A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett

Source of Book: Audiobook from the library

This is the second book in Terry Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching series of Discworld novels. The first is The Wee Free Men, which I read a couple of years ago. Earlier this year, I listened to it with the kids, who absolutely loved it. I didn’t write a separate review regarding the kids’ reactions. Suffice it to say that No'-As-Big-As-Medium-Jock-But-Bigger-Than-Wee-Jock-Jock was the most popular character. (And I made dad points by being able to say his name correctly…) Any character that can use terrible poetry as a weapon is alright by me.

This book is a good bit longer than the first one, a fact that became important under the circumstances. We generally listen to audiobooks during vacations, and this was no exception. I had planned a camping trip with about 6 hours worth of driving, and chose this book before I realized it was 9 hours long. In the actual event, a freak thunderstorm caused mudslides, closing both main roads north from Los Angeles, causing traffic to be rerouted on to the roads we wished to use. This meant that it took us 10 hours to get where we were going. The superstitious part of me thinks I need to be careful about choosing books in the future. The optimistic part of me says that it was nice to have a book if we were going to be stuck in traffic. The realistic part of me is irritated that I didn’t follow my first instinct and take the northern route from the first, rather than after finding the southern route jammed. Oh well…

A Hat Full Of Sky picks up the story of Tiffany and the Wee Free Men a couple of years after the first book. Tiffany has been selected to study to become a “real” witch as an apprentice to Miss Level, a peculiar character who inhabits two bodies. Tiffany finds that her training doesn’t consist of much - or really any - “magic,” as she understands it. Rather, she spends her time caring for the needy and milking goats. As Miss Level says, these are the “ordinary things” that witchcraft is mostly about. Not what she had envisioned, exactly, and the fact that she gets airsick on brooms and can’t seem to make a “shamble,” a magical version of cat’s cradle, doesn’t help either.

The point, however, is that Tiffany needs to learn the psychological skills of witchcraft before she can properly use the supernatural skills. Tiffany is surprised to find that Miss Level helps even the undeserving.  

“A witch never expects payment and never asks for it and just hopes she never needs to. You can't not help people just because they're stupid or forgetful or unpleasant. Everyone's poor round here. If I don't help them, who will?”

This is familiar to me, of course. I spent the early years of my legal practice at the local Legal Aid non-profit, and I very much spent time helping those who were in some ways “stupid, forgetful, and unpleasant.” My wife the nurse does this even more, and she - like a witch - cannot refuse service to the undeserving.

Later, Mistress Weatherwax, the greatest witch of all, explains to Tiffany:

“[S]he likes people. She cares about 'em. Even the stupid, mean, dribbling ones... who treat her like some kind of servant. Now that's what I call magic... That is the root and heart and soul and centre of witchcraft, that is.”

As a Christian, this concept is recognizable and dear: Grace. Favor and kindness offered where completely undeserved.

G. K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy (reviewed here) also notes this:

Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible.... It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them.

It is the same idea, though stated by two very different - and yet alike - authors. Pratchett was not religious, but he had the same irrepressible hope and joie de vivre as Chesterton. And, I might add, the same charity and goodwill toward all that I admire in both.

In this sense, I disagree with those who believe that grace can only be shown by Christians. I have experienced it from those outside the faith as well as those within, and Pratchett’s explanation in this book is as good as I have ever seen it.

The story doesn’t contain just the mundane, however. Tiffany also faces an external enemy. This is a mysterious supernatural entity called a “hiver,” although the book is intentionally unclear as to exactly what it is. It was apparently birthed in the first moments of creation, and is like a disembodied brain, but without the ability to truly think. It takes control of animals and humans, and tries to give them power, but ends up destroying them in the end.

The best explanation of the Hiver, however, may be a psychological one. As the story unfolded, I began to realize that the Hiver in a way serves to feed the Id of the host. The Hiver tries to please its host by granting its subconscious wishes. The wishes are not good for the host, however, which is the main problem. As Tiffany later realizes, the part of her that is still the mere animal - the monkey if you will - wants things that are not good for it. That part of her wants revenge, power, shortcuts, pleasure, and so on. The Id.

The Hiver represses her ego (the part of her that delays gratification and seeks long term good), and her superego (the part that is her conscience, telling her to do what is good, not what feels good.) These are the parts of her that are truly human, rather than animal. This is also the part of her that seeks help in ridding her body of the Hiver.

At this point, it will take the efforts of the Wee Free Men - who fear nothing - and Mistress Weatherwax to enable Tiffany to throw off the Hiver and regain her human, empathetic self.

