Going Postal

Terry Pratchett's Going Postal

Ever read a novel that impressed you as profound even though that didn't seem to be the author's intent at all? To me, Terry Pratchett's Going Postal is one of these.

Unbeknownst to me until three weeks ago, Pratchett has been writing these wry gems about an alternate universe he calls Discworld for many years. I stumbled across the series in the science fiction section of the library and took Going Postal home. I found that it wasn't really sci-fi, and as fantasy it fails to go by any usual rules. It's sort of like Monty Python meets The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy meets Charles Dickens.

The tyrant of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari, snatches one Moist von Lipwig from the gallows just before he plunges through the trapdoor to his death, and gives him another chance: run the Post Office, long defunct.

Moist has been quite happy as a lifelong con man, but he realizes that he cannot run and he cannot hide from the indefatigable golem, Mr. Pump. A golem is a very large humanoid made of ceramic stuff, but each golem was once just an ordinary machine or tool. Some golems are, say, former hammers. Mr. Pump is a former pump.

Golems are unstoppable in carrying out the mission they have been given. Vetinari has made Mr. Pump Moist's parole officer, so Moist for the time being decides to feign interest in his new position.

The Post Office slipped into decay a century ago, Moist learns, but it's can-do spirit lives on in the likes of old Mr. Groat, who along with a young homeless man named Stanley, who loves collecting pins, still lives in the Post Office headquarters. Moist twigs to the fact that the mountains of undelivered letters there, covered now in pigeon guano, are crying out (literally) to be delivered, even now. One thing leads to another, and before you know it Moist has conned himself into being (with the help of Groat, Stanley, and numerous others in the once-proud postal "family") their deliverer.

Meanwhile, the function of the Post Office has been taken over by "the clacks," a network of towers throughout the Discworld that send and receive messages by some sort of semaphore involving lights in the dark of night, and other signaling means, which the reader never quite comprehends, by day.

The clacks (a singular noun) was invented by the now-deceased father of chain-smoking Adora Belle Dearheart, she of the stiletto heels which she uses to impale the feet and other body parts of men who menace her in lowlife bars. Moist suspects the sweetness in her right away. He knows he will fall in love with her, but he cannot imagine that her cynical eye doesn't see right through his facade to the inveterate fraud he really is. Adora wants revenge on Reacher Gilt, the truly evil manipulator of people for personal profit who drove her father out of the clacks business in favor of his own consortium. Gilt is also indirectly responsible for the death of Adora's brother, an honest clacksman (tower operator) of the old style.

So one thing leads to another, and Moist, against his ingrained dishonest instincts, becomes something of a miracle-worker-slash-hero-slash-savior.

Along the way to a final showdown with Gilt he has occasion to retrieve his buried cache of $150,000, the honest proceeds of his dishonest life of crime. Seems Gilt has arranged for the Post Office to catch fire and burn, and the money is needed to rebuild. Moist can't just dig it up from where he has it buried without disillusioning all those who have come to trust him, who do not know about his past. So he fakes being led mystically to to the stash after praying to not one but several of the Ankh-Morpork gods.

Thus, several of the interlocking themes of the book. One, the more Moist ups the ante on being (again, still) the consummate charlatan, the more good he does in his world. Two, he accomplishes most of his fakery with naught but words — words that people want to hear and to believe, words that give them hope. Three, the more good Moist does, the more he thrills to it. It's more thrilling, more addictive, than any con he ever pulled for personal gain.

He knows deep down, much to his own chagrin, that he is not the selfless saint people see him as being. But he also knows confession to them of his own true nature would destroy the illusion, their hope, and all the good he is doing simply because it thrills him to put over the con of his life: arranging for the deliverance of the post, at snidely Reacher Gilt's expense.

His final victory depends on convincing one and all of what has long been rumored: that the souls of all the clacksmen who died doing their dangerous jobs on the towers because Gilt didn't do what was needed to keep them safe (it cost too much money) live on in the "overhead." They are now living messages that shunt eternally through the network unseen, for free. Moist enlists the aid of three outlaw clacksmen, "Mad Al and the boys," to bring one of these supposed hidden messages to light, thereby revealing the truth and incriminating Gilt and his cronies. The world wants to believe that these really were utterances of the disembodied dear departed, and Moist lets them go on believing it.

Toward the conclusion of the book, we get this exchange between Adora and Moist:

A quiet voice from the doorway behind him said: "Mad Al and the boys told me what you did."

"Oh," said Moist, not turning around. She'll be lighting a cigarette, he thought.

"It wasn't a nice thing to do," Adora Belle Dearheart went on, in the same level tone.

"There wasn't a nice thing that would work," said Moist.

"Are you going to tell me that the ghost of my brother put the idea in your head?" she said.

"No, I dreamed it up myself," said Moist.

"Good. If you'd tried that, you'd be limping for the rest of your life, believe me." [She is referring to the damage she could do with her stiletto heels.]

"Thank you," said Moist leadenly. "It was just a lie I knew people wanted to believe. Just a lie. It was a way to keep the Post Office going and get the Grand Trunk [the clacks network] out of Gilt's hands. You'll probably get it back, if you want it. You and all the other people Gilt swindled. I'll help, if I can. But I don't want thanking."

He felt her draw nearer.

"It's not a lie," she said. "It's what ought to have been true. It pleased my parents."

"Do they think it's true?"

"They don't want to think it isn't."

No one does. I can't stand this, Moist thought. "Look, I know what I'm like," he said. "I'm not the person everyone thinks I am. I just wanted to prove to myself I'm not like Gilt. More than a hammer, you understand [in the same way that a golem is now more than his former identity as a mere tool]? But I'm still a fraud by trade. I thought you knew that. I can fake sincerity so well that even I can't tell. I mess with people's heads —"

"You're fooling no one but yourself," said Miss Dearheart, and reached for his hand.

...

He let the golden glow rise. He'd fooled them all, even her. But the good bit was that he could go on doing it, he didn't have to stop. All he had to do was remind himself, every few months, that he could quit anytime. Provided he knew he could, he'd never have to. And there was Miss Dearheart, without a cigarette in her mouth, only a foot away. He leaned forward —

Words that "ought to have been true," words that generate belief and hope, are true, even if they're lies. People that utter such words and back them up with deeds are saviors, even if they're frauds. Impossible things like gods' interventions and souls that live on in the "overhead" are possible, even though they're ridiculous.

To me, who am going through a bit of a dark night of the soul in terms of my religious stance, those profound messages that flip cynicism into faith are immensely cheering.