Let’s get into it, friends. Let’s talk about what really matters.
Let’s talk about death.
We’re here to start Pratchett’s very first Death-centered book, Mort.
Summary
Mort’s father Lezek and his uncle Hemesh are talking about what to do with him. He’s just a very strange young man who thinks too much and isn’t much suited to doing anything, plus he reads. His uncle suggests his father get him apprenticed, so he’ll become someone else’s problem, and they head to a nearby village where boys line up in the town square to become apprentices. No one picks Mort, but he waits all day unto the stroke of midnight, and Death arrives. He offers Mort a job as his apprentice, making Lezek think he’s being apprenticed to an undertaker. Before they go, Lezek tells Mort that apprentices sometimes inherit the business of the men they’re apprenticed to, especially if the man owning the business has a daughter they can marry. Death takes Mort to Ankh-Morpork to have a curry, and while Mort thinks to ask about how he can eat, Death goes off on an entirely different tangent—someone has drowned a bag of kittens, and he’s angry about how his job means he often doesn’t see people at their best.
They eat curry and get Mort new clothes and a haircut, and Mort wakes up the next day in Death’s house. He walks around and runs into Ysabell, Death’s adopted daughter, who is surprised to find he is real and alive, and decides to call him “Boy”. She takes him to the kitchen where the manservant Albert is cooking up breakfast, but before Mort can eat, he is summoned to Death’s study. He tells Mort to muck out the stables, though he fails to explain what this has to do with learning the secrets of time and space, as being Death’s apprentice is sure to impart. As he’s working, Ysabell comes to ask why Death would have taken him on as an apprentice, as Death isn’t something you become, it’s something you are. Once he’s finished, he goes back to Death’s study and asks him why he was told to muck out the stables. He realizes that it’s because Death is always up to his knees in horseshit. Death is impressed by Mort’s clarity, and asks if he’s met Ysabell, his daughter, who will of course inherit everything that’s his. Then Death tries to wink.
Buy the Book
Master of Poisons
Mort spends some time with Albert, who is quite alive, though he won’t say how he came to be in Death’s employ, or why they seem to have a quiet understanding between each other. Death takes Mort out to do his job—he’s going to the assassination of a king in Klatchistan at the hands of the Duke of Sto Helit. Mort is full of questions—what sort of king the man is, why he has to die then, why Death uses a sword instead of a scythe here (kings get the sword on account of being royalty)—while Death is trying to explain that he’s merely there to do the job, not dispense justice. Mort tries to warn the king, but his pleas don’t work, as Death says they won’t. The king handles his death quite well, though he is worried for his daughter. As they leave, they walk through a wall, which almost kills Mort when he realizes that he shouldn’t be able to do it. He asks Death if this is magic, but that’s the one thing it isn’t, according to Death. The king’s morphogenetic field begins to weaken and he fades. Mort asks what’s happened to him, to which Death replies ONLY HE KNOWS.
Death explains to Mort that only the gods can interfere with who lives and who dies, and that attempting to alter it could destroy the world. Mort wants to know if he’ll be sent home, but Death isn’t displeased that Mort showed compassion—he merely tells him that he’ll have to learn the type of compassion suitable to the trade. After some time in Death’s home, where he occasionally goes out for the sake of “the Duty” of their trade, sometimes helps Albert about the place, and sometimes reads in the library, Mort asks Death for a day off. Death is surprised, but sends Mort to Ankh-Morpork for the day. Once there, he tries to get a fast horse, with the intention of heading to Sto Lat, but ends up menaced by a bunch of thieves who want the money Death sent him out with. Mort outwits them handily, knowing he’s not likely to die—he walks through a wall. In the meantime, Death is going through the upcoming deaths, one of them being a princess who is only fifteen. He decides he will send Mort solo to collect the next three deaths because he is feeling quite sad.
Mort winds up in a Klatchian household and allows them to think he’s a demon, asking them to get him a horse. The husband, who is a server at the curry place, tells the family they’re moving back home—because he just sold Mort the Patrician’s champion racehorse. Mort rides to Sto Lat, intending to talk to the king’s daughter because she’d seen him when he was invisible before her father died. But he can’t manage to walk through walls into the palace, so he goes to find a wizard, and meets Cutwell. He asks the wizard to help him figure out how to walk through walls, but Cutwell says that will take time and research. Mort gives him a gold coin as a down payment, then notes that it’s sunset and Death will be coming to collect him in the city, so he rushes from Cutwell’s home… but finds himself with Death as soon as his time’s up.
