REVIEW: THE MOIST VON LIPWIG TRILOGY

He's Mr. Mail. Mr. Money. Mr. Railway.
Yet at heart a confidence trickster who surprisingly proves himself as the ultimate bureaucrat.
He has many names -Albert, Mr. Mail, Mr. Money, Mr. Railway...-, as a trick of the trade, but there is no mistake that all of these aliases lead to the one and only



MOIST VON LIPWIG
(HÚMEDO VON MUSTACHEN in the Spanish translation)

The Moist-von-Lipwig steampunk trilogy is an excellent gateway into the Discworld, with the three-part saga's lovable scoundrel antihero and its central theme of change and technological/social progress in a renaissance fantasy world on the verge of eighteenth-century Enlightenment.

*

Going Postal - Cartas en el asunto

Postal is the only Moist novel that has been adapted to the screen so far (still waiting for the Money and Steam miniseries!). It is also Terry Pratchett's open love letter to snail mail - criticizing how it's being currently replaced by other, more advanced and quicker interpersonal communication systems -.



Self-made man, raised from obscure orphanhood to the infamy of the all-star psycho confidence trickster, Moist von Lipwig never expected to get a new lease on life on the day of execution - neither for this second chance to be in general charge of the Royal Mail. Alas, that's how things are (nice winged shako hat and matching winged sneakers, Hermes-style, also forming part of the uniform indeed!). There is also a romantic subplot of von Lipwig's betrothal with Adora Belle Dearheart, a free-spirited heiress turned social justice warrior and Ada Lovelace counterpart (think Ada Goth all grown up!) whose family has fallen on hard times due to the rise of clacks (semaphore towers, a metaphor for information technology) as the dominant medium for interpersonal communication. Knowing Moist, knowing Adora, there is both a quid pro quo and a love story in this arrangement...



In this story, an affectionate parody and subversion of Atlas Shrugged, of course information technology gets its fair share of satirising - Pratchett's idea is not going full-scale Luddism about snail mail, but showing how it can coexist with IT (the "clacks" semaphore tower system in the Discworld) at the end of the day. Hackers and free software ("the smoking GNU"), not to mention the Three Laws of Robotics, get here as much of a typically British tongue-in-cheek treatment as the mafia, capitalist monopolies, and even philatelia, the age-old hobby of stamp collecting: one of the few factors that currently keep snail mail alive.



**

Making Money - Dinero a mansalva

Right when Moist, in spite of his new lease on life, was growing weary of a cushy post as Mr. Mail, he is offered the deputy direction of the Royal Mint and First Bank on top of that - and it becomes his quest to introduce the reluctant Morporkian populace to paper money. The pug? Wealthy matriarch Topsy Lavish, Moist's predecessor, has bequeathed her immense fortune and office to her pet Mr. Fusspot, whom Moist adopts and becomes deputy for.

  



Of course the Lavish siblings, snubbed by their late mother in favour of a literal lapdog and his upstart nouveau-riche deputy, are not going to back down that easily. The Lavishes are a discworld counterpart to the Medicis and Borgias (their surname even echoes both luxury and Lannisters!), to give you an idea of what Mr. Money is up against...
He also gets a relationship upgrade with fiancée Adora on the love front... no spoiler alert, but I will let you figure out yourself what happens to them as a straight OTP!

At the end of Money, Moist and Adora... are husband and wife!




***

Raising Steam - A todo Vapor

All good things come in threes, and in Terry Pratchett's swan song, he finally gives Moist von Lipwig the chance to wear the third of three hats for his administrative hat-trick: Mr. Mail, who is also Mr. Money, becomes Mr. Railway on top of those two titles - in what is an open letter to the Victorian steam fever.
For starters, the final installment presents some interesting character dynamics by giving Moist a kouhai: Dick Simnel ("Lemnis" in sdrawckab, to echo Hephaestus) a self-taught young provincial metalworking prodigy with a great ambition - namely, this lad from oop north has made the first locomotive, and is the first train driver, in the history of the Discworld! In fact, I came for Mr. Railway, who negotiates land rights to lay out the railway tracks, and stayed for the self-taught young man with the flat cap who made and now drives the Iron Girder, which he refers to as a "she" and regards as the apple of his eye. Maybe having a soft spot for steampunk, a train driver for a great-grandfather, and being self-taught myself played all a part in this favouritism!

