Pratchett and Beliefs Sunday, Apr 5 2009 

1 , loveofbooks 8:14 am

Terry Pratchett and Theology

If there is one point where I seriously disagree with the way Terry Pratchett views the world it is in the realm of theology. Admittedly, this blog is all about books and so this might be considered somewhat of a digression, yet nevertheless, I believe it is a necessary one. Terry Pratchett has very particular views regarding theology and religion. These views are voiced to no end in many of his books. As a rule, he perceives belief as necessary force that drives humanity forward. This element is very elegantly portrayed in several of his books. On the other hand he sees the clergy as being people who take advantage of human nature and pervert it to their own ends. At best, the clergy are simply people who have taken religion too far and have become blinded by it. At worst, they are cynical unbelievers who take advantage of all true believers. The most striking example of this is seen in the book called “Small Gods”.

Truth and Falsehood

It is important to note that as a brilliant author, Pratchett has certainly displayed a deep understanding of the the human psyche. Even so, he certainly does not hold the sole pipeline to the truth and his views can thus be debated or ignored. I would like to propose that in appreciating the human tendency to belief, Pratchett has indeed hit upon a truly fundamental truth. The fact is that humans have a natural tendency to belief and religion. One might claim that this is something pre-programmed by the creator and serves as our way for getting to know “Him” or one might claim (as does Pratchett) that it is a natural product of evolution and we should not worry too much about it. By extension then, clergy are people who have followed this natural tendency to its source and although there are indeed humans who are corrupt in the clergy as well as elsewhere, the clergy themselves are for the most part simply more in touch with an inner part of themselves.

 

Combining Honesties Sunday, Mar 29 2009 

1 loveofbooks 7:27 am

Terry Pratchett’s Challenge

Although Terry Pratchett has demonstrated incredible skill in manufacturing characters who manage to capture our hearts with their unique forms of honesty, there is one challenge which has obviously posed some difficulty for the mighty author. As I have already previously described, although Pratchett’s heroes often possess some form of honesty; either internal or external, they generally do not possess both. This is probably because one would need to be truly godly in order to be completely honest both with oneself and with the people with which one associates and still lay claim to a measure of heroism.

Getting Close

Perhaps the closest Terry Pratchett has managed to get to the ideal of total honesty is with the character of Johnny Maxwell who is the character of an excellent trilogy. Johnny has certain unique powers that primarily affect him and his friends. The effect on his friends is such that they only half believe him if at all. His life at home is a total disaster and he is probably supposed to be somewhere near the bottom of the social ladder of society. Nonetheless, Johnny is almost completely honest with himself and with his friends. He is aware of his powers (at least to a certain extent) and he realizes their responsibility. He is also almost completely honest with is friends regarding his powers and achievements. There are only two elements of the story which succeeds in containing Johnny. The first is his complete lack of belief in confiding in grownups and the second is the fact that regardless of whatever happens, no one ever really believes him.

 

Honest to Oneself Sunday, Mar 22 2009 

1 loveofbooks 8:31 am

Honesty Within 

In my previous blog entry I began to describe the fundamental honesty which pervades the heroes created by Terry Pratchett. I wrote that there are two kind of honesty which exist in the Pratchett novels. The first is an external honesty where the person tells everyone the plain truth. I pointed out that when such a character appears he is generally completely honest with everyone save himself. To illustrate this I brought an example of a character who plays important heroic roles in several of Terry Pratchett’s Diskworld novels. I would like to discuss the second form of honesty I mentioned. The hero with a remarkable internal honesty. This hero (who is usually an anti hero) which Terry Pratchett excels at describing, is often a disreputable person of seemingly few recommending qualities who has an internal set of values which he adheres to with solid rigidity. The hero knows the truth of himself and the reality about him. He simply feels powerless to confront it. Thus, he is effectively being completely honest with himself.

A Little Example

Since I realize that this is a difficult concept, I shall attempt to elaborate by means of an example. The leader of Ankh Morpork (a prominent city in the Diskworld novels) is Lord Vetinari. The lord tells little to everyone and makes people do what they should be doing through veiled threats and innuendo. There could perhaps be no less honest a character. On the other hand, Vetinari has excellent perception and he sees precisely how the city needs to be run. He knows precisely what his limitations are and is willing to step down at a moment’s notice should the need arise. He holds the good of the city and its people above all and he is thus completely honest with himself.

 

Honest to a Fault Monday, Mar 16 2009 

1 loveofbooks 8:15 am

The Hallmark of Honesty

One of the hallmarks of practically all the heroes of the Terry Pratchett novels is that they are incredibly honest. They are either completely honest with themselves or else they are honest with everyone else. For some reason, it is difficult for Terry Pratchett to combine the two together. In order to illustrate this concept I will elaborate with some examples of heroes (or anti heroes) who meet the description I have just defined.

