Picked up a Terry Pratchett off my paperback shelf today pretty much at random — The Nightwatch, one of the Vimes strand. It’s one of my less-read ones, meaning maybe twice, possibly even three times, but not more. I just idly flipped it open and looked over the first couple of pages,,,and came to this little digression:
The plain old Sam Vimes had fought back. He got rid of most of the plumes and the stupid tights, and ended up with a dress niform that at least looked as thought its owner was male. But the helmet had gold decoration, and the bespoke armorers had made a new gleaming breastplate with useless gold ornamentation on it.
Sam Vimes felt like a class traitor every time he wore it. He hated being thought of as one of those people that wore stupid ornamental armor. It was gilt by association.
That’s my Terry! — and why I miss him so. His brain bubbles were the best, and he had absolutely no shame — none at all — when it came to transcribing whatever floated to the surface. I tell my son more often than he cares to hear that words are toys. Pratchett had more fun with the English language than anyone else I can think of. I take him as a role model (as my students — and family — know, to their sorrow).
As I warned — apropos of not much at all. What’ on y’all’s minds as Saturday night beckons Sunday morning second thoughts?
Image: Titian, Philip II of Spain, 1551.
RSA
I don’t have anything substantive to say, but I notice that Renaissance paintings of men in armor are much more likely to have a chestplate that looks designed to accommodate a guy’s gut than a modern sort of Batman/superhero armor look.
benw
Other masters of brilliant silliness with the English Language: Vonnegut and Doug Adams.
Also, I don’t want to know what’s going on in the groiniary region of that armor.
jon
I’m about to head home and watch the start of a new season (“series” if I was British) of Doctor Who with my sons, one of whom loves the show and two of whom tolerate it with minimal mockery. This new guy makes me wish it wasn’t a kids’ show, because there needs to be an episode where Peter Capaldi and Ian McShane converse entirely in the most elaborate insults and curses known to the entire world. With McShane over there for Game of Thrones, it could happen!
As some sci-fi guy said, “MAKE IT SO!”
debbie
Considering all that metal up top, those shoes are very insubstantial. Where are the Puss in Boots boots?
debbie
@benw:
One who’s definitely not a master of brilliant anything is Jonathan Franzen. Trying to get through Purity is tougher than rereading Cotton Mather.
Joel
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
jon
@benw: There’s nothing more weird than an armored codpiece.
Cap'n Phealy
Similar to one of the things I love about Pynchon – no distance is too far to travel for even the most miniscule pun. Case in point – in “Mason & Dixon”, there are references to “the Learned English Dog”, a canine capable of speech and comprehension. Every reference to the Learned English Dog is spelled out and capitalized, until once, when Pynchon writes “The L.E.D.blinked.”
I admire the dedication it takes to set that up and let it go.
Me
Oh, I have to say that you should read Guards, Guards! And then Night Watch immediately after. Especially if you’d read GG! Much earlier and now you’re old and boring. Night Watch is very much the adult book there, even if you don’t read them together, but please do.
Zippity
I’m heading to NYC this week, Wednesday thru Saturday-and just realized the Pope was going to be there. His motorcade thru Central Park will be a half block from our hotel. I think it’s going to be a bit crazy.
benw
@jon: There’s something fishy about your link.
Capri
I highly recommend listening to a Terry Prachett novel read aloud on tape. They really lend themselves to that. Thud is my favorite, but they are all good.
Woodrowfan
after Prachett died I started rereading all his Discworld books. I am almost done rereading “Unseen Academicals” now…
And “Thud” is one of my favorites, along with “Feet of Clay” and “Making Money.” Didn’t care for “Thief of Time” though.
JMT
I’m spending the evening re-reading Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching books. Bittersweet, knowing that the one published this year is the very last.
Bex
@debbie: Puss in Boots boots weren’t fashionable until sometime in the next century.
WereBear
@debbie: I used to do that. Not any more. I get bored, I bail.
No shame.
WereBear
Love any Prachett.
CaseyL
@benw: @jon: I used to be in the SCA, and had an opportunity to see a lot of codpieces. I think they’re funny, particularly since they were fashionable during an era when Catholicism was the state religion pretty much throughout Europe.
