{"id":4710,"date":"2018-10-02T05:00:03","date_gmt":"2018-10-02T12:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4710"},"modified":"2018-10-01T15:04:30","modified_gmt":"2018-10-01T22:04:30","slug":"mark-reads-going-postal-chapter-2-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/10\/mark-reads-going-postal-chapter-2-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘Going Postal’: Chapter 2, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the second half of the second chapter of Going Postal<\/i>, Moist gets a better sense of what state the Post Office is in. Spoiler: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an even worse mess than he thought it was. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Have we ever encountered a mess\u00e2\u20ac\u201dboth literal and spiritual\u00e2\u20ac\u201das bad as this in the entirety of the Discworld<\/i> series???<\/p>\n

The second half of this chapter is not just a spectacle of messiness, though, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m intrigued by the little mysteries that Pratchett is seeding in the text. (And look, I still don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know why Mrs. Cake is around here. What does she get out of this place? Why that<\/i> message? WHY FOG, I STILL DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T GET IT.) It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just worldbuilding, though that is still a vital part of this. There are hints of future plots to come littered about this building, and all of it is overshadowed by the biggest mystery of all:<\/p>\n

What the hell<\/i> happened to the Post Office?<\/p>\n

Groat later claims it is hubris, and perhaps he is not wrong. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also some blame laid on the clacks system, which fascinates me because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a deeply relevant conversation. Did another technology arrive that improved upon the old system so much that we should just let the older one die? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d argue that this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the case here, as there is still a strong need for the delivery of letters and packages on the Disc, and clacks provide a service that works for certain types of communication. Blaming the clacks feels like an easy target, you know?<\/p>\n

I imagine, then, that there are a lot of clues hidden here as to what actually transpired. Those damn regulations are important to something<\/i>, right? Why is it that Groat and Stanley are so dead-set on following all those rules to the letter, but have not delivered or properly accepted a single piece of mail in years<\/i>? Beyond that, though, there are so many other red flags. Why is it that Groat is so obsessed with the past? He speaks of the glory days of the Post Office; he references Chief Postal Inspector Rumbelow with something akin to veneration; he makes excuses about having mail \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pushed\u00e2\u20ac\u009d upon him so much by his superiors, despite that he just said that his boss took no bullshit. Why would Rumbelow flip out over tampered mail but not<\/i> chronically undelivered mail? It makes no sense to me! And like Moist, I thought it was obvious that Groat was lying by omission, that he was desperate not to tell Moist the truth. And why? If Moist is here to resurrect this service, wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Groat be pleased about that?<\/p>\n

Of course, it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t help that, just like Moist, I cannot figure out why this man is the best person for the job. Mr. Pump can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t shed any light on all this, and we find that out after discovering that he was LITERALLY an underwater pump for TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY YEARS, so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not like he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s up-to-date on Ankh-Morpork. HE\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S BEEN A LITTLE BUSY. All Moist has to work with is what he observes\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand what he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s observed is a goddamn nightmare\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand what Groat tells him.<\/p>\n

Which leads me to that<\/i>. Because Pratchett switches over to Groat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s POV, and through that, the truth is hinted at again<\/i>. We know he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lying; I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not questioning that at this point. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what the lies are<\/i> that concern me! So, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ceremony\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that Groat and Stanley partake in, in which they stare at the image of a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153god.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That god is styled after Mercury\/Hermes, which makes sense, given that this is the postal service. (Bless the joke about the fig leaf, for the record.) I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite get why this is a ceremony, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not actually the most confusing thing here. That absolutely belongs to this bit:<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Stanley! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a statue! Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get excited! Calm down! You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to upset\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 them<\/i>.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Stanley hung his head.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 whispering to me again, Mr. Groat,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he confided in a low voice.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes, Stanley. They whisper to me, too.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
UM. OKAY. WHAT. Who??? Oh god, is there something terrible<\/i> living in this massive pile of letters??? Or perhaps the letters themselves<\/i>? I suggest that because Stanley says he \u00e2\u20ac\u0153kept seeing the writin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which I assume refers to the writing on the letters? Look, Ankh-Morpork is weird as hell, THIS IS POSSIBLE. But there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another little clue here that might suggest why this problem has gone on for so long:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153They never listen, and then what happens? They find out the hard way.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And I assume that Mr. Mutable\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death is that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hard way.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d So, other people tried<\/i> to be the Postmaster General, but they were killed by\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 whatever is currently alive in the piles of unsent letters. So perhaps this industry didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t die, so to speak, but became alive in an entirely different way. What if the living \u00e2\u20ac\u0153things\u00e2\u20ac\u009d are preventing the mail from being sent? Look, whatever this is, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fucking CREEPY. So NO THANKS.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/youtu.be\/updMV5vpYEY<\/p>\n
Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n
– My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the second half of the second chapter of Going Postal, Moist gets a better sense of what state the Post Office is in. Spoiler: it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an even worse mess than he thought it was. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[553,463,248],"class_list":["post-4710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-going-postal","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}