The Fine Art of Trudging, A Year On Discworld: Book 2 — The Light Fantastic
In a quest to escape the reality of 2020 and recapture my youth, I’ve set myself the goal of reading all 41 Discworld novels in one year. Join me on this voyage of discovery which definitely isn’t a complete waste of time. Mild spoilers, probably.
I did it. Despite all the odds, all the setbacks, all the naysayers, I made it to week 2. Which, if I’m honest, isn’t really an achievement. If you read last week’s entry you’ll already know I wasn’t won over by the first book in the series, The Colour of Magic, but after reading a few pages of The Light Fantastic I decided to carry on with my quest.
Also, quite a few people got in touch to say the earlier books are pretty rubbish and I should carry on. This was A) nice and supportive and B) validated my review. Most of the problems I had with the first book are swept away by The Light Fantastic. It starts exactly where its predecessor ends so probably not a great place to jump in. But at least this outing has stronger gags and, rather than the puddles of anecdotes which came before it, an actual story… or at the very least a plot. Basically, the end of the world is coming in the form of a red star and only our heroes, the cowardly Rincewind and eternally optimistic Twoflower have the means to stop it.
Other good stuff includes Hrun, the idiotic (and frankly 2D) barbarian being replaced by Cohen, a senior citizen version of Conan who is a much more rewarding character and a far more interesting take on the barbarian mould. Plus there is a lot more of machinations of the Unseen University; a genteel, middle-England approach to the magical realm filled with doddering old men who are also ruthless bastards.
And it delivered the hit of nostalgic escapism this entire venture was meant to elicit. It came in the form of the trudge. It’s a minor thing but in The Colour of Magic, there is lots of flying. Characters suddenly take to the skies, the Disc becomes a distant object and they land someplace else. There is little spatial consistency to hang onto.
Unlike Rincewind, flying doesn’t bother me that much. I'm neither here nor there about it. But trudging? Well, I’m all about that trudge life.
You see trudging feels like a staple of fantasy to me. Characters schlepping through forests and mountains seems to be the natural order of things. It is a mundane action in a fantastic world giving you some sense of how it all fits together. Moving from one location to another takes time. It’s misery punctured only by the occasional vista and good company.
This book doesn’t have an embarrassment of trudging like in The Lord of The Rings — which is essentially a long description of a hike interrupted by singing in Elvish — but just enough trudge to spark a memory from teenage life. From a simpler time.
As a teen, an era for peak-geek for me, my social group, bonded by a love of nerdy nonsense and a lack of success with girls, would trudge out of our no -horse town, over the dual carriageway and into the countryside. Our goal; the fabled Crank Caverns.
It’s a real place with a silly name and kids with nothing better to do have been venturing from St Helens to the Caverns for years. It’s disused mine system deep in a woods sitting on the top of a hill. It’s kind of magical in the way odd bits of abandoned civilisation in the countryside is. It’s the kind of place older boys would tell you Satanists came to at night and you’d pretend you didn’t believe them.
I was fondly remembering how we would dick around in this semi-magical place, the drizzle and cold air biting our fingers, the frosted mud of the surrounding fields crunching under our boots and the time one of our noble party brought a yoghurt but no spoon in his pack lunch. But did that stop him from enjoying his Miller Fruit Corner? Of course not. We were trudgers. We marched forward no matter what. He simply fingered the yoghurt into his mouth. When his hand became sticky he washed it with the contents of a can of Coke. Idiot.
My mind strolled from this instance of low-level idiocy to a much greater one. The caverns themselves as a huge system of tunnels and most of it is gated off but there are a few areas council-funding doesn’t stretch too. In one part of the cavern, you can climb onto a large slab, behind the slab there is a black hole about the size of a dust bin lid descending into the earth. Climbing into said hole became some bizarre ritual to prove one's worth.
After 12 feet (or at least 12 feet give or take 15 years of memory over exaggerating) the whole levelled out and you would have to get onto your belly to get through a wide but very, very short gap. There are a few inches between your head and the roof of the cavern. You would shuffle through the absolute and claustrophobic dark, one arm stretched out in front of you to slim your body and act as a feeler until you spotted the light of the exit. You’d crawl, then crouch, then finally climb out from behind another section of the caves, exhilarated by your freedom.
About ten years ago I visit crank cavern again. The secret tunnelway had collapsed.
What’s this got to with the Discworld? Well, it got me thinking firstly, “I should trudge again” and secondly, “Jesus I could have died at any second .”
As a teen, Rincewind, the perpetual cynic and coward was my favourite character. I was a sarcastic, moody teen myself but I still had some sense of adventure and bravery (a close cousin of stupidity). Now I’m old and more similar to Rincewind than I’m comfortable with. I like him but I don’t want to be like him. He has the fortune of having adventure thrust upon him. I’m just sitting around waiting for adventure.
I decided there and then I needed to find the balance between the youth endangering of my life for no good reason and growing old, boring and static. Remembering a simpler time through reading is fine but I should try to recreate the experience of that time too. I shall trudge again! I just need some new walking boots…
Just as I was pondering this, my wife interrupted — “Have you nearly finished that one?”
“Yup.”
“Are you really going to read them all? That seems like a lot of work?”
“Yup.”
“How many are there? Like, 20?”
“…Um, yeah, around that.”