Codpieces could get very elaborate – the armored one jon linked to, I don’t even know how or where it attached to the body! I wonder if they were considered humorous at the time. Maybe so: the Elizabethans loved bawdy language and humor. I also wonder if men who wore very large ones caught a lot of flak for, er, “limning their inadequacies in aspirational fantasies.”
Debbie
@WereBear:
I’ll probably give it another 50 pages to pick up. Sometimes a book can take awhile to get going.
Steeplejack
@debbie:
Rereading?! I think I see the problem.
Steeplejack
@efgoldman:
Bro’ man, who lives in Arlington (quite close to your daughter) and commutes to work near Union Station, has been fuming about the Pope and also something else that I can’t remember. It’s even worse than his usual summer fuming about tourists and tourist buses jamming the streets on his route.
benw
@efgoldman: I think you meant to reply to @Zippity. I’m heading into NYC with the family on Sunday. Glad we’re not going to overlap with the insanity.
Woodrowfan
@Steeplejack: damn tourists. just fly in, dump your money in a bucket, and leave. we’ll give you a t shirt or something. but stop hogging our roads. fing tourists.
Shana
@efgoldman: Hubby and younger daughter both work in DC. Everyone who can is being strongly urged to work from home if they can. Parking garage at Hubby’s office building will be closed (not that he use it much anyway) but they’re also saying Metro will be a zoo.
SinnedBackwards
I’ve been holding off on PTerry’s last few books. I bought but have not yet read the last Moist, and have not yet bought the last Tiffany. I literally just can’t yet.
As far as the new Doctor, guess I’ll break down and buy the season on iTunes. I was just so disappointed by series 8. The most encouraging news I’ve seen about what’s to come is that Clara will be gone this round. Thank FSM. I hope it happens sooner than later.
GG
@SinnedBackwards: Actually my comment here but the $&@(? ipad posted it as my partner’s. Sorry.
Steeplejack
@Woodrowfan:
Well, in his defense, my brother’s specific complaint is not about the tourists per se but about all the double-parking and idling in “no standing” zones that gets much worse in tourist season. Chokes down traffic on the main arteries to a trickle and makes rush hour much worse.
NotMax
@Cap’n Phealy
Pynchon: fine scribe, but once through Gravity’s Rainbow is enough for several lifetimes
For punnish tomfoolery, Robert Aspirin’s MythAdventures series is snappy light reading. And the graphic novel adaptations of same drawn by Phil Foglio well worth seeking out.
SectionH
Comment 27 @SinnedBackwards: was mine. Not that it matters much, but he’s not a Pratchett fan.
PurpleGirl
@Zippity: Not only will the Pope be in town but the UN is also opening for the season which means lots of diplomats and heads of state, including President Obama, will be around causing traffic snarls. If you will have internet access, you should check schedules for street closures and such.
NotMax
@CaseyL
All the males in the B’way show Something Rotten wear them, in a variety of, um, dimensions.
Members of the chorus take on a variety of secondary or tertiary roles, so also sport different codpieces.
Steeplejack
I need to finish off the last handful of Pratchett’s books that I haven’t read (and maybe go back and read a few favorites). But I just downloaded the new Jack Reacher novel today, so that’s at the head of the queue.
Looks like it’s time for a late dinner: chicken parm and a glass or two of Apothic Red, my go-to supermarket plonk.
Ajabu
@Woodrowfan:
Back home in the Caribbean we refer to them as “Tourons” (a combination of tourists & morons).
But we do appreciate their stimulation of the local economy so it’s a wash.
Ajabu
@Joel:
You can pet a dog, you can pet a cat, but you can’t Petaluma.
(California joke)
Zippity
@PurpleGirl: Thank you so much for the tip! I’ve been there other times on business trips, but never had much of a chance to do any touristy things. Was looking forward to spending a day doing that-guess I’ll just have to expect to things to take much longer. Oh well!
Ruckus
@Ajabu:
The response line is why would you want to?