In the end, then, both of Tiffany’s challenges turn out to be internal rather than external. She must fight her own worst instincts and tap into her better nature. She must seek and offer grace, rather than mere justice. She must also learn the difference between seeming and actually being.

As usual, Pratchett does what the best “children’s” authors have always done: take important and profound concepts and weave them into compelling tales in ways that let children (and adults) discover the conclusions themselves. A Hat Full of Sky is a compelling story, hard to put down, wonderfully paced, and full of delightful details and jokes and believable characters. And yet, one finds Freud and philosophy at its heart too.

I didn’t discover Pratchett until a few years ago, but I am greatly enjoying catching up. His books make the miles (or at least hours in this case) disappear, and give much food for thought. The fact that my kids love him too is a bonus.

One final bit I must mention. The “mean girl” in this book has a simply perfect name: Annagramma. At least among my nerdy friends, I shall from henceforth use it as shorthand for that sort of girl.

***

Also, a bit of music. Because.

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

Source of book: Borrowed from the library

I’ve read a lot of heavy stuff this year, including the 900 page Daniel Deronda, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Railroaded, and Iron Curtain. I am almost done with G. M. Trevelyan’s monumental work, The Stuarts. And by “monumental,” I also mean it could double as a tombstone. (Actually a very interesting book - but long.)

So, I was in need of some lighter reading.

This book - and author - came highly recommended from two different literary friends who share a love for good grammar and nerdy stuff. First was my cousin-in-law Jennifer, the English teacher. We share a dislike of bad writing, pseudo-science, and faulty punctuation. She also married my geekiest cousin - and believe me, he has competition. (I remember him using Euler’s Identity as the basis for a password.) The second is my friend Karen, who also reads Anthony Trollope and Greek tragedies, and blogs about all kinds of stuff - including bad grammar.

So, if both of them recommended the same author, I figured I would give him a try. 

I was not disappointed. The book was filled with bad puns, sly references to history, culture, and the worlds of fantasy and literature. Also, lawyers figure prominently in the plot of this book.

The “Wee Free Men” of the title are a race of small wood fairies (or something like that) that also call themselves Nac Mac Feegle. The author also refers to them as “pictsies.” Yes, that is a terrible pun on “pixies,” but it is also a pretty good description. They are based somewhat on the Picts (the early Scottish tribes), and suffer from all the bad Scottish stereotypes: they drink and swear and brawl, have red hair and blue battle tattoos, and speak a sort of Gaelic. They are afraid of nothing - except lawyers. And, the related fear of having their names written down, because that would mean indictments and summons and stuff like that. In a particularly felicitous nod to Tolkien, their swords glow bright blue in the presence of lawyers.

Other good lawyer stuff: in the climactic scene, the Wee Free Men find themselves charged with, among other offenses, “Using Offensive Language (taking into account ninety-seven counts of Using Language That Was Probably Offensive If Anybody Could Understand It).” Also, I learned a very good reason why one should not sue one’s fairy godmother for breach of contract.

The heroine, Tiffany, finds herself engaged in a battle with the queen of fairyland when the two worlds collide. She gets advice (and a toad) from a witch, and sets off with her frying pan in hand, her memory of her grandmother (who was also a witch) to guide her, to rescue her toddler brother from the clutches of the queen. She makes an alliance with the Wee Free Men, as they are in need of a leader, but have extensive knowledge of fairyland.

I won’t spoil the plot, but I will mention some things I really liked.

First, I think Pratchett may have borrowed his concept of fairyland as the place of dreams from C. S. Lewis. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lord Rhoop is rescued from a dark island where dreams come true. Not daydreams, but real dreams. Nightmares. Pratchett expands this idea. In his fairyland, everything comes from dreams. All the scary creatures. The “dromes,” which capture one in a dream. One of one’s own dreams, or those of someone else nearby. Even the scenery behaves as it does in a dream.

And things were not...finished. Like the trees in the forest they were heading toward, for example. A tree is a tree, she thought. Close up or far away, it’s a tree. It has bark and branches and roots. And you know they’re there, even if the tree is so far away that it’s a blob.

The trees here, though, were different. She had a strong feeling that they were blobs, and were growing the roots and twigs and other details as she got closer, as if they were thinking, “Quick, someone’s coming! Look real!”

I had never thought of dreams that way, but Pratchett is exactly right. Whatever you “focus” on in a dream has detail, but otherwise, it is indistinct. Throughout the book, the dreamlike details are true to real life dreams. I suspect the author spent far too much time thinking about dreams in order to make the idea work this well.

