The Best Part: Interesting Times, by Terry Pratchett

"I am their lord," said Lord Hong. "They will die at my bidding, if necessary."

Cohen gave him a big, dangerous grin. "When do we start?" he said.

"Return to your . . . band," said Lord Hong. "And then I think we shall start . . . shortly." He glared at Truckle, who was unfolding his bit of paper. The barbarian's lips moved awkwardly and he ran a horny finger across the page.

"Misbegotten . . . wretch, so you are," he said.

"My word," said Mr. Saveloy, who'd created the look-up table.

Situation: Mr. Saveloy, a school teacher, joins a band of ancient barbarians led by Ghengiz Cohen to "civilize" the group so they can infiltrate an empire in Terry Pratchett's "Interesting Times." Part of that civilization education includes tempering the band's language, particularly their curses. Proof that even in apocalyptic times, a good technical writer can find useful employment.

The Best Part: Sarah Vowell's "Assassination Vacation"

[Anarchist] Emma Goldman claimed to abhor violence, and yet her speeches and writings are full of sympathetic odes to killers and would-be killers. Czolgozs [assassin of President William McKinley] included. I'm more of a Ten Commandments, rule of law girl myself. The closest I've ever come to anarchy is buying a Sex Pistols record. I find Goldman fascinating, but bothersome. (Especially her blase recounting of being Berkman's accomplice in shooting Frick.) While her apologies for violence were loathsome and her utopian hooey about life without government childish, her book's description of making friends with her fellow anarchists in New York is enchanting. Which is why her guilty assumption that Czolgosz would have been hurt by the the anarchist paper's warning - page 309 in my copy - is so poignant. The three hundred preceding pages are crammed with anecdotes and evidence of her entanglements and camaraderie.

Vowell's fascination with three assassinated presidents -- Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley -- leads to this delightful, thought-provoking book daring us to compare the crap in our times to the crap that has gone on before. Clearly, no one has learned from history, not even the historians.

The Best Part, 2019-3

"The Guardians," by John Christopher

Sir Percy got up and walked over to one of the windows. The sun was shining; his carefully groomed hair and mustache gleamed in a ray of light. Rob wondered why he was telling him all this – if in fact he was just talking for his own satisfaction. He continued:

“It must appear to be natural because people cannot be contented unless they believe their lives to be natural. But to do this and to keep everything in balance requires intelligence and planning. It requires a special group of dedicated men who will act as guardians over the rest. Thus guns are abolished but a reserve is kept to protect society against insurrection. Not only that – we have psychologists to help us mold people into proper courses of action. We are constantly on the alert for trouble. The Conurb is easier to control than the County in that respect. Anyone showing creative intelligence and initiative stands out conspicuously from the mob and can be dealt with. Here it is less easy. Aristocracies have always provided the seedbeds for revolt. However well we manipulate the gentry, sooner or later there must be an eruption. This is what we have just had. We have watched it gather like a boil and at the right moment have lanced it. It will be fifty years at least before it happens again.”

Sir Percy broke off. “Do you understand me, boy? I am not talking over your head?”

“No, sir.”

“I did not think I was.”

John Christopher’s dystopia is written sparsely, with little hooptedoodle, as a book for young readers should. But there are seeds of subtle sophistication in the story which make it utterly believable. Here, Sir Percy’s speech is the clearest description of dystopian society as I’ve ever read. It’s almost akin to the Ministry of Truth’s running of its own rebellions in George Orwell’s 1984. And has eerie echoes of the imperfect society we call home today.

The Best Part, 2019-2

"Monstrous Regiment," by Terry Pratchett

Jackrum softened his voice a little when he saw their expressions. “Lads, this is war, understand? He was a soldier, there were soldiers, you are soldiers . . . more or less. No soldier will see grub or good boots go to waste. Bury ‘em decent and say what prayers you can remember, and hope they’ve gotne where there’s no fighting.” He raised his voice back to the normal bellow. “Perks, round up the others! Igor, cover the fire, try to make it look like we were never here! We are moving out in number ten minutes! Can make a few miles before full daylight! That’s right, eh, Lieutenant?”

Blouse was still transfixed, but seemed to wake up now.

“What? Oh. Yes. Right. Yes, indeed. Er . . . yes. Carry on, Sergeant.”

The fire gleamed off Jackrum’s triumphal face. In the red glow, his little dark eyes were like holes in space, his grinning mouth the gateway to a Hell, his bulk some monster from the Abyss.

