SPOILERS Hogfather Discussion **Spoilers**

[Anonymous]

Though DEATH said if they wouldn't have managed to save the believe in the stories the sun wouldn't have risen, but a ball of fiery gas.
I understood it, especially after SoD2, that if the Auditors would have succeeded tipping over that first stone people would have lost their fantasy which is needed for them to actually be human(oid)

(Makes me wonder why the auditors in SoD3 went and tried to get rid of Roundworld the way they did, when all they would have needed would have been messing with the elves.)

Think about what would happen if the humans on the Disc would lose their fantasy in a magical field where stuff rus on narrativium and believe.
It starts with not believing in the Hogfather and taking the sun not as sun but as what it analytically/scientifically is.
next step would be not believing in gods, magical races (trolls, for example, as rocks can't move) leading to the non-believe in the gods and finally to not believing that a flat wolrd on the back of four gargantuan elephants on the back of a turtle swimming through space can actually exist...

 

[SpyViolette]

I re-watched Hogfather on Netflix last night - first time since finishing the book - and I was pleasantly surprised to find they didn't change anything really or leave too much out. I truly was an excellent book that deserved a decent film adaptation.

My little brother, who is 4-years-old, asked if he could watch it and I tried to explain that it isn't for children. He also saw me reading the book a few weeks ago and asked me why Santa had tusks, so I said that it was kinda like Santa from a different, fictional world, except he's called the Hogfather and he has pigs pull his sleigh instead of reindeer.

This all might be off-topic, I'm not sure.

 

[Anonymous]

Oh shoo, what did the book say about stories for children?

 

[meerkat]

Fourn is about right for the Hogfather. Full of horror and fun and will certainly stop him from being scared of Death and anyway, children like horror stories. GOOSEBUMP books have sold like hot cakes.

Read him it. He'll love it!

 

[Tonyblack]

You have one week to read or reread The Light Fantastic for the discussion starting on Monday 5th December.

 

[ChristianBecker]

I must say Hogfather is one of my favourite books - pity I couldn't reread it soon enough.

On the subject of the Hogfather and if it is really necessary that people believe in him I'm with LilMaibe - and Terry explains it much the same way in the end of the book.
Without believe in such things the world would be very different indeed. As Death put it, you need to believe in the small lies in order to be able to believe the big ones like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (oh, wait, slipped into the wrong context here).
Imagine a purely logical race, such as the Auditors would like it. Would there be love? Surely not. And this is but one thing, there are many others. What about human rights? They're a "lie", too. We've made them up (and a good thing it was we did).

 

[Anonymous]

It has been a while since I read this novel and plan on re-reading it before Xmas, will post my thoughts soon.

 

[rockershovel]

I much prefer Teatime to Carcer, in the sense that a character who will do almost anything with no discernible motive or sense of proportion is uninteresting precisely because it is quite impossible to get any sense of what he is like as a person.

Teatime is a psycopath but a very specific type ( am I alone in finding the "te-ah-ti-meh" joke tedious and unecessary, by the way? ) and exists in a concrete way which Carcer simply doesn't.

Personally, I enjoyed Hogfather a lot ( LOVED the pigs pulling the sledge... ), Death's bizarre and extreme sense of humour ( like promising the little girl the pony, and telling Albert that she will certainly BELIEVE... ) is great, along with him saying COWER, BRIEF MORTALS before being recalled by Albert... super stuff

 

[Fortune Clutterbuck]

The bit with the wild boars in the shopping mall is my favourite part - I chuckle every time I read it

Contrariwise to rockershovel I never really "got" Teatime - sadly I found Carcer very believable

 

[inca]

I have a question btw, what's with the cats in Death's house? Does it have a real purpose in the story?

 

[Oberon]

I have a question btw, what's with the cats in Death's house? Does it have a real purpose in the story?

I don't think so inca. I think it's just that he likes cats.

 

[Fortune Clutterbuck]

Death certainly gets very sniffy in Reaperman when he thinks the chocolates may contain cat (a rather literal interpretation of the box cover) - he also shows signs of disapproval in an early (Mort?) appearance when he has to send some drowned kittens on their way

 

[Mycroft Vimes]

To the point of saying I GET VERY ANGRY INDEED(i'm reading Mort atm).
The fact that cats can see him all the time,along with Wizards and Witches,might explain some of the attraction.
Although when experiencing the human thing of getting drunk and he's well into in the melancholy stage he also exlaims "I HAVEN'T GOT A SINGLE FRIEND.EVEN CATS FIND ME AMUSING".

