Another type of normal: #MarchMagics2024

On By CalmgroveIn Diana Wynne Jones, March Magics22 Comments
© C A Lovegrove

Making Money by Terry Pratchett.
Discworld novel No 36,
Moist von Lipwig No 2.
Corgi, 2008 (2007).

‘Why are you always in such a hurry, Mr Lipwig?’
‘Because people don’t like change. But make the change happen fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.’
— Chapter 5.

The unlikely but genial antihero Moist Von Lipwig first appeared in the 33rd Discworld novel Going Postal (2004), in which he ended up as Postmaster General of Ankh-Morpork’s Post Office, thereby becoming the hero of the hour.

In that previous novel the Lord Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, the tyrant Havelock Vetinari, had made con-man Moist an offer he couldn’t refuse; and now another irrefusable offer is being made: to take effective charge of the Royal Mint and Royal Bank.

Moist decides, wisely, not to turn down the offer and begins to envisage and put into place schemes to revolutionise banking. But the schemes of others – his girlfriend Adora Belle Dearheart, for example, and some of the bank’s avaricious shareholders – threaten to make his own schemes go quite agley.

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The Unfranked Man

On By CalmgroveIn March Magics, review, Terry Pratchett9 Comments
James Farley Post Office Building, New York

Going Postal by Terry Pratchett.
Corgi, 2005 (2004).

‘Yes, well, you know what we used to say: you do have to be mad to work here!’ said the Worshipful Master.

Chapter Five

The phrase which inspired the title of this novel refers to a distressing period in the US postal service when certain disgruntled postal workers were involved in mass shootings of colleagues and the public: ‘going postal’ meant resorting to extreme violence to express resentment, frustration or mental disturbance, though now it’s casually used as the equivalent of ‘going mad’ in a social situation.

In Pratchett’s hands the phrase becomes a way to focus his anger through critiquing a number of societal ills – the decimation of public services, for example, and corporate greed – while using his trademark humour not only to satirise corruption but also to portray those who might otherwise appear to be social inadequates instead of as individuals worthy of respect and admiration.

But our attention is focused on Moist Von Lipwig, a petty fraudster in his twenties (“I’m Moist!”) who is offered, by Lord Vetinari no less, a chance to redeem himself as the newly appointed Postmaster in Ankh-Morpork. The question we ask ourselves is, will – echoing Herodotus and the inscription on New York’s 1914 Post Office – neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stop him fulfilling his brief?

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Death dons the false beard

On By CalmgroveIn fantasy, Terry Pratchett21 Comments
© C A Lovegrove

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett.
Penguin Books, 2022 (1996).

Was the Hogfather a god? Why not? thought Susan. There were sacrifices, after all. All that sherry and pork pie. And he made commandments and rewarded the good and he knew what you were doing. If you believed, nice things happened to you. Sometimes you found him in a grotto, and sometimes he was up there in the sky…

On Discworld every Hogswatchnight the Hogfather is expected to take his sledge drawn by four pigs to visit  every child and deliver appropriate gifts. But this particular Hogswatch there is a problem: the figure widely believed to be merely a figment of the collective imagination appears to have been assassinated, and it therefore falls to another figure to secretly stand in for the role of “the Fat Man”.

But his dissembling has aroused the suspicion and then irritation of his granddaughter Susan of Sto Helit, who feels compelled to get involved as Hogswatchnight plays out. Temporarily abandoning her role as governess to Gawain and Twyla Gaiter she steps outside time in an attempt to resolve matters, picking up a decidedly odd divinity along the way.

Nothing in Discworld is straightforward, however, for on its ill-lit motorways of logical narrative there inevitably lurk dirty great big DIVERSION signs, with traffic cones leading the unwary traveller on to confusing roundabouts; take any exit and it’ll lead to murky backstreets thronged with shady characters and clueless bystanders. All that’s certain is that we’ll eventually reach Journey’s End, but where that will leave us is anybody’s guess.

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Shopping malls and snow globes

On By CalmgroveIn comic novel, humour, March Magics15 Comments
Late medieval woodcut of Death with scythe and hourglass.

Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett
Discworld novel 11,
Corgi Books, 1992 (1991).

What happens when Death fails to claim humans who die? What happens to their bodies, their consciousness, their life force? And what are the consequences for a world in which this calamity takes place?

Terry Pratchett’s famous character Death, who only converses in small capitals, has been ‘retired’ by Azrael, “the Great Attractor, the Death of Universes, the beginning and end of time” — or the Angel of Death as our monotheistic religions see him. With his scythe and faithful mount Binky he descends on a Discworld farm; here, as Bill Door, he is taken on as a farmhand by Miss Renata Flitworth.

Elsewhere on Discworld, and especially in Ankh-Morpeth, people are ceasing to die: witness Windle Poons, the oldest wizard in the world, who after death turns into a zombie. In trying to find a point to his new afterlife he joins the Fresh Start Club (other members include werewolves, vampires, a banshee and a bogeyman) and starts to note curious events unfolding — things like ovoid snow globes appearing, supermarket trollies multiplying and swear words taking physical form.

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The only certainty

On By CalmgroveIn comic novel, review36 Comments
Holbeins Totentanz: der Sterndeuter - Holbein's Dance of Death / Astrologer -
Holbeins Totentanz: der Sterndeuter – Holbein’s ‘Dance of Death: Astrologer’ (1547).

Mort by Terry Pratchett.
Corgi 1988 (1987).

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get round to Terry Pratchett.

Maybe it’s because the comic fantasy I’ve sampled up to now has elicited a lukewarm response, humour being such a personal thing. I like word play as much as the next reader, along with left-field concepts, but key literary ingredients such as plotting, a sureness with words and above all characterisation are a must for me; their lack becomes a triumph of superficiality over substance.

Pratchett’s Mort I’ve discovered has both substance and sheen. Fourth in his celebrated Discworld series he skilfully blends whimsy, high fantasy, allusions and, yes, wordplay with a rattling good story, peopled with characters that despite some caricature keep the reader interested right through to the end.

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Set in a bizarre Britain

On By CalmgroveIn Diana Wynne Jones, fantasy, magids11 Comments

The Merlin Conspiracy
by Diana Wynne Jones.
No 2 in The Magids mini-series,
HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2004 (2003).

Until I first read this in 2004 my only previous acquaintance with Diana Wynne Jones was through her The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (Vista 1996), a thoroughly enjoyable tongue-in-cheek encyclopaedic tour of the conventions of post-Tolkien fantasy writing.

This outing for the much-published children’s writer includes much of that irreverent humour (we meet an elephant called Mini and a coffee-addicted SF-detective writer called Maxwell Hyde, for example, whose name seems to be a compound of a well-known instant coffee brand and a literary split personality).

And it all starts with the title, which is about a conspiracy concerning the Merlin.

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Patterns and Portraits

On By CalmgroveIn Diana Wynne Jones, fantasy, magids13 Comments
Möbius strip
Möbius strip © C A Lovegrove

Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones.
No 1 in The Magids mini-series.
Gollancz, 1998 (1997).

I love Bristol. I love its hills, its gorge and harbours, its mad mixture of old and new, its friendly people, and even its constant rain. We have lived here ever since [1976]. All my other books [after the first nine, plus three plays] have been written here. [… ] Each book is an experiment, an attempt to write the ideal book, the book my children would like, the book I didn’t have as a child myself. — Diana Wynne Jones, in Reflections on the Magic of Writing (Greenwillow, 2012)

I used to live in Bristol. Ironically I had to move away before I became aware of Diana Wynne Jones’s writing but now [2014], apart from her plays, books for younger children and a couple of short story anthologies, I have read all her other works save Changeover andA Sudden Wild Magic.

And yet I still continue to be astounded by her writings, especially how she includes — magpie-fashion — all manner of curious things in the nest of her plotlines, and how she ruthlessly includes so much of her own life in her fiction. Including, in Deep Secret, a snapshot of her adopted town.

First things first. Deep Secret is predicated on patterns.