Pratchett also has some amusing observations about children.

Anything could make Wentworth sticky. Washed and dried and left in the middle of a clean floor for five minutes, Wentworth would be sticky. It didn’t seem to come from anywhere. He just got sticky.

Too true!

Or this exchange between Tiffany and Roland, a youth that she ends up rescuing.

“And then she [the queen] told me to sing and dance and skip and play,” said Roland. “She said that’s what children were supposed to do.”

“Did you?”

“Would you? I’d feel like an idiot. I’m twelve, you know.”

“Why did she want you to skip and play?” said Tiffany…

“She said that’s what children do,” said Roland.

Tiffany wondered about this. As far as she could see, children mostly argued, shouted, ran around very fast, laughed loudly, picked their noses, got dirty, and sulked. Any seen dancing and skipping and singing had probably been stung by a wasp.

Roland, the son of the local aristocrat, is a bit dim, so it is particularly galling to Tiffany when he gets all the credit for his own rescue, simply because he is a boy and older than her.

I also liked Tiffany’s response to having an uncharitable thought.

She tried to pretend she hadn’t thought that, but she was treacherously good at spotting when she was lying. That’s the trouble with a brain - it thinks more than you sometimes want it to.

Once Tiffany decides to become a witch, she discusses with a few other witches how she will be able to support herself. After all, it is an iron-clad rule that she must not use magic for her own gain.

“I make good cheese,” said Tiffany.

“Cheese, eh?” said Mistress Weatherwax. “Hmm. Yes. Cheese is good. But do you know anything about medicines? Midwifery? That’s a good portable skill.”

“Well, I’ve helped deliver difficult lambs,” said Tiffany. “And I saw my brother being born. They didn’t bother to turn me out. It didn’t look too difficult. But I think cheese is probably easier, and less noisy.”

And, because I can’t resist a terrible pun, I’ll end with this:

“Witches have animals they can talk to, called familiars. Like your toad there.”

“I’m not familiar,” said a voice from among the paper flowers. “I’m just slightly presumptuous.”

Reading With My Kids: The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Source of book: I own a marvelous hardback edition of this book. Illustrated by Alan Lee.

Reading this book with my kids brought back lots of memories. The unpleasant one I address in a footnote. But most of them are good. I was introduced to Tolkien when I was around age ten or so, when my dad read it to me and my siblings. (He also introduced us to C. S. Lewis’ space trilogy, and created a PG rated version of Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising on the fly.) I would read The Lord of the Rings soon thereafter on my own. Along with the Narnia books, The Arabian Nights, and the usual fairy tales, Tolkien’s works would form the backbone of my experience with fantasy and magic. 

"On the Edge of Mirkwood" - Alan Lee's illustration in The Hobbit. 

For the few who do not know, Alan Lee's marvelous illustrations were so good that Peter Jackson hired him (and the equally amazing John Howe to direct the art concepts for the movie versions.

The Hobbit, much more than its successors, is a children’s book. The plot is exciting - and easy to understand as a child. The characters, although memorable, are not overly deep. Except perhaps Bilbo Baggins. The issues faced by the characters are clear enough, but lack the nuance that Tolkien would develop in his later works. The humor is direct and a bit broad sometimes, and there is little that went over the heads of my kids. I had to explain a few words here and there, and a few ideas, but they kept up just fine, and laughed and shuddered at the appropriate times.

Needless to say, they loved this book. I enjoyed it too, as I have each time I have read it. (I also got to see the first of the Hobbit movies at this time, so it was interesting to compare them.)

I think that the character of Bilbo is particularly well suited to children’s literature. He is a reluctant adventurer who oscillates between excitement and fear. Often, he wishes he was back home, but cannot resist the part of him that enjoys the danger. He starts off naive and largely helpless, but gains experience and skills as he goes. He expands his universe from the tiny world of the Shire to include much that is good and noble, and much that is evil and treacherous. Thus, despite Bilbo’s nominal status as a middle-aged man, he is easy to identify with as a child. The Hobbit is thus an adventure and a coming-of-age story rolled into one.

While the plotting and descriptions are good, the characterization is a bit weak - again, to be expected in a children’s book. Bilbo is well developed, and we get a bit of a glimpse of Thorin, the tragic hero. Gollum is unforgettable, of course, and we are allowed to see inside his head, although not nearly as much as in The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf has his moments in the first part of the book. But the dwarves all tend to run together.

