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Loading... The Truth (edition 2001)by Terry Pratchett
Work InformationThe Truth by Terry Pratchett
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Honestly, what can one say about Discworld #25 that one hasn't already said 24 other times? It's —ing Discworld. Of course, it's —ing clever and funny. ( ) Pratchett, Terry. Truth. Discworld No. 25. Doubleday, 2000. The Truth is one of Terry Pratchett’s very best novels. It is, if anything, more relevant in the post-Trump era than it was when it was written. News, we are told, is hard to define but a reporter knows it when he or she sees it. The public is less discerning and are easily drawn in by what we would now call fake news. Like the Moist von Lipwig stories from Going Postal to Raising Steam, The Truth is an industrial fantasy. Institutions like the Post Office and the railroad have a seductive power in Discworld. The Press wants to be fed, and it demands obsessive attention from its servants. A handwritten newsletter becomes a mass-market newspaper with a dwarf-produced printing press with moveable type and a light-sensitive vampire photographer who has trouble with a flash that regularly turns him into a pile of dust. Pratchett constructs an unusually complex mystery plot that conjures Watergate, even as its editor, William de Worde, conjures William Randolph Hearst. The villains, Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip, are terrifyingly over the top, but we are reminded that they are in the service of shadowy Lords and lawyers who may be worse. Somehow, it all works out, and the press does reveal the truth and establish an uneasy détente with the forces of law and order represented by Vetinari and Vimes. 5 stars. Once again, I am in awe of Pratchett's ability to take seemingly disparate plotlines and weave them into something that's not only fun and entertaining, but also has something to say about the world around us. I honestly have only a single complaint about this installment in the Discworld series, and that's Tulip's manner of speaking. The "ings" just got to be too much. However, it's a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things, and honestly, how often are you gonna get a book where an on-the-wagon vampire creates "prints of darkness"? Another winner in a wonderful series.
Much as I enjoyed The Truth, honesty nonetheless compels me to admit that the novel didn't seem quite as zippy or fresh as most of the Discworld books (though still offering more entertainment per page than anything this side of Wodehouse). But Pratchett doesn't just spew out jokes and puns (photographs as "prints of darkness"): He implicitly defends a liberal humanism, one that loathes bigotry, jingoism, easy answers and any kind of zealotry. Is contained inHas the adaptationIs abridged inAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Fantasy.
Fiction.
HTML: The denizens of Ankh-Morpork fancy they've seen just about everything. But then comes the Ankh-Morpork Times, struggling scribe William de Worde's upper-crust, newsletter turned Discworld's first paper of record. An ethical joulnalist, de Worde has a proclivity for investigating stories -- a nasty habit that soon creates powerful enemies eager to stop his presses. And what better way than to start the Inquirer, a titillating (well, what else would it be?) tabloid that conveniently interchanges what's real for what sells. But de Worde's got an inside line on the hot story concerning Ankh-Morpork's leading patrician Lord Vetinari. The facts say Vetinari is guilty. But as William de Worde learns, facts don't always tell the whole story. There's that pesky little thing called the truth ... .No library descriptions found.
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