Ajabu
@NotMax:
Does anyone (Other than me) remember Eldridge Cleaver’s foray into the mens fashion world when he was in exile in the 1970’s?
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1975/9/26/eldridge-cleavers-new-pants-peldridge-cleavers/
Ajabu
Oh, shit. I’m in moderation for posting a link that used the dreaded “p” word referring to that part of the anatomy generally encased in a codpiece.
Guess that finally makes me an official BJ commenter.
Frankensteinbeck
This is one of the easiest kinds of writing, and one that novice writers gravitate to, usually weakening their stories in the process. Pratchett was a brilliant writer because he could do this AND weave a book whose story, social commentary, and characters would stand on their own into it. Witty writing is common. Having something to say with that wit is much more rare.
WereBear
With you there.
joel hanes
@Ajabu:
You can tune a file system, but you cannot tune a fish.
[ Actual remark in documentation of the BSD utility tunefs(8) ]
Steeplejack
@WereBear:
I’m a little nervous, because the series has been hit or miss lately. Faint signs of phoning it in and shark-jumping on the horizon. The worst recent one was the one where the villain was some sort of giant and his mansion was built to scale. Wait, that sounds so ridiculous, am I even remembering correctly?
The most recent one—master sniper in Europe—was a bit iffy. I’m glad to see that in this one Reacher is (apparently) back in the States. Those seem to go better (at least for the reader).
karen marie
If you want a writer who uses words well as beautiful toys, it is impossible to go wrong with P.G. Wodehouse. Donald Westlake is another, if somewhat more conventional. Two Westlakes that stand out, in addition to his comic crime capers, with or without Dortmunder, are Adios Scheherezade and Up Your Banners in which he takes on race relations in the 1960s, published in 1969.
karen marie
@Cap’n Phealy: I loved Mason & Dixon.
Steeplejack
I’ve got the Ole Miss-Bama game on in the background, and I’m hearing a lot about downhill runners running downhill. I’ve been hearing that a lot today and the last few weeks. Apparently it is now a thing. Please make it stop.
One that I’m pretty sure I won’t be hearing again is: “They really need to hold serve on their next possession.” (That was from earlier today.)
justawriter
I had a similar reaction to PTerry as Opus had here.
Steeplejack
@efgoldman:
Yeah, even James Madison vs. Albany was on TV here today.
As for the announcers, they need to beta-test this material on the Ocho before bringing it to the (semi-)big time.
daveNYC
Small Gods. Oh yeah.
I’ve heard the last Aching book does reflect Sir Pratchett’s painful awareness of his imminent mortality. Bring a hanky.
Funkula
Night Watch isn’t just my favorite Watch novel, it’s my favorite Discworld novel period. I love the way it explores the history of Ankh-Morpork’s political system and shows the effect that that history had on inhabitants over a certain age.
msb
GNU Terry Pratchett
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@daveNYC: I started reading the last Pratchett book and was crying by the third page, because it reminded me of losing my dad, or that this is the last book, the last time we will read about Nanny Ogg or Granny Weatherwax.
Right now I haven’t touched the book for nearly a week, just eyeing it and not wanting it to end. It keeps looking back at me and daring me to continue.
Pie Happens (opiejeanne)
@Funkula: Nightwatch is possibly his finest book. Guards! Guards! may be my sentimental favorite because it’s where we first meet Vimes and Lady Sybil, but Nightwatch is outstanding.
Robert Sneddon
@Ajabu: The natives in Somerset and Devon refer to tourist coaches as grockle wagons. Grockle is a dialect word for a turnip…
Robert Sneddon
@Pie Happens (opiejeanne): Night Watch is the answer to the old conundrum, what would you say to yourself if you could go back in time and meet who you were decades ago? Commander of the Watch Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh-Morpork gets to do that for the newly-minted and green-as-grass Lance-constable Sam Vimes of the Night Watch and it makes fascinating reading. As a bonus we get to meet the young Vetinari.
Zinsky
@joel hanes: Depending on when that was written, it was derivative of this REO Speedwagon album:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Can_Tune_a_Piano_but_You_Can%27t_Tuna_Fish