Carrot Ironfoudersson

Carrot is a member of the city watch. His character plays important parts in several of the novels of Diskworld. He often plays the part of the straight forward hero. He is supposed to embody the typical role of the long hidden crown prince in a humorous manner. He is thus incredibly practical and straight forward and has no aspirations to the thrown at all. His honesty is absolutely straight forward. He always tells the truth because he can not conceive of telling an alternative. Everything he does is completely by the book. Of course, since he is a hero, this honesty somehow manages to lead him to victory and he rarely fails at a task. The only person that Carrot is seemingly not completely honest with, is himself. Perhaps this is justified by his inordinate humility, Carrot assumes and expects all people to live up to his ideals. He seemingly fails to realize certain fundamental concepts like; that he is the ordained king (although he has hinted more than once that he is aware this may be so) or that everyone is lying to him in some way or another (although it is never clear how naive he really is).

 

Repeating Heroes Sunday, Mar 8 2009 

1 loveofbooks 7:52 am

Epic Satire has Heroes

Epic adventures include prolonged adventures that follow heroes through their prolonged ordeals and challenges. Epic satire is no different. The classic stories of epic satire include heroes who the reader learns to know and love. Good epic satire generally includes sequels where the same well loved heroes go on yet another adventure. As with many non satirical adventures, the hero of epic satire is often one which the readers can identify with in some way. He is generally a non hero character who often does not have many exceptional qualities aside from being practical friendly and honest. Even if he does have certain special qualities he always has many aspects of his character which put him in the same boat as the readers.

Author Tendencies

Often, authors tend to imagine and create a certain form of hero with which they identify so well that the same hero appears in different books and worlds under different names. Although the characters have many different characteristics there are certain aspects of the character which simply repeat themselves. For example; Frodo and Bilbo are essentially the same their characters do include certain differences but these pale in the face of the comparisons. Another example is the character of Simkin in the Darksword chronicles. His equivalent in other creations of Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman is Fizban in the Dragonlance chronicles, and he appears in the Deathgate series as well. Terry Pratchett  is no different. Several characters that he creates in one of his books have their equivalent in another book. It would be interesting to speculate if such a tendency reflects certain personal views of the author or simply the limitations of the author’s imagination. In fact, Terry Pratchett seems to have several characters which repeat themselves. Again, is this because his imagination is broader than his contemporaries or because he manages to identify with more than one of his characters?

 

The Carpet People Monday, Mar 2 2009 

1 loveofbooks 7:44 am

The Carpet People

The book known as the Carpet People is a creation of Terry Pratchett’s from when he was significantly younger. In this tale the heroes go to save the Carpet from the evil forces who are trying to take over. The concept of the book is to describe the ongoings in several square millimetres of carpet. The giant city of some of the people living on the carpet consists entirely of metal and is actually someone’s dime. The carpet people live in a technologically backward world which reflects European life before the invention of gunpowder. The story stresses the problems people have of coping with things that are bigger than they are and of accepting the different.

The Wights

This story includes several fantasy elements. Perhaps the most intriguing of these are the wights. Wights are beings which see the future and are aware of what must happen. The climax of the story occurs when the bravery of the heroes manages to change the foreseen future. This enables good to triumph and allows those who are always so certain of their path to consider living life forward rather than backward. This allows the wights to break away from what they view as what must come to pass and fight for a new, as yet unvisioned, future. This symbolizes the rigidity of certain elements of society (perhaps religious elements?) which have a mighty power in and of themselves yet are so bound by tradition that they cannot conceive of an alternative. In the story these people are forced to learn to think in new ways and this is what allows them to survive.

 

Epic Satire Sunday, Feb 22 2009 

1 loveofbooks 11:17 am

The Concept of Epic Satire

In classic jokes and satirical comedies the turn of events runs quickly. This is because there is little patience for a prolonged joke. This necessitates that epic satire include many side jokes that have no direct bearing on the actual story. Since epic adventures must end with a happy ending the epic satire does too. The big challenge of the author of epic satire is to succeed in ending the story in a way which although happy is not the way one would end an epic tale. In other words, if the epic adventure ends with the hero marrying the princess and riding off, the epic satire must end with the hero riding off and the princess doing whatever she likes (or perhaps with the princess marrying the hero and the hero running off).

The Insight of Satire

Satirical stories are an excellent vehicle for the author to grant us a unique mirror with which to examine ourselves. This is because humor can occasionally penetrate far deeper and more powerfully than mere descriptions. Part of the reason that this is so is because part of the power of humor is that we don’t view humor as referring to ourselves and thus we allow the meaning of the message to land closer to home. The genre of epic satire allows the author to criticize and make fun of our most fundamental concepts of heroes and villains as well as many other aspects of our world. A skilled author can teach us quite a lot while we clutch our sides from laughter. I would like to examine some of Terry Pratchett’s excellent lessons. This I hope to do in my next few blog entries.

