4th and 8th
We had a good 4th of July. Our friends barbequed in their back yard - there were fireflies and mason-jar lanterns - and we celebrated the birth of our country by blowing up a small piece of it. Then we stole all their squash, went home, and watched 1776 until 4:00 am.
That really is a good movie. It is also a long movie. I always forget because the sound track is so short. But the writing is just fantastic. Funny and dark at all the right moments. Really, it has only one flaw, in my mind, which is this: no finale. I'm just complaining about the soundtrack here - the end of the movie is fantastic and deeply moving. But the last song is "Is anybody there?" (and before that "Molassas to Rum to Slaves"). There's not even a good 11 o'clock song. Gives the whole thing sort of a downer-ending/anti-climactic feel - at least when you're listening to it in the car. Wouldn't really have worked any other way, of course, but I'm always frustrated that there's no finale, because I love the music so much.
Yesterday I read Guards! Guards! It's been a good long while on that one, but a friend of mine is reading through the series and had just returned it. I love Sam Vimes so much.
I notice this though. Terry Pratchett characters are, as a rule Genre Savvy (bordering on Dangerously Genre Savvy). Really powerful characters - the Witches, Vetinari - are second order (or meta-) Genre Savvy. That is, not only do they know all the fantasy tropes, they know that Discworld characters in general do, and can manipulate other people's Genre Savvy. And Vimes' power seems to be seeing the way things are Supposed To Go and occasionally saying "ah, no. Not doing that." He is, when the mood takes him, positively Genre Defiant, or perhaps intentionally Genre Blind. Not all the time, of course, but when necessary. From the dedication onwards, Guards! Guards! - if not the Discworld series as a whole - is very much about Genre Savvy.
The book also has some truly excellent quotes, which I'm in the mood to repeat here.
First off, there's the Dedication:
"They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they wanted to.
This book is dedicated to those fine men."
This gets a specific and lovely reprise around the last third of the book, when the main character is arrested, and the villain pulls a title drop, shouting "Guards! Guards!" :
"Er," said the leader of the guards, and hesitated.
"What's the matter, man?"
"You, er, want us to attack him?" said the guard miserably. Thick though the palace guard were, they were as aware as everyone else of the conventions, and when guards are summoned to deal with one man in overheated circumstances it's not a good time for them. The bugger's bound to be heroic, he was thinking. This guard was not looking forward o a future in which he was dead.
"Of course, you idiot!"
"But, er, there's only one of him," said the guard captain."
"And he's smilin'," said a man behind him.
"Prob'ly goin' to swing on the chandeliers any minute," said one fo his colleagues. "And kick over the table, and that."
"He's not even armed!" shrieked Wonse.
"Worst kind, that," said one of the guards, with deep stoicism. "They leap up, see, and grab one of the ornamental swords behind the shield over the fireplace."
"Yeah," said another, suspiciously. "And then they chucks a chair at you."
"There's no fireplace! There's no sword! There's only him! Now take him!" screamed Wonse.
A couple of guards grabbed Vimes tentatively by the shoulders.
"You're not going to do anything heroic, are you?" whispered one of them.
"Wouldn't know where to start," he said.
One thing I always notice is just how very young both Vimes and Carrot are in this book. Carrot especially, of course, but Vimes is quite a different person before he gets overrun by unanticipated success. Although even now, he does hate plumes. So much. But not Kings particularly yet - that is probably a direct result of this book. And what really makes the change is very near the beginning, even before he knows just what an asset Carrot is going to be, and before Sybil, he makes the uncharacteristic decision to Do the Right Thing. So right-on Captain Vimes.
This is also the book that introduces L-Space and the Wrong Trouserleg of Time. The first in particular is one of my favorite devices in all of fiction. He describes the fauna of L-Space in some depth:
"Creatures evolve to fill every niche in the environment, and some of those in the dusty immensity of L-space were best avoided. They were much more unusual than ordinary unusual creatures.