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Crisis at the University

On By CalmgroveIn comic, Diana Wynne Jones, fantasyland6 Comments

Year of the Griffin
by Diana Wynne Jones.
Gollancz, 2003 (2000).

university’s
challenging, no matter what
universe you’re in

Year of the Griffin is set in the same universe as The Dark Lord of Derkholm and their common source The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, but, bar a few cross references, works equally well as a standalone.

Set eight years after Dark Lord, the story is centred on the young griffin Elda who is in her first year of University.

Yes, a student griffin. At a university for wizards. You just know that things aren’t going to be straightforward.

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A spoof with serious intent

On By CalmgroveIn Diana Wynne Jones, fantasyland, review16 Comments
Abergavenny Castle © C A Lovegrove

The Dark Lord Of Derkholm
by Diana Wynne Jones.
Gollancz, 2000 (1998).

comic fantasy
makes valid point: don’t despoil
the lands you visit

Anyone who is part of a large organisation will recognise the quandaries that Wizard Derk finds himself in when he is appointed Dark Lord in a real-life role-playing game.

Despite his living in a world where magic is as natural as breathing, his attempts to cope with the vagaries that are thrown at him by an uncaring Senior Management, and which are deliberately sabotaged by Middle Managers with their own agenda, are familiar to those foot-soldiers in this our own world who are forced to cope with one emergency after another caused either by conspiracy or cock-up.

And although crisis management is by its nature very stressful, there comes a point where you feel you have neither the energy nor the inclination to carry on with your goodwill sapped and your moral compass thrashed.

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Fantasyland

On By CalmgroveIn Diana Wynne Jones, fantasyland45 Comments
Non-specific Fantasy World Map (credit: http://freefantasymaps.org/

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland
by Diana Wynne Jones.
Gollancz, 2004 (1996).

Dark Lord (dread lord). There is always one of these in the background of every Tour, attempting to ruin everything and take over the world. He will be so sinister that he will be seen by you only once or twice, probably near the end of the Tour. Generally he will attack you through MINIONS (forces of Terror, bound to his will), of which he will have large numbers. When you do get to see him at last, you will not be surprised to find he is black […] and shadowy and probably not wholly human. He will make you feel very cold and small. […]

In The Tough Guide to Fantasyland Diana Wynne Jones created an imaginary tourist’s guidebook to a generic world where magic is a given — in fact the kind of world conjured up for almost any example of the epic fantasy genre you can name. Think Middle Earth, Narnia, Earthsea or, less familiarly, the Old Kingdom, Prydain, Zimiamvia or Pellinor. Jones imagines them all perhaps as aspects of Fantasyland, though it’s clear that the Disney version is not really what she has in mind. As pretty much all fantasy is predicated on conflict leading to some sort of resolution the nemesis of each world is thus nearly always some incarnation of a Dark Lord. It’s hard to think of any dread adversary who doesn’t conform in some way to Jones’ description, their motivations exactly those of Milton’s Satan:

One who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.

But a Dark Lord alone does not a Fantasyland make.

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Mocking conventions from an armchair

On By CalmgroveIn comic, Diana Wynne Jones, fantasyland11 Comments
frisland
The legendary island of Friesland, located east of Greenland

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones.
Vista, 1996.

Discover the laws
governing fantasy worlds.
Beware tongues in cheeks.

Helpful tips for travellers to Fantasyland by the late great Diana Wynne Jones, from which I draw a number of conclusions:

(1) Get immunised by reading a wide range of fantasy, both good and bad: you never know what bugs you will be exposed to in Fantasyland.
(2) Remember to have an up-to-date passport: you’ll need either your own unread fantasy novel (preferably with your own bookplate stuck in the front) or a library book with plenty of entry/exit stamps from previous travellers’ visits.
(3) Obtain a visa (a credit card receipt for a fantasy book from your local bookseller will do).
(4) Have the correct currency ready (any bronze, silver or gold coins will do, so long as it makes a nice clinking sound in your purse).
(5) Finally, don’t forget to pack the Tough Guide: you’ll be lost without it. The author has travelled widely in Fantasyland, knows the terrain intimately and generously shares her insights into its attractions, peculiarities, geography and distinct cultures.

