SPOILERS Jingo Discussion *spoilers*

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Tonyblack

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#1
**Warning**

This thread is for discussing Jingo in some depth. If you haven’t read the book then read on at your own risk – or, better still, go and read the book and join in the fun.

For those of us that are going to join in the discussion, here are a few guidelines:

Please feel free to make comparisons to other Discworld books, making sure you identify the book and the passage you are referring to. Others may not be as familiar with the book you are referencing, so think before you post.

Sometimes we’ll need to agree to disagree – only Terry knows for sure what he was thinking when he wrote the books and individuals members may have widely different interpretations – so try to keep the discussion friendly.

We may be discussing a book that you don’t much care for – don’t be put off joining in the discussion. If you didn’t care for the book, then that in itself is a good topic for discussion.

Please note: there is no time limit to this discussion. Please feel free to add to it at any time - especially if you've just read the book.

And finally:

Please endeavour to keep the discussion on topic. If necessary I will step in and steer it back to the original topic – so no digressions please!

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Jingo by Terry Pratchett
Originally published 1997




When an ancient island rises in the Circle Sea at mid distance to Ankh-Morpork and Klatch, both nations claim it for themselves. Add to this the assassination of a visiting Klatchian prince to A-M and you have the sparks of war being fanned to an inferno. Commander Vimes enlists the Watch to carry out a ‘Police Action’ on the Klatchian mainland.

--------------------------------------
I want to thank CrysaniaMajere for doing the Introduction to this month’s book. :)

CrysaniaMajere said:
It's not easy to say in just a few words if I liked Jingo. Yes, and no.

Yes because of all its contests anti-war, anti-racism, anti-all-prejudices in general, and because politics has a very small role in it, I'd say almost insignificant, but we get to see Vetinari a lot anyway, and that's very significant to me.

No, because it is too true: it shows that too often people are either ignorant or stupid belligerent hypocrites, and that even good people are.

And it really annoys me that Carrot goes ordering Vetinari around, doesn't matter if he agrees with him, it's wrong! If he wants things done his way he should put a crown on his head and drag the city in the mud, 'cause that's what he'd do, he's no Vetinari. Ok, maybe that's excessive, but not too much.

Now you go on. There's a lot to say about Jingo. :)
------------------------------------


Want to write the introduction for the next discussion (The Last Hero)? PM me and let me know if you’d like to – first come first served. ;)
 

DaveC

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#3
My favourite parts of Jingo were the bits that took place within the city. I love the development of the watch, like a supernatural episode of The Bill.

I didn't really like the bits with Vetinari, Colon, Nobby and Leonard, to me it distracted a bit too much from the desert with Vimes, I wish there was more Carrot too, because I actually like him.

I love the bits that to do with the Klatchian family, it really reminded me of This is England, even though Jingo came first.
 

Jan Van Quirm

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#4
poohcarrot said:
There's a DW continuity lapse.

In Jingo they play proper football with goal posts and an inflatable pig's bladder.

Yet in UA the game of football is totally different. o_O
I think that's because it's CR football (Carrot Rules) not football football? He'd definitely do it by the book like a Youth Leader or Cub Scout Akela. The football in UA is more to do with street gang culture and territory and it's the wild violent and legendary origins of the game - like polo too, which Ahmed mentions on the 'not a battlefield' and the anarchic antagonism that breaks out despite Carrot's best attempts to keep it 'clean'.

It's so long between Jingo and UA so I never really took much notice but this seems a good opp to follow up - do the bad boys mentioned at the start of Jingo get a mention in UA? :laugh:
 

raisindot

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#5
poohcarrot said:
There's a DW continuity lapse.

In Jingo they play proper football with goal posts and an inflatable pig's bladder.

Yet in UA the game of football is totally different. o_O
There's no continuity lapse at all. The pig's bladder ball is Carrot's, and the version he's playing only represents the version of the game he plays. Doesn't mean that his version has to be the only way it's played in AM. Many of the 'innovations' in a sport are born in more homespun games and then are later adapted in the "established" versions. For example, in the U.S., professional basketball was largely a pass and layup game until the African-Americans who had honed their skills on playgrounds in urban centers, brought dunking, alley oops, and a more athletic style of play to the game.

J-I-B
 

poohcarrot

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#6
Bollux J-I*b and Jan. You are talking complete tosh already. :rolleyes:

It's football. It's the universal game that unites Discworld and Roundworld. The Klatchian army and the A-M army played because they all knew the rules - just like the street toughs at the start. That's why at the end when the two warring armies play it's a direct parody of the New Year's Day in the first world war when the Brits and the Germans played.
 

raisindot

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#7
Jingo is one of the strangest DW books, perhaps because so much of it takes place outside of AM. It's hard to get a handle on it because it is, in many ways, a 'transitional' book.

