Question about Snuff

[Malky79]

To get straight to the point, has anyone else noticed a notable increase in what I suppose could only describe as an increased amount of double entendres within Snuff compared to other Discworld novels?

I introduced my better half to the Discworld and to my delight she really loves the vast majority of them. I do as it happens read them to her of a bedtime and it was she who thought there was a definite change of tone in this regard. I think she might be right but am not totally sure.

I always found the Discworld novels to be quite a complex and layered and not without an element of this humour in the past, but are there more saucy type gags in Snuff than before?

 

[tmoh]

Well, there's definitely more interest than usual in, shall we say, bodily functions. You've got Young Sam's love of poo, for one, and of course the whole practice of Unggue, and lots of little things as well--count the number of times Ted Flutter pisses himself in fear, or how often we're told how terrible his turkeys smell. So perhaps the "saucy type gags" are an extension of the book's very...biological nature?

Though I suppose none of that explains why the book's so concerned with such things. I think I'll leave that to better literary critics than my biology-major self....

 

[Anonymous]

The double entredes were always there IMHO, the stories now just find it necessary to hit one in the face with them.
And, I said it before, there is an increased amount of scatalogical themes. Not only Sam Jr interest in poo, but, for example, the story seeing the need to not only explain why it is hilarious Rincewind is a coward but also go and inform us about the 'increased amount of soiled underwear' caused by him. Or Harry King as character. Needed for the story? Not really, actually. Still there to talk about what you'd normally leave in the toilet? Yep.

 

[Thales of Miletus]

Can you give an example from the text?

 

[Dotsie]

This is a family forum!

 

[meerkat]

 

[pip]

Do i dare ask why you think Harry King is not needed meeps. He's absolutely key in The Truth and is an important character all round in the city as the success story and the rich guy who bacls the underdog . he's also a good play off vimes as the guys who climbed from the gutter to the top. Personally he's one of my favourite characters and plays nicely on the new rich concept.

 

[Anonymous]

Granted, I can't remember what exactly his role was in 'The Truth', it's been a while since I read it. But as for the post-Nightwatch era we are in now he seems to be there just to have cues to talk about shit&piss.
I said it before, and I will ask again:
What is with the sudden turn towards toilet-humour in the past few books?

 

[raisindot]

SPOILERS

Harry King is one of Pterry's best "non-main-character" creations. As a self-made man, he is a symbol of the new breed of middle class entrepreneurs who is shaking up the Ankh Morpork power structure, daring the old aristocracies and the guilds to keep him down.

He had a huge role in The Truth, essentially saving The AM Times by providing Wm. De Worde with the newsprint he was going to sell to the competing paper--after De Worde made an offer King couldn't refuse (pun intended).

In Making Money, he is Moist's first large deposit and lending customer, and, later, he makes a point of publicly demonstrating his faith in Moist after the gold is stolen.


Dealing in excretions and refuse may be how he built his wealth, but there's far more to him than that.

 

[Anonymous]

Has there been an official vote I missed making him the 'best non-main-character'?
In any case, in The Truth, as far as I recall it after your words, he made sense. In MM? Not that much. Especially as said, his actual contribution was minor and got bloated up out of proportions for the sake of having the shit&piss guy in a supporting role. Everything else that was there to him got taken away almost entirely.

 

[pip]

sadly by bemoaning the loss of subtlety you're missing the subtlety. behind the taking the piss sign joke (which i actually like) Harry King is important as the everyman done good and te champion of the underdog. his role in MM is actually pivotal as he starts the ball rolling . As with de Worde he supports Moist as the Underdog with spirit.
Yes the crude jokes are right on your face but thats a thin surface to a deep and really interesting character.
I agree with raisin in him being one of the best support characters and like Vetinari I think he leaves a lot to the imagination in terms of a back story .
So while there is a few crude jokes in the later books there is still great subtlety. And with the poo books I think its fair to allow Terry parody the latest trend in young childrens books. You'd
be amazed at how many are about poo.
Crazy but true

 

[Anonymous]

Well, I have been surprised when I looked up that book with the mole.
Guess we have to wait how straight things are played with that book. Though it doesn't change the trend towards toilet-humour that's so present in UA. King in MM was meh, but, as I said in the other thread, UA really, to repeat the phrase, played things too straight and serious when it came to those topics.
Though if I ever get the chance to ask Sir Terry in private I shall ask him is UA was meant to be a FU towards the publishers for pestering him to write something to cash in on the world cup first in '06 and when that didn't work in '10.