Whereas the first few books were essentially powered by the lampooning of epic fantasy tropes, which produced a new kind of magic unique to Pratchett’s work, the Discworld has changed. A medieval world has morphed into what’s essentially a 19th century society, albeit one where humans co-exist with such people – and they’re presented as fully rounded people, it’s important to note – as trolls, dwarves, golems, and now even geeky goblins.

 

Raising Steam marks a completion, of sorts, of this process, because such a world can’t rely on the magic of the Middle Ages and Early Modern era for its forward momentum. No, it needs a new power source: coal-fired steam. Step forward Dick Simnel. It would be easy to mistake Simnel for a straightforward, even simple country lad, but that’s to overlook the fact that he’s an engineer. And not just a glorified blacksmith, but someone who’s learnt the mysteries of the sliding rule, an innovator, a lad with a shed who knows how to use it.
Through careful experimentation and occasionally blowing stuff up on a more-or-less controlled basis, Simnel has tamed the steam, harnessing the power of all four classical elements in order to make the first train in the Discworld move forwards on the tracks. When the higher-ups like von Lipwig see Simnel's locomotive, the Iron Girder, they also see the future. What follows is Pratchett’s take on the railway fever that gripped Victorian Britain at the excitable zenith of industrialisation.

As the tracks are laid and rights to the lands are acquired, the task proves not easy for our senpai-kouhai duo (later turned a trio with the addition of a curious hobgoblin), due mainly to railway terrorism by Luddites/ISIS counterparts who are fanatically opposed to industrial progress on what they deem religious grounds. The railway, which brings people together, opens up possibilities and certainly helps, but it’s also a potent symbol of change for those who don’t want change thank you very much. And at the extreme end of those who don’t want change lie the fundamentalists, the violent naysayers, the people who prefer to blow stuff up on a more-or-less uncontrolled basis.
How to counter such a mindset is the overarching preoccupation of the second half of the novel, as Moist and Simnel build a railway all the way from their Morporkian-Sto Plains homelands to Überwald. Why? Without giving too much away, it’s because certain dwarves can’t accept being at peace with traditional enemies. The same fanatical dwarves who want to stop the Iron Girder in its tracks, to be more exact... The internecine conflicts amongst the dwarves soon spill out beyond their mines, and this eventually draws Moist, Simnel, and the railway right into the middle of an attempted coup d’état. Will they reach their final station unscathed?
This second act, with colonialists laying railway tracks across hostile "savage" territory and all the consequences thereof, was reminiscent of, and even surpassing, The Lunatic Express -even the climax involves a railway bridge across a chasm, though with far more dangerous enemies than African Lions to confront!-. There is a traintop battle, railway accidents, a fat controller, and landowners intent to make Moist drunk in order to stop the tracks from coursing right across their estates - a wild ride indeed...

EL FINAL DE LA HOJARASCA

Here are my English and Spanish versions of an assignment I had to do for a course on García Márquez:

La hojarasca, The Leaf Storm, ends with the foreshadowing of the whistle of a ghost train and the disappearance of Macondo into that corner for heaping up "villages that no longer do a service to the nation." But it also ends, on a more personal note, with the funeral train of the late French doctor leaving the colonel's mansion, right before their confrontation with the local community. 
The last words are said by the grandchild: "Now they (the villagers) will sense the smell. Now all the curlews will begin to sing." These seabirds, that stand for tradition and the voice of the people, are clearly a leitmotif in the story, as much as the railway train and the leaf storm that represent the fruit company and the hinterland's connection to a globalised outside world, the impact that the arrival of the fruit company in general, illustrated in the particular case of the grass-eating and cohabitating European physician, has on traditional Macondo society. 
The railway is a powerful symbol of modernity and progress. In Clarín's story "Adiós, Cordera", the appearance of railroads and trains in a rural landscape (in that case, in northern Spain) also symbolizes the connection of the hinterland/backwater with a nineteenth-century globalized world and its market economy (market agriculture, market industry...), bringing in the outside world with all of its progress and all of its threats to traditional life. The final ghost train stands obviously for the decadence and return to isolation of Macondo as a discarded cog in the works of globalisation. Back to the childlike wonder even adults had at the start of 100 Years of Solitude, seeing a magnet and a block of ice brought by Romany peddlers from the outside world as magical objects. Back from railroads to curlews once more. 
The epigraph being Creon's decree (that anyone who buries the corpse of the traitor, exposed according to the law to scavengers and the elements, will be disgraced and executed in public) really foreshadows the fact that La hojarasca is basically going to be a retelling of Antigone in a (fictional) tropical rural village during wartime. 
The decrees of the social establishment (leave the traitor exposed as a mark of shame, execution awaits whoever buries or even mourned him) against those of the heart (every dead body deserves the same dignity; after all, we are all equal in death). That is not only a classical but even a UNIVERSAL theme; it's for instance at the heart of Hamlet (regarding revenge) or Romeo and Juliet (regarding young love). 
But the interesting thing is that Gabo didn't know he was unwittingly rewriting Antigone until one of his friends pointed it out. It's because this theme and this dilemma, like those of Shakespeare, are universal. The open ending is clearly enticing; how will the community and the family react during the funeral? Every reader is free to imagine their own ending. 
Would the villagers lunge at the colonel's family like an angry mob, and would he have to speak for the cause he defends? I imagine that ending. Furthermore, I'm sure the mob will learn their lesson and finally respect the colonel. The curlews will be hushed by the commanding voice they had hitherto overlooked until this moment, and sing in chorus with the old veteran.


