Terry Pratchett Book Club: <i>Unseen Academicals</i>, Part IV

It occurs to me that the cover of this book shows Vetinari as the referee and now I’m trying to remember if I was disappointed that he didn’t actually get to do it.

Summary

At the inn, Glenda runs into Lady Margolotta, but only thinks it’s a woman with her entourage. She scolds her ladyship for being cruel to Nutt and making him feel worthless, only realizing after-the-fact that she’s told off Ladyship herself. Nutt easily shoes the horse and gets them a ride back home. He and Glenda talk, and he admits that he wrote Trev’s poem to Juliet for Glenda, which Glenda can’t think of what to say to, so she begins to cry instead. They both agree to keep their relationship at bay while getting ready for the match, and notice that the city seems amped when they return—there’s been a piece about Nutt in the paper and fights in the streets and the Watch is going to be set up to prevent outbursts around the game. Pepe takes Trev aside and tells him he’s going to have to play and that he’ll have something ready to help him out, just to make sure that he lives long enough to keep Juliet happy. Trev goes to see Carter, who got beat to hell by Andy and a few others yesterday when all the fighting broke out. Trev heads to the Hippo to see practice and finds that Andy’s joined the Ankh-Morpork United team, and it’s looking like Vetinari’s plan to change football might fail.

Bu-bubble Magazine is there to interview Nutt, who gives answers so complex that the journalist gets ushered away by Glenda. Trev tries to explain how bad things are about to get and Glenda suggests that they let Vetinari know about all the trouble. They burst in on a meeting between Vetinari and Lady Margolotta, armed with pie, which Vetinari insists that they leave behind. He also tells them that he’s aware of the dangers of the game, but there’s not much that can be done at this point. Nutt has put the team on a special diet the night before the game, meaning no one gets to eat much more than salad, and they spend the evening wandering the university looking for more food. Pepe comes by to show Trev micromail that he can wear for the game, thought Trev insists he’s not playing. The team convenes the next day and makes it onto the pitch where Sam Vimes tells the group that they’re on their own, and that he’s very displeased that they’ve all chosen to start their own war so soon after he managed to put together the Koom Valley Accord. He leaves the pitch and the game begins, which is told to us from the perspective of William de Worde, reporting for the Times.

The university scores two goals straight away, and Ridcully gives one of them to the opposing team to mess with their heads. On the next play, Ankh-Morpork United deliberately disables the university’s best player, Professor Macarona, necessitating a substitute player: Nutt subs in. Glenda sees another member on United’s side throw a banana onto the field, which the Librarian promptly eats, knocking him out. Trev is supposed to sub in if another player is gone, but he still doesn’t want to because he promised his dead mother, as he keeps telling everyone. Doctor Hix volunteers to revive her so he can get permission, which is roundly dismissed. Pepe knows it’s time to get the whole crowd on their side, so he starts chanting Trev’s surname and the whole stadium picks it up, remembering Dave Likely. Glenda and Juliet already had a jersey made up with Dave’s old number, and so Trev gives in, apologizes to his mum, and gets out on the field. Trev can’t make the shots initially because he’s used to using a tin can, so Dr. Hix gets himself thrown out of the game to give them a little time. Henry, the Archchancellor of Brazeneck who is acting as referee, informs them that he’s moving the game into sudden death and the next goal scored wins.