It's the first book where Carrot's role starts to become diminished, while Vimes truly emerges as the key driver of the narrative. By the end, Carrot has become little more than a Lawrence of Arabia parody, while Vimes has become the man who can move the world (we even see the first glimpse of what will emerge as "The Beast").

I also like the mirroring of Vimes and 71-Hour Ali. Their partnership is a very logical outcome of two men who both have a strong belief in "The Law," even if their means of enforcing it are quite different.

I didn't like the Vetinari/Colon/Nobby subplot all that much. First, given that Vetinari believed that Leonard of Quirm is one of the most dangerous people in the world and keeps him locked up for both his own good and the good of society in general, it doesn't make sense that the Patrician would set him loose on the streets to find Colon and Nobby, given that anyone who found out how Leonard was would immediately kidnap him. The whole submarine trip was quite dull at times, although I suppose necessary to help Vetinari discover the true nature of Lesh (which he suspected already). Sometimes I think that whole subplot was designed to set up the scene with Vetinari juggling and later bringing the donkey down the minaret and Nobby's Kaffe-Klatsch with the women. And the whole cross-dressing thing got old after awhile (but set the stage for its reappearance with a vengeance in "Monstrous Regiment")

Overall, a very good book (although I still rank it below the Watch books that followed it), and a clear sign of Pterry's literary progression, as Jingo set the stage for the "fully realized" copper/diplomat/world-shaker Vimes who would emerge in The Fifth Elephant.

J-I-B
 

poohcarrot

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#8
raisindot said:
Overall, a very good book (although I still rank it below the Watch books that followed it), and a clear sign of Pterry's literary progression, as Jingo set the stage for the "fully realized" copper/diplomat/world-shaker Vimes who would emerge in The Fifth Elephant.

J-I-B
I rate Jingo as the best Watch book and Fifth Nellie as the worst. But it just goes to show, doesn't it? There's nowt so queer as folk. :p
 

raisindot

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#9
Wrong, wrong, wrong, Pooh.

There's only one reason why the street kids play Carrot's version of football in the beginning and why the Klatchians and AMers play at the end.

It is because Carrot teaches them. He introduces the game to both the street urchins and to the opposing armies. That's PTerry's big joke here about Carrot. That he can make anyone do anything he wants--even learn a game they've never played in the middle of a war zone.

J-I-B
 

Jan Van Quirm

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#10
Germans v Rest of Europe 1914 and FA rules are the sanitised version of an ancient sport smartybollux :laugh:

Everyone knows kicking/whacking team games with a biggish ball played 'for real' (so footie, rugby, hockey, lacrosse, shinty and hurling and polo (horses or elephants) depending on where you were) were originally developed for play using a bladder of some description and was sometimes 'organised' as a victory celebration with the highest-ranking detached head of the foe you could find after a decent battle - no pitch borders or formal goalposts although they'd have had a 'score' area.

The first game in Jingo is Carrot Rules - the Jingo battlefield and the 'shove' version at the beginning of UA are the proper game and in the latter is formalised back to Carrot Rules by Vetinari and the Wizards team so they can civilise it ;)

Didn't they do a Jingo style game between Wincanton and a nearby village one Hogswatch meet a few years back before UA was written? Its an analogy for law/order and anarchy :p
 

Jan Van Quirm

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#11
I love the Vetinari, Leonard, Colon/Al and Nobby/Beti part most of all in this :laugh:

The reason Vetinari springs Leonard from his safe cell in the palace is nothing to do with the war or with politics in general - it's because Leonard's already seen Leshp, but in it's sunken state and from below the surface. Vetinari makes the connection and takes Leonard back there so between them both they can work out whether the island city is a permanent phenomenon or not. Then it's just a case of pooh's fave pearl of Turkish wisdom - Leshp will go away very soon and so ultimately it doesn't matter, because eventually it won't be there to fight over at all - and so any defeat or victory will be completely void. :rolleyes:

Another pearl that I noticed right back when we were reading CoM (or one of the 1st 4 books anyway) last year - Leshp was mentioned in there as well, right at the beginning of Discworld. Sunken or otherwise lost legendary cities are 2 a penny in fantasy. Terry also played with the idea in MP too - there's a sunken city with lots of strange lobsters in that as well :laugh:
 

Tonyblack

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#12
Regarding the football thing. Isn't there an even earlier book that talks of Troll football using somebody's head? It's almost certain a continuity thing - but so what? It's not the first time Terry has done such a thing.