 

Diskworld Sunday, Feb 15 2009 

1 loveofbooks 7:34 am

For a Change

I decided that I would abandon the Amber subject for a while and take on a different genre of science fiction and fantasy which requires diligent attention. That is the genre of epic satire. What I mean is the creation of exciting long novels of adventure which are based in a science fiction or fantasy setting and which are full of comedy and satire.

Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett is one of several authors who excel at this special genre. He has created several series of books each of which describes a different world. Each series contains elements of science fiction and fantasy and each is replete with funny and amusing British satire of the finest sort. If you have not read any books by this author, now is the time to run out and get a copy of one of his books from your local library or book store! You won’t be sorry! Don’t worry, the blog won’t run away! 

Diskworld

For those who are unfamiliar with the creations of Terry Pratchett, Disk World is the fantasy world created by Terry Pratchett. It is a wonderful world of magic where the entire world is a flat and stands on the backs of 4 giant elephants. These stand on the back of the Great Turtle who flies through endless space. The sun and the moon are shiny objects that orbit the great turtle in his travels. This is a world where magic works although somewhat unpredictably, Death roams the street and occasionally buys a hot dog (or gets his horse shod), rules of physics exist but in ways which differ from what we are familiar with and heroes triumph although not in ways they could possibly have imagined. People who have read Terry Pratchett’s books have generally enjoyed them and they can easily take up several enjoyable hours of reading.

My Plan

I would like to take this model of satire and expound upon it. This is what I hope to do for the next few blog entries. I think it would be a fun exercise. If anyone has read Terry Pratchett’s novels and sees things differently, he is welcome to comment and I hereby tender an official apology to Terry Pratchett and any else who might be offended by my personal views…

 

The Last of Amber Sunday, Feb 8 2009 

1 loveofbooks 8:04 am

A Closing Remark

I suspect that although I have a lot of insight to discuss and reveal regarding the incredible Amber series, it is time to take a break and refresh myself with discussions of other no less fascinating subjects of literary discussion. It is thus, that I find myself thinking over all the deep and innate truths of the Amber series, trying to decide which of these should I end this current discussion series with. There is one truth which pervades the entire story and which is worth learning as a lesson to us all.

It Pays to be Nice

A very powerful and fundamental truth which is stressed over and over again is that it pays to be nice to people. The reason the heroes of the Amber series succeed is because they are always trying to be decent to everyone. Although this means that they occasionally end up being nice to the bad guys and although they are generally blundering through a world of powerful foes, somehow, being nice to everyone helps a lot. Perhaps part of the reason this is so is because in Amber, as in the real world, there is very little absolute evil. In most cases there are just different shades of perspective and egotism. The result is, that people generally have a great deal of good within them. Consequently, being nice to these people often brings out the hidden good that resides in their hearts. For some reason, in Amber, as in our real world, this good generally does not include apologies. Apologies are something that you can almost never get out of the typical Amberite and they are something that no matter how pleasant you are or how right you are, you can never get out of people. So, are we a good reflection of Amber, is Amber a reflection of us?

 

A Mirror of a Shadow Sunday, Feb 1 2009 

1 loveofbooks 11:09 am

A Brilliant Concept

 

 

The world created by Roger Zelazny in his Amber series allows us to enjoy a unique perspective as to the reality which surrounds us. Although our Earth is described as only a shadow of the one true reality, our Earth must, by definition, reflect certain aspects of Amber. These can be seen in Amber and re-examined within our own world. This means that the various motifs that surface in the world of Amber are motifs that pervade our world as well. In essence, Roger Zelazny is holding up a special mirror of our own world for us to gaze into and thereby examine ourselves.

 

 

A Joke

 

 

In fact, when first contemplating Zelazny’s stories it occurred to me that there are three main characters that are bound together by a sort of bond of family beyond that which binds the rest of the Amber family. This bond overcomes the regular rivalry within the family. I am referring to Corwin, Merlin and the Ghost Wheel. I once made a joke about this trio, calling them the father the son and the ghost (sorry if that offends anyone!).  In fact, this joke has a great deal of depth to it and I shall elaborate on this in my next blog entry. For now, I will point out that there are several rivalries that are taking place in Amber. There is a big rivalry which is between Amber and Chaos, there is a rivalry within Amber as to who shall rule the throne (this rivalry is later matched by a similar rivalry as to who shall rule the Court of Chaos) and there are several personal rivalries between the various characters themselves.

 

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