice of the River Ankh, various hallmarks in the literature of times gone by. These references are as well as sustained metaphors relating to popular culture, like the arrival of rock music, and social issues, such as jingoism and racism. For literature, however, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Lovecraft and Tolkien are just some of the names that can be found parodied and scrutinised in Discworld. Whilst I’ve read books that might have the power to change the world, there are none that quite manage to comment on how it really works quite so astutely…
So now you know the absolute bare minimum that you need to know about Discworld, where am I going to take you with this information? Keep reading and you’ll see!
I can’t forget Discworld
I already mentioned this one in passing, but it’s well worth more thought. What is it about Pratchett that makes his writing so easy to remember, to identify aspects of it in every day life and literature? I would begin by reassuring the reader of the absolute quotability of this series. There are many memorable quotes that can evoke all sorts of emotive responses, from a critical understanding of human behaviour to a comic representation of how little we really know about our universe – just as the quote I opened this post with does. Pratchett takes the Big Bang and turns it into something incredibly simple; the physics of the beginning of the universe is transformed into a smirk-inducing statement of inevitable knowledge. We all know the most eminent theory on the beginning of the universe is the Big Bang. We know smart people work very hard to objectively understand the science behind the beginning of everything, but ultimately, no-one knows. Nothing exploded and here we are.
The next aspect of Discworld that makes it so easy to remember is the sustained use of familiar characters. People that you become acquainted with very early on in the series become recurring characters who the reader comes to know. Take for instance, one of my favourite characters; Carrot. I’ll just call him Carrot because as the series progresses, his title changes – lance constable all the way through to captain – but he remains the same person throughout. He’s a simple, honest character, who may be the fabled lost heir to the fallen throne of his city, though you didn’t hear that from me, but he just lives his life being a member of the police force in the largest city on the Discworld, Ankh-Morpork. I always remember the character clearly because Pratchett teaches the readers of Discworld to know the people within its pages. It gives the whole series a feeling of coherency, of a real-time living of life within the pages of the elaboratively designed covers. The novels have what feels like the most human people (whether they’re human beings is another matter entirely) to ever appear in print. It’s hard to forget a character that you’ve watched evolve – even when you haven’t read the books in a while.
I See References Everywhere
I also mentioned before how Pratchett used works of all different authors from all over the world to create funny and culturally relevant storylines for each individual novel. Imagine my amusement when reading something of Charles Dickens’ and finding that I remember the basics of the story because I’ve seen it parodied in another book! I can connect the dots between the tradition and the commentary, which is just as fulfilling as life can be for a literature student in the world of books. Picture me, remembering Shakespeare’s Macbeth from the estimated four hundred times I read it through school as I read about three witches that live in the rural Ramtops of the Discworld and gather to meet on a moortop in the driving rain. I’ll construct before you my joy at spotting a Lord of the Rings reference slide by, quietly as can be as the narrative goes on; I glance up to my battered, beloved copies of Tolkien’s fantasy giants on the bookshelf and grin. I make a note to re-read them once again, just when I get the time.
Not only can one see the references to other books in Discworld, you may also see the parodies of popular sayings that somehow make a bit more sense than the original one does.
Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.
Well… It might not be better to light a flamethrower in the darkness. It’d be irresponsible, dangerous and quite frankly, a candle is typically easier to find in a blackout than an incendiary weapon. My point is this; in times of metaphorical darkness, when you feel weak and alone – why settle for a tiny sputtering light when you can set the world aflame with your own nearly-forgotten brilliance? It won’t be a flamethrower every time, by any stretch; a candle is usually all you’d have the energy for. Sometimes, though, just sometimes, it’s worth lighting up the entire street.
I Work in a Bookshop
This one is reasonably specific to me and other booksellers, but I do have a point to get across that isn’t the obvious, ‘duh – you sell books!’ that connects, and it is this: people are still buying this series. Every week, as a trolley filled with new books awaits shelving, there will inevitably be stock to replace Pratchett novels that have sold through the week. On the day I finished up writing this post, I sold Discworld books to four different people (all of whom I chatted to with more than the usual animation and enthusiasm) of all different levels of knowledge about the series. A teenage boy who’d had a recommendation from his dad and asked questions as his interest grew during our conversation. A mother with young squalling kids who said, “I just need some escapism – I can’t find my copies anywhere,” who grabbed the first four books off the shelf and held them jealously until I could get them into a carrier bag for her. An older gentleman that told me he remembers when the first one came out and just wanted the most recent book because it’d complete the series on his shelf. Finally, a woman about my own age with a handful of books from all genres. “I’ll read anything,” she said with a laconic grin, “even books that have weird cover art. The story sounds like fun.”
I hear you, my bookworm friend, I hear you.
I best get this wrapped up, I suppose. I could go on for much longer but instead I’ll leave the readers of the Words Matter blog with this –
People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.
And isn’t that, to some degree, why people study literature?