Book Club Chat
Pratchett has stated that Mort is the first Discworld novel he was personally pleased with, making some comment about how before all of his plots had existed to essentially hold up his jokes, and Mort was the book that changed all that. It is not at all surprising that the first Death book would be the tome that did it, I think, because the Discworld is a unique fictional universe, but Death of Discworld is something altogether singular even alongside that remarkable feat.
And of course, what really matters about Death is that he’s capable of being depressed.
There is always a question of whether we believe, from a storytelling perspective, that being a personification of Death would be a depressing job. And different stories have different opinions on the matter, whether they decide that Death is a function and therefore incapable of feeling any way about the work, or that having a job tied to literally the only fact of life—that everything eventually dies—is an inevitable hardship that takes its toll. But with Discworld’s Death it’s a bit more specific, namely in the fact that Death is aware that his job means that he’s often going to encounter the worst in people. We get that very explicitly with the section around the drowned kittens, and it comes early in the story as a way of framing the difficulty we’re going to see between Death and Mort.
There’s a weariness to Death from the outset of the story, which really culminates in the moment when he asks Albert about what he’s feeling, Albert tells him sadness, and he replies I AM SADNESS. Which always struck me because if you’re the personification of an aspect of natural order then… well, it just makes sense that your emotional states are more than just your brain doing chemicals. If Death is sad and he is becoming sadness, conceptually, that’s a lot, even for him.
There’s also the romantic aspect to this story between Mort and Ysabell, of course, which is made to mirror Great Expectations. (The fact that Ysabell calls Mort “Boy” is a tell to that end, as Estelle calls Pip the same.) And I have feelings about that because honestly, it is not a Dickens I’ve ever been overly fond of, but you could argue that Pratchett is trying to do Dickens one better here. Just to start, the set up is better—rather than a horrific bitter old woman keeping a girl locked away from the world, Ysabell’s adopted dad isn’t trying to make her life miserable with the world he’s created around her. He knows that she’s lonely and could use some company her own age. He’s trying to help in a very messy dad sort of way. So it’ll be fun to pick over the way Pratchett uses that framework to a better end, and actually creates a proper love story around it.
As a side note, there’s a thing I think about a lot, which is that Death’s decor is all done in purple and black. Which is just… it’s the thing, right? Like, I myself as a person with deeply goth sensibilities who still loves glitter and color, know that the goth color outside black is always purple. If a character who leans goth is wearing another color, it’s purple. (Occasionally there’s a splash of red, usually if they’re evil.) Ergo, Death’s house is black and purple. And white, too, because bones.
Asides and little thoughts:
- Obvious thing out of the way—Mort means death in French, we all know it, it’s very cute.
- This is the second time we read “million-to-one-chances crop up nine times out of ten” in the Discworld novels, which is something of a running joke for Pratchett that even predates Discworld—apparently it can also be found in The Dark Side of the Sun.
- Stuck on the idea of reannual plants, and being a gardener who knows they are planting things so that you can enjoy what you saw last year.
- When Mort tells Death that his clothes are new and Death’s response is IT CERTAINLY ADDS A NEW TERROR TO POVERTY, just, damn son. I think one of my favorite things about Death is how his sense of humor is something scathing and profoundly gentle all at once.
- As descriptors go, the idea of Ysabell being close to Pre-Raphaelite but with the “slight suggestion of too many chocolates” is something that I think many of us would strive for, or have possibly achieved. *reaches for chocolates*
- Mort’s way of dividing up the stables when doing his work is, indeed, a very useful way of thinking of anything, even if I can’t always get my brain to cooperate on that front.
- I love that Death says he gets his coins in pairs, as a reference to covering the dead’s eyes with coins. It’s just good.
Pratchettisms:
Tragic heroes always moan when the gods take an interest in them, but it’s the people the gods ignore who get the really tough deals.
The other diners didn’t take much notice, even when Death leaned back and lit a rather fine pipe. Someone with smoke curling out of their eye sockets takes some ignoring, but everyone managed it.
He blanched and muttered a few protective incantations after Death turned, very slowly for maximum effect, and treated him to a grin.
There were a lot of funereal drapes here, and a grandfather clock with a tick like the heartbeat of a mountain. There was an umbrella stand beside it.
It had a scythe in it.Three men had appeared behind him, as though extruded from the stonework. They had the heavy, stolid look of those thugs whose appearance in any narrative means that it’s time for the hero to be menaced a bit, although not too much, because it’s also obvious that they’re going to be horribly surprised.
Death had said that it was an acquired taste. Mort had decided not to make the effort.
We will be reading through to “Fut up!” next week.
Pratchett has stated that Mort is the first Discworld novel he was personally pleased with, making some comment about how before all of his plots had existed to essentially hold up his jokes, and Mort was the book that changed all that.
