GOING POSTAL (BY) TERRY PRATCHETT

Published 2004, 377 pages

Characters: C

Writing: C+

Plot/Pacing: B

Poignancy: C

Going Postal was recommended to me specifically as a follow-up to John Dies At the End, and reading the two together does make for an interesting comparison — though a rather unfortunate one as well, something my Recommender clearly didn't intend.  Going Postal is the kind of book that makes you appreciate other books more.  Where John Dies At the End was endearingly imperfect, Going Postal has a rehearsed feel to it, as if the writing of the novel came so easily to Pratchett that he neglected to include anything interesting on top of it all.  This makes sense, given that it's the 33rd installment of the "Discworld" series.  Though Pratchett isn't nearly as well known in the States as he is in his native Britain, he is in fact one of the most read authors in the English speaking world, and other reviews of Going Postal seem to indicate that this is a good place to start, one of his strongest efforts.  To Pratchett's credit, you hardly need to know anything in order to understand the story, yet the world behind it still feels extensive.  The possibility for a long and varied series is obvious even from this one installment.   Yet, as a result of its place in this greater world, Going Postal is almost the opposite of a fantasy epic. Instead of showing one piece of a larger story, Going Postal is like a single episode of a sitcom, where nothing that happens ultimately matters.

Surprisingly, Pratchett's deliberate plotting is still Going Postal's strongest feature — it's somewhat original and flows quickly, though predictably.  With as many novels as Pratchett has written, he must be fairly desperate for fresh material, so Going Postal deals with a rather, uh, unique conflict: the failing post office of the fantasy land of Ankh-Morpork.  Our hero must save it, by competing with the Large Greedy Corporation running a competing service, sort of a steam-punk version of the telegraph.  This new technology has been threatening to put the post office underground, and now only one man can save it!  Our hero invents the postage-stamp, woos a lady, hatches various schemes, and saves the day.  Or whatever.  For all the negative things I can and will say about Going Postal, it's never a bad book, just a dull one.  There are no outright failings (nothing to earn the FAIL tag from me, anyway) and I never found it particularly frustrating or offensively incompetent.  In fact, it's almost offensively competent, and no more.  To coyly reference a much better novel, Going Postal is... mostly harmless.

It's hard to read Pratchett without thinking of the master of British comedy-literature: Douglas Adams.  Both men very obviously draw from the same comedic well, write the same sort of novels, and enjoy that quintessentially British goofiness that Monty Python made ubiquitous.  Yet here is where the comparisons get a bit dicey.  Pratchett is hugely popular to this day, his career dating back to the 70's, and yet for all his assets, his novels seem (to me) like the sitcom version of Douglas Adams.  Partly this is due to their very context — as one installment of a 30+ part mythology, Going Postal obviously isn't going to have the weight of a more self-contained effort.  And yet the feeling of triviality goes deep, and I never found myself caring much about the characters, or plot, or even the humor, ostensibly the book's main appeal.  Everything seems lightweight and manufactured, as if Pratchett were yet another Frank W. Dixon, R.L. Stine or Stephenie Meyer.  This is, possibly, the very appeal of a long-running series, and thus probably not so much a fault.  Such books are meant to be light-reading, time-killers, easy amusement: exactly the same as a sitcom.  Do you like those things?  Do you like "Theoretical British Humor"?  Then by all means, check out Pratchett.

The humor, unfortunately, is only ever theoretical.  Theoretical British Humor is the what happens when a British author, writing Standardized British Comedy, believes that the mere knowledge of his Britishness, plus a few silly names, will produce laughs.  It's the turns of phrase, the casual absurdities, the mild satire, the tendency to use certain non sequitors and witticisms, except nothing is actually very witty. You can spot where the jokes might go, you can see him teasing his prose and dancing around them, shaping his sentences to make room... but they never come.  It's as if the mere comedic tone were meant to provide the comedy.  Unfortunately, a comedic tone without actual comedy just makes everything feel casual and unhurried, destroying tension without providing any payoff in its place.  Unless, of course, you find "silly" character names to be uproariously funny.  Do you?  Good, because every character in here has a silly name.  If Silly Name Humor is your thing, then this might very well be your Led Zeppelin.

For all the wrong reasons, Going Postal is a good companion read to John Dies At the End.  The latter book managed something extremely difficult, blending earnest humor, genuine horror and realistic characters while rushing forward at an unrelenting pace.  Going Postal obviously must entertain a certain crowd, given its reputation, but if you, like me, don't find it particularly funny, then nothing else in the book is willing to step forward and save it.  This is ultimately what makes a comedic book memorable — humor is so subjective that it can hardly be relied upon, and authors like David Wong and Douglas Adams understand this, injecting a bit of scale and drama into their writing so that their novels are more than just throwaway gags, even if the humor doesn't work for you.  Going Postal feels skeletal, everything flimsy and cheap.  The characters are wholly unremarkable and the plot, while speedy and effective, merely brings you to the end, no more.