Guards! Guards!

I listened to this story on the road between my family's home in Colorado and El Paso, Texas (my mother's hometown). This was our family's first encounter with Terry Pratchett's Discworld. Guards! Guards! had everyone in the van shrieking with laughter.

Terry Pratchett's style of humor is coarser than that of P.G. Wodehouse, more literary than that of Dave Barry, more heartfelt than that of Douglas Adams. The storyline - which involves, among other things, a simple but honest youth who was raised by dwarfs, the unsavory City Watch that he joins, a magic book stolen from a university library, and dragons - meandered somewhat, as if the author had toyed with various possible plot developments and decided to keep whatever bits amused him.

What endeared Guards! Guards! to me the most was the way that the author conveyed the wonder of books. Large collections of books, Pratchett says, can bend space and time. Someone initiated into the secret knowledge of librarians can venture into "L-space", which connects all libraries everywhere. His descriptions suited my sense that books in general, and libraries in particular, are magical.

(The recording from Isis audio books was excellent, too. Reader Nigel Planer brings to life a large cast of characters.)

I'm curious - are any of you acquainted with Pratchett's Discworld novels? If so, do you have a favorite? More generally, what do you read when you're looking for a good laugh?

The Nibelungenlied

This is a version of the legend on which Wagner's ring cycle is based. A. T. Hatto has translated the thirteenth-century poem - purported to be the greatest of German medieval epics - into businesslike prose. The narration is brisk and direct, with no use of suspense. Indeed the grim ending is given away in the first chapter:

In the land of the Burgundians there grew up a maiden of high lineage, so fair that none in any land could be fairer. Her name was Kriemhild. ...The time came when she was wed with honour to a very brave warrior... What terrible vengeance she took on her nearest kinsmen for slaying him in days to come! For his one life there died many a mother's son.

The doomed husband-to-be is Prince Siegfried, who travels to Burgundy when he hears of Kriemhild's beauty. With his matchless strength and his cloak of invisibility, Siegfried helps Kriemhild's brother, King Gunther, to win the fierce Icelandic queen Brunhild (and subsequently to woo her, in a scene which pretty thoroughly offends both chivalrous and feminist sensibilities). In return for this help, King Gunther agrees that Siegfried may marry Kriemhild.

This happy state of affairs does not last, for Siegfried impudently stole a ring and a girdle from Brunhild while he was invisibly assisting Gunther. A spat between the two queens reveals Siegfried's possession of the items, which has unseemly implications. Brunhild's allies murder Siegfried in retaliation for the scandal. Kriemhild eventually achieves her revenge, and the epic ends with a bloodbath that leaves over a thousand dead.

Reading the Nibelungenlied gives a glimpse into an alien culture, a society in which it is common courtesy to crowd around and jostle strangers to show that they are welcome. What caught my attention was the poet's emphasis on clothes. Clothes are brought up constantly: for example, a wedding is shown to be a grand event because every guest is wearing brand-new clothes. Before anything important can happen, the first step seems to be to put on splendid clothes.

Clothes are important for us, too. But as far as I can tell, in the Nibelungenlied clothes are not valued for self-expression, or fashion even. Clothes are important solely and supremely as a signal of wealth; of status.

And status has weighty implications for medieval kings and their vassals. So maybe a lesson that can be drawn from the epic is the potential fragility of the feudal system. After all, the catalyst of the entire tragedy is Brunhild's confusion about Siegfried's social standing. Tampering even slightly with the network of loyalties that is supposed to maintain stability has violent consequences.

Little Dorrit

This is one of Dickens’ “dark novels,” the preface of my edition informs me. One of its themes is captivity: the first chapter introduces the reader to two prisoners in Marseilles; we later meet good-hearted Mr. and Mrs. Meagles waiting to be taken out of quarantine; and Our Heroine Little Dorrit was born and raised in a debtor’s prison. Each of these characters, and many more, come to play an important part in a plot so intricate that it is positively... Dickensian. Typical of Dickens, too, are the book’s castigation of social ills (although in this case, government bureaucracy is a principle target), the quick changes in mood from heart-wringing pathos to satirical comedy, the dramatic changes of fortunes of the protagonists, and the distinctiveness of the characters.

All of this I expected. What surprised me was that Dickens – long before Alan Greenspan spoke of “irrational exuberance” or John Maynard Keynes discussed “animal spirits” – created an insightful description of a speculative financial boom and bust. Given the blame that has been cast on today’s macroeconomic and financial models for our current economic woes, the plight of Mr. Pancks seemed startlingly relevant:

'It was my misfortune to lead him into a ruinous investment.' (Mr Pancks still clung to that word, and never said speculation.) 'Though I can prove by figures,' added Mr Pancks, with an anxious countenance, 'that it ought to have been a good investment. I have gone over it since it failed, every day of my life, and it comes out—regarded as a question of figures—triumphant.' ...These incontrovertible figures had been the occupation of every moment of his leisure since he had lost his money, and were destined to afford him consolation to the end of his days.

Is anyone else a huge fan of Charles Dickens? Reading Little Dorrit reminded me why I love his books.