I agree; Mort is the earliest Pratchett book I own, the place where I consider Discworld to have gotten going. I’m really excited to be following the reread for a book I know.
Oh, that sequence with the thugs. The way that ends is possibly my favourite moment in all of Pratchett: “He was in the Shades, and he was alone. He ran for it, and got quite a long way.” That may well be the very best example of Pratchett’s incredible ability to use negative space in storytelling, giving you exactly what you need to know in the words he doesn’t use.
Ah, Mort, the.book in which we really get to know our favorite anthropomorphic personification.
Yes, the kittens. And Death saying CATS ARE NICE.
Mort being an adolescent boy largely constructed out of elbows.
It’s the book where Death comes to life, anyway.
An absolute gem, full of characters with a history and a plot that revolves around people doing things rather than looking for or stopping something. Sir Pterry really pushed the boat out on this one and turned a corner (if I may mix my metaphors).
Mort and Wyrd Sisters are what I’d recommend to anyone new to Pratchett.
I think this is the first place where we see that Death has — not pride, but an idea that he’s doing something that must be done; note him telling Mort that compassion isn’t grounds for firing him but taking pleasure in someone’s death might have been, or “There’s no justice!” / “THERE’S JUST ME.”
I can’t rediscover the exact text, but possibly my favorite Pratchettism in this block is the bit about the sort of smile that lies on a riverbank waiting to snap at things. But the statement that the Shades is the sort of place that has denizens rather than inhabitants is also right up there, and not far ahead of several others; it felt like this actually had more ~gags in it than ER, but he doesn’t stop the story to be funny — instead he uses his wit to move the story forward while having fun, which is fun to watch.
This is basically just a retelling of the Grimm story Godfather Death, isn’t it?
I’ve read a few comments ELSEWHERE that said how little people liked Mort, and I thought to myself, well, surely, I must be wrong to be enjoying it this much. That just goes to show that ELSEWHERE is not to be taken too seriously.
That there is such a soft spot in DEATH’s “heart” for kittens is great. I can’t put it any better way.
I’m not sure if it was being done in Mort, but later Discworld books had Death talking in small caps rather than all caps. And, fortunately, HTML CSS supports small caps. You just need to add the proper tag around Death’s speech: <span style=”font-variant:small-caps”>should appear in small caps</span>
Death is totally a cat person.
Pratchett books (and Rex Stout oddly enough) are my comfort reads, when I’m too tired/lazy/sad/whatever to start a new book. And Mort is one of my favs. How can you not love a Death who loves kittens
Also Albert is a great character.
@@.-@ Mort also had a knee in his neck, as I recall. Can’t think of a better way to describe a prominent Adam’s apple in a long skinny neck.
@10: Death’s lines use ESCaps in place of lower-case letters, and full-size capitals as in standard text, in what ISFDB says is the original US publication (Signet, 1989); I’m pretty sure that also holds for the earlier books. However, AFAICT this blog doesn’t support even trivial HTML, e.g. <i>; maybe the all-seeing moderator can comment?
@8: There’s one element in common (the human acting against Death’s orders) but a lot of differences — even if you’re talking about Zelazny’s musical adaptation (in which the human lives) rather than original. Aside from all the furnishings and the comedy take, Mort is an apprentice Death rather than a human who gets famous by using a gift from Death. It’s possible Pratchett knew the story — but he might not have, depending on which edition of Grimm he read; it’s in Bantam’s complete (1987), but I don’t remember it being in a much older version (ancient-looking when I read it in the early 1960’s).
I do agree that this is the one where Pratchett really found his form. Fascinating to see his growth (over a relatively short time.) The first book, funny as it is, is really a collection of comedy sketches, the second has a bit of a plot but nothing major. Equal Rites does tell a story but Mort absolutely sings, tightly plotted and absorbing whilst still being laugh out loud funny.
I’m enjoying the read so far. Good find on the coins come in pairs quote – I was confused when I read it, though I really should have caught the reference.
Another bit I don’t quite get: “The big low room inside was dark and shadowy … and the kind of person who throws all his socks at the wall and wears the ones that don’t stick.” What’s the joke here?
In Greek mythology there would only be one coin in the mouth for Charon.
US editions aren’t a good place to look for the “correct” spelling/font in a British book.
@17: I think Pratchett is upsetting the cliche of the dark-and-mysterious wizard’s room by telling us it’s really just an ill-lit mess, despite the second-rate wizard’s attempt to dress it up with incense. cf Adams’s somewhat stronger description of Dirk Gently’s living room, ending with ~”If Hercules had gotten one look at it, he would returned armed with a navigable river.”