 

[Tonyblack]

Though if I ever get the chance to ask Sir Terry in private I shall ask him is UA was meant to be a FU towards the publishers for pestering him to write something to cash in on the world cup first in '06 and when that didn't work in '10.

I would love to be a fly on the wall when you ask him that. He'll probably think you're an escaped lunatic.

 

[Anonymous]

Or I will be the first one to have had the courage to ask him and be right. C'mon, the chance is there

 

[Tonyblack]

Or I will be the first one to have had the courage to ask him and be right. C'mon, the chance is there

I've said this before. Terry was talking about writing a book on football called Unseen Academicals in 2005. When he told us about it informally at a campsite meeting while eating bacon sandwiches, he seemed perfectly happy with the idea and not the least bit annoyed with his publishers.

I think you are talking nonsense. A writer of Terry's stature can pretty much write what he likes.

 

[Anonymous]

Stop trampling my refuge of sanity.
Next you tell me I mustn't say UA is not the same trouserleg of time as Jingo, Last Continent or Going Postal

 

[Tonyblack]

I'm not saying you can't say it, I'm saying that I think you're wrong.

 

[Anonymous]

You have no idea how discouraging that is to me But okay.

 

[raptornx01]

by constantly focusing on that aspect of Mr king you really are blowing it out of proportion. thats not all there is to the man, and you make it sound like he paid Moist with a barrel of piss. it is seems to me that (as vetinari would say) "the offence, if such it be, is largely self-inflicted"

 

[Paranye]

Well, say we accept the premise that there has been an increase it what we shall, for lack of a better word, call "crude humour".

If this is the case, then Mr. P is following in the footsteps of thousands of years of literary tradition. The great Roman writers were obsessed with bodily functions and body parts - check out Catullus and Martial. There are words in Latin for things we don't have words for - if you're over 18, look up "verpus". Then we have Chaucer, Dante, Martin Luther - don't even get me STARTED on Rabelais. The idea of bodily functions being in some way not acceptable material for discussion is very recent. Most writers before Victorian times acknowledged the cruder side of life along with the more refined.

What I'm getting at here is that references to and jokes about excrement or human bodily functions have a long tradition of being more than just a way of getting a cheap laugh. They represent reality, true reality, the down-and-dirty everyday reality that we don't like to think about. Everyone poops - you, me, Jesus, Scarlett Johansson - and every parent will tell you that for the first few years their lives basically revolved around their child's excretory habits. Little Sam's innocent delight in poop is one of the most wonderfully realistic depictions of a little boy I've ever seen.

This is what the character of Harry King is all about - he made his living by people's unwillingness to talk or think about their own waste. He made his living by being frank about reality. He rose to his current heights on a mountain of excrement and a golden river of urine.

And in a sense I think this is what Snuff is all about - the fact that we can't pretend something doesn't exist just because it's ugly, that something isn't necessarily worthless because it's disgusting.

The unggue pots remind me of something that sort of sums up what I'm trying to say - The Caganer, a popular figure in Catalonian nativity scenes. He's just a little man depicted as having a poop, right there in the manger. It's no blasphemy; he represents God becoming man, the divine meeting the flesh, with all the disgusting reality that entails. Unggue pots are like that - the repulsive and the beautiful, co-existing.

So I guess what I'm saying is that there may or may not have been an increase in "toilet humour" in the last few books - I haven't really noticed - but one thing all Terry Pratchett books have in common is that they try to get us to see the truth of things, to see reality, all of it, even the icky bits. Sure, those jokes are there to amuse us (I know they amuse the heck out of me) but I wouldn't say that's all they are.

TL;DR - When is a poop joke not just a poop joke? When Terry Pratchett tells it.