Glenda realizes that Trev is going to lose until a voice starts speaking to her: It’s Trev’s old tin can in her pocket. She remembers that anything can be the ball and contrives to get the can thrown in when the ball goes off-field. Throwing the tin can out, Trev immediately wipes the field of the opposition and scores the needed final goal to win. The captain of United punches Andy for losing them the game, and Juliet runs onto the field to Trev, the two of them floating into the air as the stadium chants. Andy says it’s magic, but Glenda realizes it’s religion: The god of the game brought their win today. The win is celebrated, Trev tells Juliet that he’ll follow her wherever she goes, and Nutt and Glenda go to see a play together about star-crossed lovers. Andy gets his comeuppance from Pepe. Vetinari and Lady Margolotta are eating dinner when Nutt and Glenda show up to speak to them. Nutt asks Ladyship if he has worth and she agrees that he has and asks him to teach the rest of the orcs. He agrees to and asks Glenda if she will accompany him, and she agrees. Then he asks Vetinari for a golem horse, which the Patrician grants, and they leave. Ridcully goes to see Ponder about a little incident at Brazeneck that they’ll need UU’s help with, and they’re not smug about it at all.

Commentary

We’ve arrived at the point in the Discworld books where every single one of them begins to feel like a potential goodbye. This one even moreso perhaps with the ending litany of You think it’s all over? between each denouement. Nutt’s journey is dealing with thoughts about othering and prejudice, but it’s also an incredibly universal story about how we determine the value of our lives, what measure we should attempt to live up to. Nutt’s initial measure is one born of abuse; Lady Margolotta may have saved Nutt from being treated as less than sentient, but she wasn’t kind to him by any stretch.

And to a certain extent, we have to assume that Margolotta’s coldness is ultimately a projection. After all, she and Vimes are similar (Vetinari has a type): teetotalers who are unhappy with their natures and work very hard to control them. She’s cruel to Nutt because the way she treats him is the way she treats herself, with distrust and hard discipline. It doesn’t make it okay, of course, but it doesn’t come out of nowhere, and I’m curious just how much Vetinari perceives that, given his gentle ribbing of her through the final act.

The romance between Nutt and Glenda is beautiful because they are two people who are good to others, but never think to be good to themselves. And a good, healthy partnership helps with that mismatch in life—reminding us to expect more, encouraging us to seek out better. Trev and Juliet are adorable, but they’re the celebrity couple. Whereas we’ve got Nutt and Glenda doing their own version of Pylades and Orestes’ famous I’ll take care of you./It’s rotten work./Not to me. Not if it’s you. with

That got me slam in the chest. Who needs romantic declarations or poetry after that? And this time, our Cyrano gets what he deserves, with the poem ultimately being read by the person who it was for and understood.

But what of the match? Using William as the cipher through which we experience the game is a stroke of genius in its ability to make reading about the game bearable and even real fun at points. But I think the piece that impresses me the most is the suggestion that Trev can’t win by being Dave Likely’s kid, the way sport narratives often go; he has to win by way of a bit of old world magic, the religious nature of sports devotion, the spirit of Game. It’s not my personal brand of faith, but that excuse, that little cheat, it makes more sense to me from the narrative perspective.

The game itself gets to be fun, but frankly underwhelming as a dramatic climax. The real high point is the final confrontation of Nutt staring down a stadium of people following the game’s end with the soft utterance of “Come on if you think you’re hard enough.” It’s devastating in its confidence. It’s only a threat if you choose to act against him. So smart and deftly done.

As Vetinari says, who needs pies with this kind of happy ending?

Asides and little thoughts

• It occurs to me that Lady Margolotta has lost her vampiric accent in this book, which forces me to wonder if it’s an affectation that she puts on for easily unnerved guests (like Vimes), or if she changes her accent to suit the region.
• Vetinari suggesting that Drumknott might do better if he happened to “meet a young lady willing to dress up as a manila envelope” is just… sir, you should not be thinking this hard about your assistant’s kinks.
• Had to make Ponder the kid who feels the need to point out that when you tell someone to “give 110%” you’re just expanding the percentage that the 100 is.
• Aw, Hwel got to write his Romeo and Juliet. There are a lot of touches like that in this book, nods to much earlier stories (like Stanley’s stamp magazine), meant to fill out the world and show you where people are after all this time. Which also lends to the ending-is-near feeling…

Pratchettisms

Okay, next week we start I Shall Wear Midnight. We’ll read Chapters 1-4!