@18: I grant spelling (having dealt with arguments about preserving UK spelling in the long-ago when I was editing), but was anyone talking about that? ISTM that fonts should match. The US cover is the same very full Josh Kirby artwork as the original UK editions (according to the ISFDB images), but cropped, so it may have been re-typeset — but I’d have thought they’d have the same type convention as the UK version. Does anyone have an original Gollancz or Corgi to check the interior of?
I forget whether we ever see English-idea-of-Greek in the Discworld, but ISTM that at this point Pratchett is still giving us the English-idea-of-England, for which a pair of coins on the eyes would be vaguely appropriate — although I don’t recall Death ever seeing a corpse laid out for burial rather than at the moment of death.
@chip: Death says at one point that being Death he doesn’t have to know about burial customs. Typically, he meets people before they’re buried. The ones he meets after they’ve been buried tend to overexcited and disinclined to discuss things.
@19 In my Corgi edition of Hogfather, Death speaks in all-caps, no difference in font size either at the beginning of a sentence or right down the length of the sentence, actually, but the font for Death’s speech is slightly smaller than that of capital letters elsewhere in the text. Can’t be more descriptively technical than that, hope that it is of some use.
I forget whether we ever see English-idea-of-Greek in the Discworld
We definitely see the English-idea-of-ancient-Greece on several occasions: Ephebe features heavily in Pyramids, Eric and Small Gods.
In my UK paperbacks death is all-caps in TCOM, but small caps in subsequent books (except for the initial letters of sentences, names etc which are full-sized caps). He’s also “He” in TCOM but just “he” in subsequent books.
<i>As a side note, there’s a thing I think about a lot, which is that Death’s decor is all done in purple and black. Which is just… it’s the thing, right?</i>
Death considers the value of the traditional black robe as acceptable garb in any cultural context:
“It was simple. It went with anything. Sooner or later, it went with everything.”
@17: I expect the sock part refers to someone who cares so little about hygiene as to deem socks wearable if they’re not so filthy that they’d stick to a wall. I don’t want to know exactly what could make a filthy sock sticky. Unless it’s the wall that might be sticky, which seems possible.
(Ugh.)
“someone who cares so little about hygiene as to deem socks wearable if they’re not so filthy that they’d stick to a wall.”
Reminds me slightly of Red Dwarf – amiable slob Dave Lister helps to reduce the laundry burden by turning his underpants inside out, thereby extending the wear time by an additional three weeks.
After reading Soul Music and absolutely loving Susan Sto Helit // I always feel sad about Mort knowing what happenes just a few years later.//
I’ve never quite worked out if that’s a reference to fashion constantly changing but coming back around to the same things (eg “black is the new black”), or a reference to death and decay and the eventual heat death of the universe. When the sun eventually burns out, everything will be black.
Just a reference to the inevitability of death, I think.
I think part of what I find so miraculous about Pratchett is that he sees human beings very clearly, and yet he clearly has enormous affection for human beings. He sees the pettiness and the greed and the prejudice and the aggressiveness, and he isn’t discouraged. Most of the people I’ve ever heard of who love humanity as a whole are kidding themselves about what people are really like. Most of the people I’ve ever heard of who see humanity clearly don’t like people very much. Pratchett manages to see all of our faults and fears and weaknesses for what they are … and love us, anyway. I think maybe he’s God. :-)
Another thing that I like about the Discworld novels is that they’re astonishingly well written, especially the middle of the series and beyond. Every book includes a sentence that’s so lovely that I have to read it out loud to my husband, just so that we can both appreciate the wonderful way that Pratchett used words, even though both of us have read these books more than once. At least from the middle of the series on, Pratchett’s use of language is genius, but his books are FUN; they’re not heavy or dull.
Fun plots on the surface, incredibly insightful commentary on human nature under the surface, wonderful use of language — Pratchett is a Shakespeare for our times.
The Beam Me Up Book Club discussed Mort just a week and a half ago. Here’s our meeting notes.
Among other things.
Another characteristic that Alan noted in Sir Terry’s writing is the decency of the protagonists. Mort, Death, Death’s adopted daughter Ysabell, his servant Albert (formerly the Discworld’s most powerful magician), are all decent folk, sometimes a bit preoccupied with their own peculiar beliefs (Death is lonely, Ysabell is a frustrated romantic), but dedicated to their duties over their own desires.
