![]() ![]() This is a joke about academics, for the story is set in Discworld's Unseen University. Wizards tend to think it's a long time to the next meal, right until they are consuming it." ![]() When Mustrum Ridcully, archchancellor of the university, observes that "It's a long time since lunch," Pratchett the annotator is sceptical. " In footnotes, Pratchett shakes his head at his own characters. "Glenda was taken aback and affronted at the same time, which was a bit of a squeeze. So Pratchett likes to throw in comments on the absurdity of what has just been said. A joke is an intervention that the author cannot resist. When, in the opening sequence, a strange creature appears seemingly composed of "bits of beasts unknown to science or nightmare or even kebab", the authentic Pratchett tone is struck. There are great literary precedents for waggishness: Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy is a joke-driven novel – but then it is often accused of facetiousness or, as FR Leavis called it, "trifling". T erry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals, like the previous volumes of his Discworld series, is highly literary (spot the allusions to Keats or Browning or Shakespeare), but its generosity with jokes is not what a "literary novel" provides. ![]()
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