I agree that the main reason it's put in there is as a parody of the WW1 match (which I thought was on Christmas Day o_O ). But there's also a comment about war taking place on the sports field. I think that may be a reference to Wellington's alleged comment that: "The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton".

Also the idea of getting the street urchins learning to work and play together is pretty much the mandate that Baden Powell set up for the Boy Scout movement. Carrot seemed to be playing the role of BP as well as Lawrence in this one. :laugh:
 

poohcarrot

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#13
The problem you two are having (the two Js) is that you both not interested in football.
Alternatively, the problem I'm having is that I am interested in football. :p

Page 37 Kirby pb said:
"Although A-M football doesn't have goals in the normal sense, two had been nevertheless made at each end of the alley using the time-honoured method of piling up things to mark where the posts would be.
If it's "time-honoured" it means it's a tradition, or an old charter, or something.

I took the "A-M doesn't have goals in the normal sense" to mean there were no goal posts anywhere in the city because footy hadn't taken off yet. Instead, people improvised like I used to do when I was a nipper.

Page 378 said:
Someone broke through the scrum and, punching and kicking, staggered towards the Klatchian GOAL
Page 382 said:
Oh, I always carry a deflated one in my pack, sir. A very pacifying object a football.
So it's not just an inflated pig's bladder, it's actually a real football.

And A-M won on PKs! :laugh:
 

raisindot

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#15
poohcarrot said:
The problem you two are having (the two Js) is that you both not interested in football.
That is absolutely only half true. I was interested in football when my kids were playing it (both quite good, made the highest level non-school city teams, skills that must have come from their mum's side since I've got none of it).

Now that they're not playing anymore, I'm back to being one of the 95% Yanks who don't give a rat's about it.

Back to discussion.

:laugh:

J-I-B
 

Jan Van Quirm

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#17
Thought this might come in useful for this thread after briefly talking about other instances of lost cities on the Disc



The numbered locations on the Circle Sea region are as follows (clockwise from our NW into the sea itself) -

8 - Para Mountain } Moving Pictures
14 - Holy Wood }
7 - Jowser Cove
15 - Chirm
19 - Kom
21 - N'Kouf
3 - Ephebe
2 - Djelibeybi
1 - Tsort
6 - Erebos
5 - Papylos
4 - Crinix

also - just 'cos it's so funny 13 - Heliodeliphilodelphiboschromenos :laugh:

As a tangential point, but still on Leshp in general and it's place in Circle Sea cultural importance (as a Mediterranean style cradle of civilisation :p ) and of Holy Wood and it's sunken 'city' (which really is too close to Leshp for co-incidence), I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that a retro mage-war Discworld Atlantis/Indiana Jones-style story is waiting to happen if Terry is spared long enough to get around to it? 8)

The entire Circle Sea is too super-volcanic caldera-like for comfort in fact. :twisted:
 

Jan Van Quirm

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#18
poohcarrot said:
Jan Van Quirm said:
:eek:

:laugh: oh - Kirby paperback! :rolleyes:

Like Terry says (and did) you don't have to like football to write about it.
He does (and did), he doesn't, but I do. :laugh:
Therefore my take is going to be different from yours. :p
And long may we disagree so entertainingly smartypants


Actually -
credit to pooh for the map too (that's my old map from the turtle table which pooh sent me a beautiful unfaded replacement for last year)
 
#19
Didn't Thief of Time act as a crystallising moment in DW? I'm fairly sure (although I'm willing to be corrected) I read somewhere that continuity errors pre ToT can be chalked up to the History Monks cobbling the timeline back together as best they can, but everything post ToT can considered the 'true' state of Discworld reality as it currently stands... If I'm remembering correctly, the fact that post-UA football exists in Jingo can be chalked up to the "Trousers of Time" effect. As I said earlier, my memory may be playing tricks on me. o_O

Speaking of alternate timelines, the scenes where Vimes' Dis-Organiser gets itself caught in the wrong reality make for genuinely chilling reading. For me, Jingo is where the Watch stories begin to truly find their voice, rather than being gentle parodies of swashbucklers, murder mysteries or police procedurals. After Jingo, the Watch stories are driven more by the characters than the plot. The Vimes who thunders from the page in The Fifth Elephant, Night Watch and Thud! really comes into focus in Jingo.

I do have some issues with the book, though. I really don't like Fred Colon at all in Jingo. I understand the necessity of having a character who engages in mindless racism, jingoism and xenophobia but having it be Fred felt very forced to me. I would probably rather a new character or even a minor recurring character (Quirke, maybe?) be the one taking that path.
 

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