Terry Pratchett, Snuff
Nov. 29th, 2011 05:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethHave finished reading latest. I liked it. But it was weird, all the people in my head were suddenly played by new actors and actresses. Except for some cameos. It's not like saying they were out of character, they were just different. *big shrug* My brain is an odd place.
Also, I'm not sure there was a moment when all the parts came together. It's not like it had loose threads at the end, but it seemed like a simple investigation plodded on along the middle, and some other threads sort of waved around it a bit and went away when they were done. I couldn't see a scene where you realised why all the parts were necessary. This might be due to the preach-to-choir effect of the basic 'everyone is people' message. Maybe I didn't get it because it seemed too obvious to get. But if this book were a hairdo I'd unwrap it and braid it again.
Also, I'm not sure I like it that it concludes with everyone being people because oh look they have all these wonderful natural skills. I mean, when they were sitting around eating rabbits and making pots, they were still people. When they were only talking their own language to each other, they were still people. I can see how getting people to treat them as people when they're just doing their own thing down rabbit holes is a rather more difficult trick, but it bothers me to have these sudden skills turn up to give them artistic cred and an economic niche. It's more plausible as a motivation for everybody else in the book, but it's looking like they all can be people if they learn how to do pretty by existing people standards. When really they're people in the first place and always. It doesn't feel much like anyone got a moment of revelation, in that they didn't realise that people who do different are still people, they just realised that the funny looking people could still do same.
It's the mimicry argument from class at the moment, colonised people's learning to do mimicry to gain respect. It's true and messed up at once. It's bothering me now.
But if the book went the other way and they kept sitting in their tunnels doing their same usual obscure things, it's difficult to see how it would be convincing if society at large just up and changed its mind. Individual revelations are plausible, but collective social change? Even done this way, trickier to sell.
Maybe it would be a different story told from a goblin point of view. I think it's bugging me most that they're just called passive and accepting, that they just seem to be being led around by the do-gooder contingent among the dominant culture. It seems to be repeating an ugly myth, not refuting it. But there's sticky outy bits in that interpretation too. Goblins that don't fit passive at all at all.
I don't know, I started the night with an irritating headache, middled it with nausea, and end it at six in the morning, so chasing down the source of my niggly feeling something isn't quite in focus is tricky, and it may well be that I'd feel differently about how involving the book is if I read it without biological distractions.
But I liked the book. Not loved. And don't quite know what to do with it.
Also, I'm not sure there was a moment when all the parts came together. It's not like it had loose threads at the end, but it seemed like a simple investigation plodded on along the middle, and some other threads sort of waved around it a bit and went away when they were done. I couldn't see a scene where you realised why all the parts were necessary. This might be due to the preach-to-choir effect of the basic 'everyone is people' message. Maybe I didn't get it because it seemed too obvious to get. But if this book were a hairdo I'd unwrap it and braid it again.
Also, I'm not sure I like it that it concludes with everyone being people because oh look they have all these wonderful natural skills. I mean, when they were sitting around eating rabbits and making pots, they were still people. When they were only talking their own language to each other, they were still people. I can see how getting people to treat them as people when they're just doing their own thing down rabbit holes is a rather more difficult trick, but it bothers me to have these sudden skills turn up to give them artistic cred and an economic niche. It's more plausible as a motivation for everybody else in the book, but it's looking like they all can be people if they learn how to do pretty by existing people standards. When really they're people in the first place and always. It doesn't feel much like anyone got a moment of revelation, in that they didn't realise that people who do different are still people, they just realised that the funny looking people could still do same.
It's the mimicry argument from class at the moment, colonised people's learning to do mimicry to gain respect. It's true and messed up at once. It's bothering me now.
But if the book went the other way and they kept sitting in their tunnels doing their same usual obscure things, it's difficult to see how it would be convincing if society at large just up and changed its mind. Individual revelations are plausible, but collective social change? Even done this way, trickier to sell.
Maybe it would be a different story told from a goblin point of view. I think it's bugging me most that they're just called passive and accepting, that they just seem to be being led around by the do-gooder contingent among the dominant culture. It seems to be repeating an ugly myth, not refuting it. But there's sticky outy bits in that interpretation too. Goblins that don't fit passive at all at all.
I don't know, I started the night with an irritating headache, middled it with nausea, and end it at six in the morning, so chasing down the source of my niggly feeling something isn't quite in focus is tricky, and it may well be that I'd feel differently about how involving the book is if I read it without biological distractions.
But I liked the book. Not loved. And don't quite know what to do with it.