Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where I first became aware of Terry Pratchett – sorry, SIR Terry these days. The truth is it was with my brother’s copy of Only You Can Save Mankind, and him chuckling over the captain having no choice but to say ‘You are severely reprimanded’; I remember at age 8 or so not understanding at all what he found so amusing. I read the book, but ‘Terry Pratchett’ was just a name, and I still knew nothing of Discworld. When I was ten, I was going through a period of loving Marvel Comics, and in an attempt to steer me back towards the literary, as well as her own favourites, Mum bought me a graphic novel of The Hobbit – which was bundled with the excellent comic adaptation of Mort. This fired the imagination, and I borrowed my first Discworld novel – Men at Arms – and proceeded to devour every single Pratchett book ever written, including the more obscure – and often terrible – books: Strata; The Unadulterated Cat and Eric, for example. Well…except for the maps and plays.

Pratchett remains a favourite author, and of course my heart goes out to him whenever I hear about his Alzheimer’s. Some of his books I can reread again and again and always love. On the other hand, I’ve not been particularly enamoured of any Discworld book: Monstrous Regiment was an entire rather dull book for the sake of one joke obvious from the start; the Lipwig books, about introducing familiar institutions from our world into that of the Disc, satisfy but feel like formulaic rehashes of books like Guards! Guards! and Moving Pictures; Thud! ultimately meandered without a strong plot or ending, and even the Tiffany Aching books don’t quite live up to their promise.

So I wasn’t expecting much of Unseen Academicals, in which football takes centre-stage. From the looks of the cover it would be another Rincewind book, with the staff of the Unseen University bumbling about and probably foiling some contrived magical disaster. So it was quite pleasing to discover that I was completely wrong about that. Because while football is a large chunk of this book, it is only one piece, and the much large slice of the, uh, pie is taken by Glenda, probably my favourite Discworld character to be introduced since Otto – and far less silly.
The UU discovers that it is required by ancient statute to play a game of football, which is a rather terrifying and anarchic game. So they set about reforming it into something playable. Hopelessly out-of-touch with the working people, though, they need help, and those roped into doing so end up being the workers of the night kitchen, including Trevor Likely, the son of a famed old-style footballer who has vowed never to play, headstrong everywoman Glenda and her beautiful but thick best friend Julia, plus the rather peculiar Mr. Nutt, who looks like a big goblin but speaks like an orator.

Nutt is the key character to the piece, his innate abilities facilitating much of the action and also saying a few things about prejudice. Trev and Jules provide the romance, cheesy uplifting moments and more or less for the sole purpose of some Posh and Becks references, allow for a fun side-plot about fashion and celebrity that also introduces some great new characters. But Glenda is the real protagonist of the story, a plain and dumpy girl who isn’t too smart but nonetheless has great insight and determination and generally can sort out the world just by seeing the way it truly works. She’s a character it’s very easy to sympathise with, and it’s very hard not to be on her side.

I was fully prepared to think that Unseen Academicals was where Pterry jumped the shark. But in fact, even though there is no great crisis, nor any evil to overcome, the novel turns out to be perhaps the most mature and intelligent of recent months. Well worth reading!

Calvin and Hobbes: The Complete Collection

Calvin and Hobbes was not a comic I grew up with. It was not that it had no impact on my life – when I was young I used to do fun little voice acting jobs at a recording studio, and one of them was voicing Calvin in my best attempt at an American accent – but it was never syndicated in any of the newspapers in the house, and besides, I was more inclined to read ‘The Bash Street Kids’ or ‘Minnie the Minx’ in my copy of rather brainless The Beano.

As I begun to read comics online, though, more and more of my favourite writers professed their debt to Bill Watterson, and making little references to the world of the hyperactive six-year-old and the tiger only he can see. So it finally became convenient to read The Complete Collection – something I must buy for myself – so I worked my way through all the thousands of strips that make up Calvin and Hobbes, at once a daunting task and nothing like enough.

Calvin is a headstrong, selfish and rambunctious six-year-old living in the suburban United States. The comic’s key ingredient is the way that Calvin gets lost in his fantasies and daydreams, believing them utterly until he is jerked back to reality, usually by a parent or teacher. Thus, he might believe himself transformed into a vicious dinosaur, or the brave adventurer Spaceman Spiff, or my particular favourite, a hardboiled pulp-noir detective spouting terrible but ingenious pun after pun. And of course, his favourite toy, a stuffed tiger bigger than he is, comes to life as his reasonable, often sharply sarcastic, and occasionally dangerous foil Hobbes.

What makes Calvin and Hobbes so perfect is the way that it sets its boundaries very definitely with a series of settings that become familiar: the living room, the bed, the bathroom, the garden, the school and the great outdoors. Calvin has the same teacher throughout, interacts properly with only two other kids (the girl from his neighbourhood and the school bully) and has no relatives but an uncle who comes for one visit and never appears again. Themes recur again and again: in winter, Calvin wants to hit little Suzie with a snowball, sled downhill very fast, make disturbing and hilarious snowmen and behave himself for Santa despite his mischievous nature. When the weather is better he sets up stalls selling things nobody wants but him, takes Hobbes to his treehouse for a meeting of his anti-girls club G.R.O.S.S., and torments his father by calling him at work to make him jealous of the freedom a six-year-old gets. At school, he subverts his projects and gets poor grades, longs to escape, torments Suzie with gruesome reports of what is in his lunch and tries to avoid being beaten up by the bully while still getting in smart remarks.

Deviations from these patterns are few, but provide interesting diversions, such as when there is a burglary, or when the family go on holiday. Strips centred on the parents also develop two very interesting and instantly recognisable characters. But it is the range that Watterson gets into the familiar patterns that astonishes, and marks his genius. Calvin himself is complex, constrained in a school that expects him to conform but highly literate and capable of satirising, for example, academia. It was extremely hard to get him just right, a loud, annoying brat who wants the world to revolve around him, likes causing others pain and serves as a representation of the problems of his media-obsessed, demanding and sheltered generation – and yet is extremely likeable. But it works, because we get to know him and how sweet he really is. His plots to get Suzie backfire more often than not, he shows moments of great affection towards Hobbes in particular, he apologises when put in the wrong and some people bring out his more vulnerable side, especially his babysitter. Strips where he almost wrecks his parents’ car, where he’s scared of burglars taking Hobbes and where he simply admires the beauty of nature are amongst the best.

I think my favourite strip, though, is a simple one from a Sunday (Sunday strips being longer and coloured) in which Calvin’s mother chases and tickles him to tire him out, but ends up exhausted herself. With almost no dialogue, using characters who mostly yell at one another, Watterson perfectly captures the love between parent and child.

There’s no substitute for reading the comic strips, though. They really are worth anybody’s time. Superb writing.