Going Postal

Going Postal (2004) Terry Pratchett (Discworld)

Moist von Lipwig should not have come to Ankh Morpork.

Apart from all those repossessions, bankruptcies, and sudden insolvencies, what had he actually done that was bad, as such? He’d only been moving numbers around.

After being sentenced to death, he didn’t quite expect the afterlife to be what it was.

Moist stared. He’d felt the snap of the rope, the choke of the noose! He’d seen the blackness welling up! He’d died!

“I’m offering you a job, Mr. Lipwig. Alfred Spangler is buried, but Mr. Lipwig has a future. It may, of course, be a very short one, if he is stupid. I am offering you a job, Mr. Lipwig. Work, for wages. I realize the concept may be unfamiliar.”

Only as a form of hell, Moist thought.

“The job is that of postmaster general of the Ankh-Morpork Post Office.” Moist continued to stare.

I never fails to amaze me that so many things in the Discworld books end up being appropriate for RIGHT THIS MINUTE no matter how long ago they were written.

“What’s this do?” said Moist hurriedly, picking up a pot of greenish goo.

“That, sir? Wart cure. Wonderful stuff. Very natural, not like the stuff a doctor’d give you.”

Moist sniffed at the pot. “What’s it made of?”

“Arsenic, sir,” said Groat calmly.

“Arsenic?”

“Very natural, sir,” said Groat.

I mean.

You really intend to continue with this folly, in the face of everything? The Post Office? When we all know that it was a lumbering, smug, overstaffed, overweight monster of a place? It barely earned its keep! It was the very essence and exemplar of public enterprise!”

“It never made much of a profit, it is true, but in the business areas of this city there were seven deliveries a day,” said Vetinari.

Also:

When Reacher Gilt talks about freedom he means his, not anyone else’s.

And also:

And this was known as that greatest of treasures, which is Hope. It was a good way of getting poorer really very quickly, and staying poor. It could be you. But it wouldn’t be.

Because…

There had to be a way of making it better and sleeker and cheaper… or maybe it was something so big that no one could run it at a profit. Maybe it was like the Post Office, maybe the profit turned up spread around the whole of society.

He just always seems to be speaking to TODAY and RIGHT NOW.

Publisher: HarperCollins
Rating: 8.5/10

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