On the other hand, Tolkien shows flashes of the his descriptive powers in the scenes with Gollum and Beorn, and in the extended episodes in Mirkwood and the Lonely Mountain.

I loved reading the part of Gollum to the kids - and I think I do a pretty good job. “Thief, thief, thief! Baggins! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it forever!”

And, of course, the poetry. Tolkien’s poems roll off the tongue much like the old ballads that they imitate. There is music there, even when no tune is given. My children so far seem to have inherited at least a bit of my poetic bent, particularly my eldest daughter, who steals my Wordsworth book from time to time. Here is the Dwarves’ song before they set out on their journey. It absolutely must be read aloud.

Far over the misty mountains cold

To dungeons deep and caverns old

We must away ere break of day

To seek the pale enchanted gold.

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,

While hammers fell like ringing bells

In places deep, where dark things sleep,

In hollow halls beneath the fells.

For ancient king and elvish lord

There many a gleaming golden hoard

They shaped and wrought, and light they caught

To hide in gems on hilt of sword.

On silver necklaces they strung

The flowering stars, on crowns they hung

The dragon-fire, in twisted wire

They meshed the light of moon and sun.

Far over the misty mountains cold

To dungeons deep and caverns old

We must away, ere break of day

To claim our long-forgotten gold.

Goblets they carved there for themselves

And harps of gold; where no man delves

There lay they long, and many a song

Was sung unheard by men or elves.

The pines were roaring on the height,

The winds were moaning in the night.

The fire was red, it flaming spread;

The trees like torches blazed with light.

The bells were ringing in the dale

And men looked up with faces pale;

The dragon’s ire more fierce than fire

Laid low their towers and houses frail.

The mountain smoked beneath the moon;

The dwarves they heard the tramp of doom.

They fled their hall to dying fall

Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.

Far over the misty mountains grim

To dungeons deep and caverns dim

We must away, ere break of day,

To win our harps and gold from him!

My very favorite of the poems is “The Road Goes Ever On and On,” but in the version Bilbo sings at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring, rather than the Hobbit version.

Finally, Tolkien captures a vision of goodness that has always spoken to all of us who never expect or intend to be heros on a large stage. Those of us who really prefer to do good in little, everyday ways. And those of us who love a good meal, friends, and a song. As Thorin puts it on his deathbed:

“If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.”

Bilbo is effective precisely because he isn’t a traditional hero. He knows he can’t win in direct battle, so he must use his wits - and the fact that gold has little effect on him. He would prefer a warm bed, good food, and a few smoke rings to treasure and power.

In reading this to my kids, I was reminded of the charm that it held when I was first discovering the world of magic and imagination. I also remembered with fondness the evenings spent listening to my dad make worlds come alive for us.

Note on a book burning:

Most of us who grew up in the 1980s in conservative Christian homes remember the paranoia that swept through regarding a supposed conspiracy by toy makers and television to indoctrinate children into the occult. My mom was heavily influenced by two books in particular, The Hidden Dangers of the Rainbow, which alleged a new age conspiracy that would eventually take over the world. In addition to other rather dubious claims, it considered yoga to be the gateway drug into the occult. (Frank Peretti’s novel, Piercing the Darkness would dramatize these fears.) The other book was Turmoil in the Toy Box, by author Phil Phillips. (Not to be confused with the American Idol winner of the same name. Or the Nineteenth Century lawyer and congressman. Or the Irish archbishop, or the archeologist. Also, he does not appear to be a relative of Douglas or Howard Phillips.) This book purported to find the occult in everything from He-Man (arguable - assuming your kids know advanced symbolism) to the Care Bears and Mighty Mouse. (really?) The biggest bogeyman, however, was Dungeons and Dragons. I remember being paranoid about that. Not that I actually knew anyone geeky enough to play it at the time - that happened in Law School, and I discovered that most of what was said about it wasn’t actually true. Phillips would also write a book about the satanic dangers of Halloween. (This idea has had a huge influence on conservative Christianity.) Later, he would write books specifically warning of the dangers of Power Rangers and Barney. I should also mention televangelist, sensationalist, and “exorcist” Bob Larson here as well, who saw demons everywhere, and helped stir up the panic about toys and games. And about a satanist conspiracy.  (He also was part of the “rock music is satanic” movement of the 1980s - although he has since changed his mind. I imagine it was easier to sell the idea of hidden messages in Black Sabbath and Stryper than in Train and Brandon Heath.  I talked about the real origins of that movement here.) What was it about the 1980s and satanist conspiracy theories anyway? It’s not like any of us actually knew any real satanists. Did more than a few dozen exist? Our county (and others) had those now-reversed “molestation ring”  cases where kids were led psychological coercion to allege ludicrous satanic ritual abuse. Innocent people spent a decade or more in prison as a result of this panic...

