In the ninth part of Night Watch, Vimes has an unnerving confrontation with the Unmentionables. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read Discworld.Â
Vetinari
I JUST WAS NOT READY FOR THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF VETINARI IN THIS BOOK. I don’t know why I didn’t assume that he would be absent from the past, but in hindsight, Vetinari has always been super mysterious. His inclusion here wasn’t obvious, and even as I read about the silent, calculating assassin who was bullied by his peers, my mind didn’t jump to Vetinari. I didn’t think we’d know any of these people! I assumed someone was going to be revealed to be the one hired to go after Vimes. LOOK, wouldn’t that be funny?!?!?!?! WHAT IF EVEN IN THE PAST, PEOPLE WERE TRYING TO KILL VIMES???
I am absolutely uncertain how Vetinari plays into it. NOT AT ALL.
The Unmentionables
I WAS NOT READY FOR THE SECOND PLOT TWIST IN THIS DAMN SECTION EITHER. Hey, SPACE THESE OUT and GIVE ME SOME ROOM TO BREATHE. But y’all, this makes this struggle all the more important. Vimes turns on one of the Unmentionables, and he does so with his younger self assisting him. That’s vital, of course, because Vimes has to teach by example. It’s one of the best ways to help someone learn, right? (It certainly worked for me.) And sometimes, that “example†is messing up. I loved this particular passage:
But when you got older, you found out that you now wasn’t you then. You then was a twerp. You then was what you had to be to start out on the rocky road of becoming you now, and one of the rocky patches on that road was being a twerp.
This resonated with me in a number of ways. I often think about my own journey as a writer. A lot of my peers here in New York are much younger than I am, and get tese brief moments of jealousy or envy because it took me so damn long to write a book. But I wasn’t equipped to write a novel a decade ago. I had the ideas and the drive, but I had none of the discipline. My politics were messy. My knowledge of things like plot, characterization, and pacing weren’t what they are now because I hadn’t spent nearly a decade unraveling all of those things for this site.
And the same goes for what I’ve believed in and what I’ve supported. I’ve been involved in social justice since I was a young teenager. (Indeed, I had to be because of my circumstances; I didn’t have much of a choice. But that’s another essay I’d love to write some day.) Looking back on some of the things I’ve said and done, even with positive intent, is an act of humiliation for me. It should, of course, because we should evolve. We should constantly be trying to examine the world around us and our part in it. So, sometimes I read some of my older non-fiction, and it’s cringe-inducing. Anti-black. Classist. Appeals to the wrong sort of person. Sloppy. Hell, even some of those original Harry Potter and Twilight reviews are just… not good? (Which is why I was glad I went through and got them edited by a bunch of lovely people!) Same with my thoughts on The Book Thief, which I think are just grossly ignorant of how that book came across to Jewish people. In order to grow, we have to be twerps sometimes. We have to apologize when we hurt people, and then we have to actively work to be better.
So what does that look like in Night Watch? How does Vimes repair a past that is so locked into brutality and violence? We’ve seen him go after some smaller things and a couple bigger ones. Here, though, he takes a huge risk by arresting one of the Unmentionables. The mere act of arresting another cop is absolutely unfathomable to these people, and GUESS WHAT. IT IS TO MOST COPS IN AMERICA, TOO. So I knew this was going to be a tense, uncomfortable thing. That did not prepare me for the cruel twist that Pratchett dropped on me:
Carcer is now a sergeant with the Unmentionables.
AND HOW DAMNING IS THIS LINE:
“Funny how things work out, eh? Turns out I’m prime copper material, haha.â€
SO, A SERIAL KILLER IS PRIME COP MATERIAL. Good gods.
Even worse, Carcer discovers that the younger version of Vimes is alongside Future Vimes, and NOW I HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE. Is Carcer going to use this knowledge as leverage? Probably! He certainly tries to here, but for the moment, Carcer and his men back down, insisting that they’ll play by the rules… for an hour. And it’s not like I feel comforted by this. THIS IS SUPER FUCKED UP, Y’ALL.
Surprise: I’m enjoying this book a lot.
https://youtu.be/W97hrWX7w1k
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