Ususally he could forewarn himself by keeping a careful eye on the kickstool crabs that grazed harmlessly on the dust. When they were spooked, it was time to hide. Several times he had to flatten himself agains the shelves as a thesaurus thundered by. He waited patiently as a herd of Critters crawled past, grazing on the contents of the choicer books and leaving behind them piles of small slim volumes of literary criticism.
And you had to avoid cliches at all costs."
I especially like this footnote:
The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are:
1) Silence
2) Books must be returned no later than the last date shown
and 3) Do not interfere with the nature of causality
I feel like I should say something about Doctor Who at this point, especially the recent finale "The Pandorica Opens" / "The Big Bang." Silence and Interfering with Causality in conjunction with each other are really evocative of that plot. I think the Doctor's gonna have his library card revoked. I should mention this to the folks over at ihasatardis. There's already been a reference to this book - "FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC" (which Sgt. Colon assured him meant "to protect and to serve.")
Point of interest. Vimes' Latin (and his spelling) get a lot better in later books. Possibly under the influence of Carrot? Carrot's spelling, on the other hand, gets noticibly worse - although it might just be his discovery of commas.
This is also the book in which Lord Vetinari really comes into his own. He's in earlier books (depending on who you ask) but this is really the book that cements him as the Xanatos-worthy Chessmaster he really is. Interestingly, at the beginning of the book, he dismisses Vimes the way everybody else always does. By the end of the book, he has realized that he needs Vimes and his world-view. A later character remarks "if Vimes didn't exist, I think you'd have to create him" to which the Patrician responds "how do you know I didn't?" (or something like that). But at this point, he hasn't yet. He doesn't tell Vimes to drop it to ensure that Vimes pursues it anyway, and with the kind of burning anger that he needs to get things done properly (because he doesn't know about that yet) - he tells Vimes to drop it expecting that he'll actually drop it. And he is genuinely surprised by the rewards requested by the Watch.
They have a very interesting conversation in the end of the book, which I'm pretty sure I've quoted before, but it always strikes me:
"I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people," said the man. "You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides."
He waved his thin hand toward the city and walked over to the window.
"A greatrolling sea of evil," he said, almost proprietorially. "Shallower in some places, of course, but deeper, oh, so much deeper in others. But people like you put together little rafts of rules and vaguely good intentions and say, this is the opposite, this will triumph in the end. Amazing!" He slapped Vimes good-naturedly on the back.
"Down there," he said, "are people who will follow any dragon, woship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathesomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no. I'm sorry if this offends you," he added, patting the captain's shoulder, "but you fellows really need us."
"Yes, sir?" said Vimes quietly.
"Oh yes. We're the only ones who know how to make things work. You see, the only thing the good people are good at is overthrowing the bad people. And you're good at that, I'll grant you. But the trouble is that it's the only thing you're good at. One day it's the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it's everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no one's been taking out the trash. Because the bad people know how to plan. It's part of the specification, you might say. Every evil tyrant has a plan to rule the world. The good people don't seem to have the knack."
"Maybe. But you're wrong about the rest!" said Vimes. "It's just because people are afraid, and alone -" He paused. It sounded pretty hollow, even to him.
He shrugged. "They're just people," he said. "They're just doing what people do. Sir."
I'm always very much struck by the Patrician's observation about opposite sides, and that they need not (or simply aren't) good and bad.
Anyway, I like this book. A lot. I like the whole Vimes subseries, and while this isn't my favorite one in it, it doesn't stick out as an aberration either. Many (or most) people come out of it utterly in love with Carrot, and I have a good friend whose favorite character is Nobby (same guy likes Belkar in Order of the Stick). But I like Vimes - in the same way I like The Brigadier. (does that make Benton Carrot? No...) Carrot's just a little too perfect (although he ends up just terrifying as time goes on). Vimes is very very...human. Good character, good book, good series.
Good day :)