Pratchett, Terry - Going Postal and Making Money

[oyceter]

Moist von Lipwig is a con man blessed with an unmemorable face. Alas, that wasn't enough to keep him out of Vetinari's prisons, and he's going to hang in the morning. Then Vetinari offers him the chance to live and reform Ankh-Morpork's ramshackle postal system (the offices are literally buried in mail), and Moist finds himself conning more people than ever.

I didn't expect to like this much, since I don't like the Ankh-Morpork books as much as some of the others, thanks to Pratchett's good-natured but largely unsuccessful attempts to talk about things like racism and sexism in the modern world. But I absolutely adore Moist, and I had tremendous amounts of fun following him from one scheme to another, each one more ludicrous and exaggerated than the last. I also love the chain-smoking Adora Belle Dearheart (also known as "Killer" or "Spike") to friends, all the clacksmen in the towers, and the characters at the post office. (Especially the clacksmen. I think it appeals to the geeky not-really-coding part of me.)

In Making Money, Moist is given a chance to overhaul the Ankh-Morpork Royal Bank. Alas, because of his reputation from Going Postal, he goes into this as the favorite, which makes everything less fun. There are much fewer of his crazy schemes, and there's actually not that much about the bank either. I ended up wanting more details about the switch to paper money and how that worked and all the background of working at a bank, but instead, we get a lot of schemes against Moist that don't have all that much to do with banking per se.

Still, I hope Pratchett does end up writing Moist in the IRS, since I think that will prompt great creativity on Moist's part, which are my favorite bits. I was laughing so hard at the end of Going Postal for the sheer audacity of it all.

Links:
- tenemet's review of Making Money
- kate_nepveu's review of Going Postal
- kate_nepveu's review of Making Money

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

What you said, pretty much.

http://www.steelypips.org/weblog/2005/06/pratchett_terry_14.php
http://www.steelypips.org/weblog/2007/09/pratchett_36.php

[oyceter]

Yay, links!

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the sequel yet, but Going Postal is one o my very favorite Discworld books. I love Moist, I love the creepy post office, I love the ancient golem, and I love how Pratchett very successfully combines comedy with mythic wonder, much as he does in the Tiffany Aching books.

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

Comedy with mythic (myffic?) wonder *and geek culture*, in the case of _Going Postal_, which he did wonderfully.

[oyceter]

I LOVE Going Postal! I was a little surprised, because I wasn't very enthusiastic going in, but I just loved it! Moist! The clacksmen and their ways! Everything!

Sadly Making Money is not nearly as good, as it doesn't have Moist conning people like mad and the bank background is not nearly as cool as the post office/clacks system.

[sanguinity]

What did you make of the thing with wots-his-name ernyyl orvat n pybja (rot-13) at the end of Making Money? (Assuming you can remember that far back, that is.) There was something about that which rubbed me all kinds of the wrong way -- it coded racially/ethnically for me, with essentialism, to boot. "Oo, you found out that your parents are REALLY an Exotic Racialized Ethnicity? Then you must be special and have exotic superpowers congruent with your heritage! And you must leave 'regular' society (because you're not actually regular) and go live with Exotic Other People because they are the only expression of your True Nature!"

Or am I bringing, ahem, issues to that ending?

[oyceter]

Oooohhhhh! I had completely forgotten about that. I think I would need to reread to see what I thought; I don't usually associate the guilds with the racial/ethnic essentialism Pratchett does so much with species, but I also don't read as many of the Ankh-Morpork books. On the other hand, that kind of a conclusion fits with my general impression of Pratchett, which is that he does cool individuals but completely fails at understanding the dynamics of group behavior, especially if it involves anything political.