This (from Alan’s link) is a really insightful point, and carries over into one of my own hobbyhorses about comedy – that some of it is made by people who basically love people, and some of it is made by people who basically hate people. UK television viewers will know what I mean when I say that The Fast Show is category 1 and Little Britain is category 2. PG Wodehouse and James Thurber are category 1; Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift are category 2. “Four Lions” is category 1; “The Death of Stalin” is category 2. Category 1 characters are often weird, eccentric, deranged, obsessive, terribly broken in some way, dense as teak; but they’re still basically people that you can sympathise with. Category 2 characters we watch with horrified laughter.
I prefer category 1 comedy, I think, and Pratchett is category 1.
Correction: The murder of the king is in Sto Lat, barely 20 miles away from Ankh Morpork. It’s very far from Klatchistan.
“Even the hot meat pie man had stopped crying his wares and, with no regard for personal safety, was eating one.” Since this is not Ankh Morpork, this can’t be CMOT Dibbler. But it could be one of his clones.
This book comes from Neil Gaiman insisting that he would like to read a book about Death. Which makes me wonder: why did Pratchett create Ysabell in The Light Fantastic? She doesn’t really have a role in that book, and nothing is said about the circumstances of her adoption at that point. Did he already plan to write about Death, but later?
The name of Binky is Bigadin in French. Of course, Mort is still Mort.
“Well,—-me,” he said. “A—-ing wizard. I hate—-ing wizards!”
“You shouldn’t—-them, then,” muttered one of his henchmen, effortlessly pronouncing a row of dashes.
Later we’ll meet Mr. Tulip, who pronounces it with one dash!
@8: The stories are indeed similar. Except that in Godfather Death the hero is a doctor, so I don’t feel like he has to adhere to Death’s rules (even though he must pay the price if he decides to break them). Mort is Death, and he should understand why what he’s doing is wrong.
I love how Pratchett talks about small town: “Mort enjoyed visiting the town, with its cosmopolitan atmosphere and strange dialects from villages as far away as five, even ten miles.”
And of course, Ankh-Morpork will always be the Ankh: “Poets have tried to describe Ankh-Morpork. They have failed. Perhaps it’s the sheer zestful vitality of the place, or maybe it’s just that a city with a million inhabitants and no sewers is rather robust for poets, who prefer daffodils and no wonder. So let’s just say that Ankh-Morpork is as full of life as an old cheese on a hot day, as loud as a curse in a cathedral, as bright as an oil slick, as colorful as a bruise and as full of activity, industry, bustle and sheer exuberant busyness as a dead dog on a termite mound.”
“You couldn’t help noting with every breath that thousands of other people were very close to you and nearly all of them had armpits.”
“Even before it entered the city, it was slow and heavy with the silt of the plains, and by the time it got to The Shades even an agnostic could have walked across it. It was hard to drown in the Ankh, but easy to suffocate.”
““Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?”
Mort thought for a moment.
“No,” he said eventually, “what?”
There was silence. Then Albert straightened up and said, “Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve ’em right.””
I don’t think Albert could criticise someone for wanting to understand their world. After all, it’s only in Ankh-Morpork that curiosity not only killed the cat but threw it in the river with weights tied to its feet!
Another nice Pratchettism:
“Some jobs offer increments. This one offered—well, quite the reverse”
Very late to the party, but I don’t think anyone has yet mentioned that the dirty socks joke (“throw them against the wall and wear what doesn’t stick”) could be referencing a turn of phrase regarding an arguing or problem solving style: To throw everything against the wall and see what sticks.
I always assumed the phrase in turn had something to do with the way my Mom taught me how to test sphaghetti for doneness – literally fling a noodle against the wall and see if it sticks – but I’ve been surprised before by how not-common some of my family’s habits were.
Weirdly, a copy of Mort was never in my Discworld collection until now. For a long time, I was holding out for a copy with Kirby’s cover art, to match the rest of my early Discworld paperbacks. At one point a friend loaned me a copy, and I read it, but the story simply slipped out of my head, so that when I listened to Mark Oshiro’s reading years later, it was completely new. And then it slipped out of my head again, so I have finally got myself an ebook copy to read along now, and to reread at will, so it can become as familiar as every other Discworld novel.
For what it’s worth, my first Discworld was Sourcery. My Mom found it for me shortly after its publication–must have been, if it was published in 1988 and I was reading it in the hospital–Mom was doing her best to keep me entertained during a year and a half of chemo treatments, so she was giving me fantasy novels somewhat indiscriminately–so I imprinted on Rincewind from the beginning and will always be very fond of his stories.
I think Death’s garden includes purple because the opposite if light was described as “a disappointing purple color” in The Light Fantastic.
Also worth mentioning is that the 4 horseman call Death “Mort” when they’re playing cards in the same book.