{"id":4726,"date":"2018-10-12T05:00:26","date_gmt":"2018-10-12T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4726"},"modified":"2018-10-08T19:06:06","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T02:06:06","slug":"mark-reads-going-postal-chapter-4-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/10\/mark-reads-going-postal-chapter-4-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;Going Postal&#8217;: Chapter 4, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the second half of the fourth chapter of <i>Going Postal<\/i>, Moist tries to get answers. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>Discworld<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Vetinari, unsurprisingly, thought this through. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what he does! And he stuck a man who has been a life-long criminal and con man in a situation where running would end in his certain death and where staying would&#8230; well, pique his interests. Almost <i>perfectly<\/i>. Because this situation, as Moist details, is so perfectly suited to his notions of money-making. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a massive government job that is going to require tons of work and help, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so easy in a context like that to devise a means of distraction, to set up red herrings and sleight of hand to get people to look one way while Moist takes everything that he can. So, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s already making plans to leave, but THIS ISN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T GOING TO HAPPEN, IS IT. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think Moist is going to abandon this at the end, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure how he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll reach that point. The journey is as much a mystery to me as are&#8230; well, all the ridiculous mystery shit going on.<\/p>\n<p>And OF COURSE there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another one. I did like that there was an immediate ramification for Moist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s involvement, which comes in Mr. Parker, whose letter Moist delivered after a forty-year delay. He helped reunite a couple who never knew how the other felt, and now, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re getting <i>married<\/i>. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a pretty spectacular, heartwarming twist, but Moist isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t exactly a heartwarming person. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so fitting that Pratchett doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t write him that way. He isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t overjoyed that he did a good thing, and in fact, as the Parker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s approach Moist, he has to resist the urge to RUN AWAY FROM THEM. Instead, he views this all through his old habits: he lets these people see him as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153good\u00e2\u20ac\u009d person because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s social currency. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a means by which Moist can get <i>more<\/i> things that he wants.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>But then there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the curse, the <i>new<\/i> mystery that might actually just be a mystery I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve already seen. A random woman whose grandfather used to work at the post office reveals that there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an alleged curse that surrounds the place. Initially, I assumed she was referring to the curse of the postmaster general, but nOPE:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It lives under the floor and drives you maaad!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she went on, enjoying the syllable so much that she seemed loath to let it go. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Maaad!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So&#8230; is that the <i>whispers<\/i>? Is there something else in the post office? IS THAT WHAT CAUSED THE INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENT??? Oh god, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so much going on here, but I feel both super close to the truth and EPICALLY FAR FROM IT.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>But I am much more certain about the incredible scene between Moist and Mr. Pump. I had mentioned in a previous review that I suspected Moist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s likability was due to the fact that we never really got a sense of what his crimes were. Because of that, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to determine the impact of them. Well, imagine no more, because Mr. Pump lays it all out in a brutally honest monologue about how Moist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actions have demonstrably led to the collective hastening of the deaths of many people. And I adored that Mr. Pump spelled it out that way: Moist may have thought that the people he targeted were fools, and maybe some of them were trying to swindle him. But can he truthfully say that he harmed <i>no one<\/i>? That his schemes and cons did not cause people to suffer? Yeah, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not exactly willing to hear this, either, and he becomes <i>extremely<\/i> defensive about it all, but Mr. Pump is spot-on. Yes, he was nearly hung to death, but did he learn his lesson? Not yet, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d say!<\/p>\n<p>This chapter ends with something that had confused me for a long, long time. Thankfully, no one in this community ever explained what GNU stood for, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been seeing it for YEARS. I believe it was always followed by a name, and I assumed it was an acronym. But here, Pratchett reveals that a complex culture has sprung up around the clacks system, complete with its own terminology. The death of John Dearheart has affected this community, and I imagine that none of these people truly believe he just fell from a tower. But what sprung up in reaction to that is bittersweet. GNU is a code that comes with instructions. G means you send the message on. N means that the message is not to be logged. And U means that it must be turned around at the end of the clacks line and run back. So why would they send a name back and forth forever on the line?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never have wanted to go home. He was a <i>real<\/i> linesman. His name is in the code, in the wind, in the rigging, and the shutters. Haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you ever heard the saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcMan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not dead while his name is still spoken\u00e2\u20ac\u2122?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Oh.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>OH.<\/p>\n<p>OH NO, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/tMKWHa7OIDU<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong>My YA contemporary debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/bit.ly\/AngerIsAGift\">ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the second half of the fourth chapter of Going Postal, Moist tries to get answers. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld.\u00c2\u00a0<\/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-4726","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\/4726","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=4726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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