Since I was never into modern television (except Mighty Mouse, apparently), and greatly preferred Legos and books to everything else toy related, this never really affected me in a negative way, at least personally. But I am sure I said some unkind things to kids who did play with these toys. To my knowledge, none of them ever got into the occult.

I would later find out that this paranoia extended far beyond cheesy kids’ television and stuffed bears with hearts on their tummies. For Bill Gothard, many objects contained malevolent powers - and the worst offender was Cabbage Patch dolls. They caused infertility. (I am not making this up.) And so, a purge of the household was necessary. (It occurs to me, after having had five children in seven years, that it would be cheaper and far less painful to put a cabbage patch doll under the bed than to get a vasectomy. Except that birth control was considered evil as well.)

This idea of destroying “evil” objects extended to books too. Books with magic in them were the equivalent of Simon the Sorcerer’s magic scrolls. So, at the peak of my family’s involvement, we burned our Tolkien books. I did not agree with this decision, and didn’t watch the whole thing. Since they were cheap paperbacks had seen better days, it wasn’t a huge loss.  I can tell you that books don’t burn very well by themselves, unless you take them apart page by page. Otherwise, they are pretty much the same as a log. For some reason, we spared our C. S. Lewis - although many others considered these occult as well.

Fortunately, this insanity passed, and we all went to see the Lord of the Rings movies in the theaters when the came out. I would say that, since that time, the more mainstream Christian groups have moved on to new issues (and new panics), while the most conservative elements - particularly in the home schooling movement - have broadened the forbidden list to include pretty much everything in culture more modern than the Victorian Era. And it even can get more restrictive than that.

My wife’s family never destroyed any books. (My wife didn’t read Tolkien until after I introduced her to him, although the rest of her family read them before the movies came out.) The group they were in, however, was extremely restrictive on reading material. (Many within Gothard’s group are this way as well, but not all.) For some of them, the only acceptable reading materials were the Bible and missionary biographies. Fiction was out, because it was “telling lies.” Because, you know, the story didn’t really happen. Particularly suspicious were magic and talking animals. Not only did it not happen, but it couldn’t happen in our world. Even those that allowed fiction tended to seek out books like Elsie Dinsmore, which portrayed their view of appropriate child behavior. Certainly no book could be allowed that had a child tell a lie or disobey! And the illustrations were not exempt from this paranoia either. If a girl’s skirt was too short (you know, like the actual clothes little girls wore when the book was written), they drew a longer one. Can’t have those knees showing.

It still amazes me that there are people - plenty of them - that cannot fathom that fantasy and magic, and indeed imagination - are vitally important a child’s development. And to an adult’s mental health. They really cannot believe that children can tell the difference between fantasy and reality. The use of the impossible, the fantastic, and the unfamiliar to illuminate the possible, the everyday is a crucial feature of imagination. We can see the issues more clearly when we remove the trappings of our particular situations. We don’t really think that a wizard and dwarves will invade our house and sweep us along on an adventure. We know that we will probably never have to fight off car-sized spiders. We won’t be literally looking for vulnerable spots on a real dragon. But that doesn’t mean that we learn nothing from The Hobbit. As G. K. Chesterton put it in Tremendous Trifles:

Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.

So for me, this era is a reminder of the power of cultural panic, which we still see today about food and medicine in addition to an ever-changing array of moral and spiritual “conspiracies.” It’s comforting to direct our natural fears of somehow ruining our children (which are difficult to raise!) into the avoidance of an outside malevolent influence. It’s easier and more comforting to believe that evil comes primarily (or entirely) from outside of ourselves. I doubt that anyone missed out on much by being denied the latest disposable plastic action figure, but the general idea of isolation from anything “outside” is damaging. When a child discovers that yoga is not, in fact, a gateway drug to the occult, and that the toys of his or her childhood were the result of a marketing conspiracy, rather than a demonic one, it does tend to lead to skepticism of other claims. And when good books are burned because of irrational fear, something in the soul dies. Fear becomes a barrier to the enjoyment of a great story, and future opportunities to learn and explore are circumscribed by the terror of contamination. And so, one retreats further and further into the bubble of “likemindedness” until everything in life becomes black and white - and very little of the white.