Pratchett

Jack and Melissa Holcomb · 14 Apr 2000, 21:18 · from urth-v0028.mbox · original

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From: "Jack and Melissa Holcomb" <jackandmel at socket.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Pratchett
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 21:18:58
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> I have heard that Terry Pratchett has a habit of cramming his books with
clever
> references to other books and authors.  Most are too clever for me to
catch, but
> this one in Carpe Jugulum made me think it might be a nod toward Wolfe and
the
> Long/New Sun books.

In my experience, Pratchett's parodies of anything and anybody are anything
but subtle -- although as with any parody, you need to have at least casual
familiarity with the original in order to "get it."  Here, though, I think
you may be working too hard to see something that isn't necessarily there.
It seems far more likely that Pratchett and Wolfe were working from the same
source material -- which is, after all, anything but esoteric.  (My kid has
one version of it memorized, after all.)

> "On one shelf alone he found fourty-three remarkably similar accounts of a
great
> flood, and in every single one of them a man very much like Bishop Horn
had
> saved the elect by building a magical boat."

Maybe.  The library thing, more than the flood, seems suggestive -- but
libraries aren't exactly rare in fantasy lit, either.  I'd say the dozens of
versions of the flood myth (many remarkably like the story of Noah in the
Hebrew Scriptures, especially those from the Near East) seem like a more
obvious source of this jab.

Haven't read Carpe Jugulum yet -- but Terry Pratchett is one of my secret
vices.  He's the one writer I've read who actually makes humorous fantasy
work, probably because he doesn't rely on puns to carry the story.  He
writes genuine and interesting characters.  He's head and shoulders above
the competition -- Piers Anthony and Robert Asprin leap to mind -- who seem
to be writing mostly for thirteen-year-olds with fair reading skills and
underdeveloped taste.

Jack

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