La hojarasca concluye con la predicción del silbido de un tren fantasma y de la relegación de Macondo al rincón donde se almacenan "los pueblos que han dejado de prestar servicio a la nación". Pero también concluye, de forma más personal, con el cortejo fúnebre del difunto doctor francés dejando la mansión del coronel justo antes de su enfrentamiento con la gente del pueblo. 
El nieto dice las últimas palabras de la novela: "Ahora (los macondenses) sentirán el olor. Ahora todos los alcaravanes se pondrán a cantar". Estas aves marinas, también llamadas zarapitos, representan la tradición y la voz del pueblo en el relato y son, por ende, un Leitmotif, tanto como los trenes y la hojarasca (tormenta de hojas) que representan a la compañía bananera y la conexión entre el ambiente de periferia o hinterland de Macondo y un mundo exterior globalizado; el impacto general de la compañía frutera en la sociedad rural tradicional se ilustra con el caso particular de la llegada de cierto médico europeo amancebado y comedor de hierba. 
La ferrovía es un símbolo muy potente de la modernidad y del progreso: en "¡Adiós, Cordera!", de Clarín, la aparición del tren en un ambiente rural tradicional (del norte de España, en este caso) también representa la conexión de una sociedad periférica/de hinterland con el mundo exterior globalizado y su economía de mercado (agricultura de mercado, industria de mercado...), trayendo al terruño el mundo exterior con todo su progreso y todas sus amenazas a lo tradicional. 
El tren fantasma final representa, por ende, la decadencia y el retorno al aislamiento de Macondo como un engranaje desechado por la maquinaria de la globalización, de la economía internacional. Un retorno al asombro infantil que mostraban incluso los adultos al principio de Cien años de soledad, al ver un imán y un bloque de hielo que los gitanos nómadas han traído del mundo exterior como objetos mágicos. De vuelta de la ferrovía a los alcaravanes. 
El que el epitafio sea el decreto de Creonte (quien se atreva a sepultar o incluso a llorar al traidor, expuesto en público a los carroñeros y a los elementos, pagará con la pena de muerte), realmente predice que La hojarasca va a ser una reescritura de Antígona en un ambiente rural tropical (ficticio) en tiempos de guerra/posguerra. 
Los decretos de las autoridades sociales (dejar al traidor expuesto en público como marca de vergüenza, la ejecución espera a quien le entierre e incluso a quien le llore) en conflicto con los decretos del corazón (todos los cuerpos inertes merecen ser tratados con dignidad; al fin y al cabo, la muerte nos hace a todos iguales): he aquí un tema no sólo clásico, sino UNIVERSAL: también está en el fondo de Hamlet (a propósito de la venganza) o de Romeo y Julieta (a propósito del amor adolescente). 
Pero lo interesante es que Gabo no se dio cuenta de que había reescrito Antígona sin proponerse la idea hasta que uno de sus amigos hizo hincapié en ello. Es porque el tema y el dilema, como los de Shakespeare, son universales. El final abierto es realmente incitante: ¿cómo reaccionarán el pueblo y la familia durante el funeral? Cada lector/a es libre de imaginar su propio final. ¿Atacarán los macondenses a la familia del coronel en turba furiosa, y tendrá él que defender su causa ante el pueblo? Tal es el final que yo imagino. Y encima, estoy segura de que la turba habrá aprendido la lección y respetará al coronel. Los alcaravanes callarán ante la voz de mando que habían despreciado hasta la fecha, para cantar a coro con el anciano militar.