 

[Tonyblack]

I have been watching/listening to this podcast about the origins of Christmas and some of the mistakes people make regarding the origins. It struck me that it was a good companion to the Hogfather.

 

[Hogfatherquest]

Hello.
I would like to know what does the bold italic text in the end of the book mean? I don't understand who says that. Thank you

 

[Tonyblack]

Hello.
I would like to know what does the bold italic text in the end of the book mean? I don't understand who says that. Thank you

Welcome to the site!

I've just looked at the end of my book and I'm not sure what bit you mean. What does the text actually say?

 

[Hogfatherquest]

Hello.
I would like to know what does the bold italic text in the end of the book mean? I don't understand who says that. Thank you

Welcome to the site!

I've just looked at the end of my book and I'm not sure what bit you mean. What does the text actually say?

It's in the end, when Mustrum Ridcully is in the bathroom and the Librarian is playing the organ. I attach a photo, but it's in czech language.

http://prnt.sc/duqh3a

 

[Tonyblack]

Ah ok! I found it. As far as I can see, the reason for the different print is to draw the attention of the reader. It's a narration that is saying: Pay attention to this - something funny is going to happen. So no one is actually saying anything, just the writer. I hope that helps.

 

[Hogfatherquest]

Ohh ok, thank you very much I only wasn'tsure if there is something deeper or not

 

[Aquamarine]

Been reading this one again recently. As much as I really like it, I gotta get into the right frame of mind to fully appreciate some of its aspects.

Part of the problem is just how coy it is about giving information to guide the reader. Teatime's scheme, for instance, has to be pieced together from various clues which Susan, Death, and the Wizards pick up around the place. Parts of the scheme are revealed higgledy-piggledy - knocking out the tooth, kidnapping Violet, piling up the Tooth Fairy's collection - and there's so much going on besides that it feels disproportionately sidelined in favour of the seven locks subplot, to the point where it feels too much like that subplot was a big part of the scheme even after learning that it really isn't.

And I honestly barely noticed the brief POV paragraph of

Spoiler

the Bogeyman/Tooth Fairy

in the early pages until a subsequent reading, which is unfortunate as her/his actual reveal at the end felt sudden, perfunctory, and needlessly, confusingly fragmented. Even when the connections are made (the

Spoiler

sympathetic magic

reveal, for instance), they're so lightly touched upon that I still only fully grasped them because I read external sources and other people's reactions to the book.

However, this is not the same as saying they're bad. The more I think about it, the more I like how the themes all tie together in the end. Take Teatime, for instance. Throughout the book, it's emphasized that kids aren't as innocent as adults like to believe, quite keen on blood and gross things like the Hogfather's four pigs trashing the store. Teatime simply represents the extreme endpoint of that theme.

He's curious and distracted, hence his attempts to do things simply for the sheer fascination of doing them (one of my favourite parts is when he asks Ernie how the dust works and seems keen to try it himself). He takes imaginary creatures seriously, as Downey rather uncomfortably finds out. And he genuinely doesn't seem to understand things that the adults around him take for granted (for instance, that it's pointless using the mirror test on a decapitated corpse to check that it's dead). He also makes a fine counterpoint to several characters - the manchild Banjo, the "civilized" businessmen he hires, Lord Downey, and Death, all in various ways.

For another example,

Spoiler

the Tooth Fairy being the Bogeyman

actually works well with the main themes of the Death series in general: that anthropomorphic personifications can acquire humanity, that they can come to care for the beings they allegedly torment, and that they adopt the specific style human belief has tailored them for. In this case, that youth is equal parts oversimplified misunderstanding of the world (the colourful painting world) and intense terror of it (obviously, the childhood nightmares of the "businessmen"). Weird as it looks superficially, it fits Terry Pratchett's explicit philosophy of subjecting fantasy to rational sense and logical questions, tying everything together neatly.

As much as the execution of the ideas feels flimsy, I have tremendous respect for them now that I understand what they are.

But that "Teh-ah-tim-eh" business was grating. "Teatime" is just such a nice, cosy name that ironically compliments his twisted character; why spoil such an oddly fitting name with an ugly joke that only really serves to scramble my brain briefly and take me out of the text?