He let it happen, Pollly knew. He obeyed orders. He didn’t’ do anything wrong. But he would have sent Maladict and Jade to help us, instead of Wazzer and Igorina, who aren’t quick with weapons. He sent the others away. He had the bow ready. He played a game with us as pieces, and won . . .

Poor old soldier! her father and his friends had sung while frost formed on the window panes. Poor old soldier! If ever I ‘list for a solider again . . . the Devil shall be my sergeant!

In the firelight, the grin of Sergeant Jackrum was a crescent of blood, his coat the color of a battlefield sky.

“You are my little lads,” he roared. “Aid I will look after you.”

One of John Steinbeck’s rules of writing goes like this:

Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That’s nice.

Another rule follows right after:

But I wish it was set aside so I don’t have to read it. I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.

Here, Terry Pratchett breaks the second part of the rule. He throws his hooptedoodle in with the story. But just enough. Just enough hooptedoodle to help us see, for a moment, Private Perk’s Sergeant jackrum turn into the Devil from her father’s old song. The hooptedoodle slows the action down, but just for a moment. Just for that delicious moment when Perks realizes while Jackrum may play the fool from time to time, he is, at the fundament, no fool at all – and is in fact, devilish.

This represents the perfect balance of story and hooptedoodle. We slow down just long enough, at the end of the scene, to sweep ourselves deeper into Jackrum as a character.

So I need to do this with my characters as well. This is why you read lots of books, folks. So you see how others do it. And so you see how long it took them for it to become natural.

The Best Part, 2019-1

"Men at Arms," by Terry Pratchett.

“[G]ive me some more coffee. Black as midnight on a moonless night.”

Harga looked surprised. That wasn’t like Vimes.

“How black’s that, then?”

“Oh, pretty damn black, I should think.”

“Not necessarily.”

“What?”

“You get more stars on a moonless night. Stands to reason. They show up more. It can be quite bright on a moonless night.”

Vimes sighed.

“An overcast moonless night?” he said.

Harga looked carefully at his coffee pot.

“Cumulus or cirro-nimbus?”

“I’m sorry? What did you say?”

“You gets city lights reflected off cumulus, because it’s low lying, see. Mind you, you can get high-altitude scatter off the ice crystals in – “

“A moonless night,” said Vimes, in a hollow voice, “that is as black as that coffee.”

“Right!”

“And a doughnut.” Vimes grabbed Harga’s stained vest and pulled him until they were nose to nose. “A doughnut as doughnutty as a doughnut made of flour, water, one large egg, sugar, a pinch of yeast, cinnamon to taste and a jam, jelly, or rat filling depending on national or species preference, OK? Not as doughnutty as something in any way metaphorical. Just a doughnut. One doughnut.”

“A doughnut.”

“Yes.”

“You only had to say.”

Harga brushed off his vest, gave Vimes a hurt look, and went back into the kitchen.

Pratchett is at heart a writer’s writer, who often explores odd little tropes of writing with enough exaggeration to point out how most of the rest of us are mucking things up.

The Best Part: Here is Your War

Pages 244-245, "Here is Your War," by Ernie Pyle

Another plane throbbed in the sky, and we lay listening with an awful anticipation. One of the dogs suddenly broke into a frenzied barking and went tearing through our little camp as if chasing a demon. My mind seemed to lose all sense of proportion, and I got jumpy and mad at myself.

Concussion ghosts, traveling in waves, touched our tent walls and made them quiver. Ghosts were shaking the ground ever so lightly. Ghosts were stirring the dogs to hysteria. Ghosts were wandering in the sky peering for us cringing in our hide-outs. Ghosts were everywhere, and their hordes were multiplying as every hour added its production of new battlefield dead.

We lay and thought of the graveyards and the dirty men and the shocking blast of the big guns, and we couldn’t sleep.

“What time is it?” came out of darkness from the next cot. I snapped on the flashlight.

“Half past four, and for [expletive] sake go to sleep!”

Finally just before dawn we did sleep, in spite of everything.

Next morning, we spoke around among ourselves and found that all of us had tossed away all night. It was an unexplainable thing. For all of us had been through greater danger. On another night the roll of the guns would have lulled us to sleep.

It was just that on some nights the air became sick and there was an unspoken contagion of spiritual dread, and we were little boys again, lost in the dark.

Fear without using the word. Fear through repetition of congruous imagery. Fear that brings us back to that world of little boys, spooked in the familiar surroundings of their neighborhood, their back yard, by an unexpected light or shadow or sound that ordinarily would not have bothered them. For me, the sound is that of a cat in heat. Never bothered me during the day, but at night, that eerie cry like that of a baby, bothered me terribly.