Oh, and don’t speak to any strangers down dark alleyways…

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Snapshots of the author

On By CalmgroveIn Diana Wynne Jones, Howl, review21 Comments
mindmap

House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones.
HarperCollins, 2008.

Many of the pieces in Reflections, the collection of writings by and about Diana Wynne Jones, address the question authors often get asked: Where do you get your ideas? And of course there is no single simple answer. She does however offer this suggestion, in an item entitled ‘Some Hints on Writing’:

When I start writing a book, I know the beginning and what probably happens in the end, plus a tiny but extremely bright picture of something going on in the middle. Often this tiny picture is so different from the beginning that I get really excited trying to think how they got from the start to there. This is the way to get a story moving, because I can’t wait to find out.

With House of Many Ways I found it hard to force a plan onto a review, so adopting Jones’ modus operandi for this commentary seemed an appropriate way to go about it. The beginning has been taken care of, and the conclusion is virtually foregone, and now it’s time to move to the images that arise almost unbidden from a second reading of this fantasy. Many of them involve snapshots of the author herself.

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A magic carpet ride

On By CalmgroveIn Diana Wynne Jones, Howl, review3 Comments
© C A Lovegrove.

Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones.
HarperCollinsChildrensBooks, 2000 (1990).

This, the sequel to Howl’s Moving Castle, begins in an Arabian Nights fashion, which seems light years away from the European land of Ingary.

Genies in bottles and flying carpets have nothing to do with a Welsh wizard and a fire demon called Calcifer powering the moving castle, surely? And many of the other distinctive characters in that famous first instalment must be unrelated to the eastern city of Zanzib in the Sultanates of Rashpuht, mustn’t they?

But appearances are deceiving in this parallel world where magic can and does happen.

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Of shreds and patches

On By CalmgroveIn Diana Wynne Jones, Howl, review30 Comments
Table Mountain, Crughywel hillfort © C A Lovegrove

Howl’s Moving Castle
by Diana Wynne Jones.
HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2009 (1986).

At the southern edge of the Black Mountains in Wales, high above the market town of Crickhowell, sits a hillock called Crug Hywel or Table Mountain. Geologically it is an example of a translational slide, a piece of the Black Mountains that has slipped downhill towards the River Usk before coming to a halt.

On top of Crug Hywel’s plateau sits an Iron Age hillfort, named after some forgotten historical or legendary figure called Howell or Hywel.

The feature is, in effect, Howl’s Moving Castle.

I don’t for a moment believe that the author had this ancient hillfort as a model for the titular castle, nor do I even suggest she was aware of the coincidence of name, only that I’m sure she would’ve been delighted with this parallel. Because, as the Q&A extra at the end of this edition shows, the genesis and composition of a novel such as Howl’s Moving Castle is made up of bits and pieces of her own family life, chance encounters, unconscious jokes, past memories, and so on. As Nanki-Poo in The Mikado sings,

A wandering minstrel I, | A thing of shreds and patches, | Of ballads, songs and snatches, | And dreamy lullaby…

Shreds and patches typify the make-up of this fantasy, and of many of the characters in it (in particular the Howl of the title); but what holds it all together — as in all good stories — is heart, both literally and metaphorically. And though some of the stitching is evident in the writing we forgive the imperfections because the whole is just so enchanting.

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Intimations of mortality

On By CalmgroveIn Diana Wynne Jones, Howl, review7 Comments

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones.
HarperCollins Children’s Books, 2009 (1986).

At first sight it might seem strange that of all Diana Wynne Jones’ books (a) this should be chosen to make a film of, and (b) perhaps because of (a) this should be one of her best known titles.

Why does this story, which she notes was inspired by a chance request by a young fan for a story about a castle that moves, strike such a chord with not just younger readers but also adults?

Putting aside the liberties that particularly the second half of the film takes with the story, I think a key to this book’s fascination is the heroine’s premature ageing.

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