hey say a rumor can run around the world before the truth has got its
boots on. At least, William De Worde's father says that, among many other
things. It was mostly the other things that caused William to flee his
role
as the heir apparent of a rich, arrogant and stuffy family, and move to
Ankh-Morpork, where he could live in relative freedom, obscurity and
near-poverty. As a literate man, William earns some 30 dollars a month
(and all the figs he can eat, twice a year) writing monthly news bulletins
for a variety of distant nobles who want to know what's going on in the
Discworld's most colorful city. His simple but rather laborious job
involves writing down lists of current events, having the local engraver
carve a woodblock version of the list, making a few impressions with the
woodblock, and then sending them off to his clients.
At least until the first printing press hits town (and, quite
literally,
hits William). The new gadget is the pet project of a handful of dwarfs
seeking to earn their dowry fees, and when they install it in a defunct
rocking-horse factory, they're looking to make a quick buck, not to change
the world. Unfortunately for them, the truth is inexorably getting its
boots on. After William prints out some extra copies of his newsletter and
inveigles the local mendicants to sell it on the street, he discovers
there's a thriving market for a "news paper." Suddenly he has more money
than he knows what to do with.
Of course, he has as much trouble on his hands as he has money. The
Patrician is pointedly distrustful, the Engravers' Guild is furious, and
the locals begin showering him with demands. Things only get worse when,
in
defiance of all logic, the Patrician is caught trying to murder his own
clerk and abscond with a pile of gold. Naturally rumors abound, and
naturally De Worde finds himself in a position to save the day. He just
has
to deal with the Guild, the wary, suspicious and intrusive City Watch, a
competing newspaper making up wild stories about exploding people and
women
who give birth to snakes, and two terrifyingly competent hit men, and then
he can get right down to solving the mystery.
All the news that's fit to parody
Pratchett's recent Discworld books have skated around the edge of
cynicism, but this one jumps in with both feet and stamps around. William
De Worde is a good-hearted though fairly hapless man with many
problems on his hands. The Patrician's potential ouster is a
minor blip on his horizon compared to the imbecility he has to deal with
on
a day-to-day basis. The average citizen in The Truth is a crafty
moron, from William's Everyman readers, who believe everything they see in
print is unassailably true, to the nitwits who ignore critical events
while
demanding more ribald features about humorously shaped vegetables. Mostly
this broad portrayal of the general public seems satirical, but
occasionally it edges over the line into outright bitterness.
Not that there isn't plenty of good-natured humor in The Truth. As
usual, Pratchett ranges from subtle wordplay, including several variants
on
"The truth shall make ye free," to outright slapstick, in the person of a
vampire photographer whose own flashbulbs frequently reduce him to a fine
powder. Pratchett has an indisputable knack for veering back and forth
between drama and comedy, sometimes in the same paragraph, often within
the
same character. The conspirators Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip--the former a human
gimlet with the mind of a snake, the latter a looming lunk who breaks
people with his bare hands, snorts powdered mothballs and critiques art
with a connoisseur's flair--are the perfect examples of Pratchett's
typical
balance between the bizarre, the funny and the convincingly dire.
Likewise, the entire story of The Truth walks a fine line
between drama and melodrama, comedy and cynicism. It covers over an
essentially thin plot with a by-now-familiar froth of apt observations,
sudden twists and turns of phrase, a little serious plotting and a lot of
silliness. Pratchett's greatest talent, the one that's gotten him through
25 Discworld books in a row at this point, is in making that
froth
look as substantial and solid as it does here. There are some surprises in
The Truth, both linguistic and contextual. But the real surprise is
how well this massive series continues to hold up.
