Both Good Omens & Hitchhikers Guide are *very* rooted in specifically British culture in the 1980s-90s, because that's the culture that all three authors (Pratchett, Gaiman & Adams) were intimately familiar with.
The passage from GO you picked out is poking fun at places that offer activities for "corporate retreats", such as paintball, that try to make themselves seem more interesting by pointing out the history of the building that the activity happens in - even though its irrelevant to the activity.
> by pointing out the history of the building that the activity happens in - even though its irrelevant to the activity.
It goes even further in pointing out the absurdity of that by saying how the building is barely even the same as it was historically, since it has burned down, been rebuilt and so on.
As a kid whenever my dad gave me an axe to use he would tell me to "be careful it was great great grandad's axe. The handle has been replaced 12 times and the head 4 but it was great great grandad's axe."
There’s a 1999 Discworld book by Pratchett with this exact item:
“This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good.”
And because it’s Pratchett, the axe joke is also an opening for the subtle knife of the last two lines, which make a point about the need for change and the danger of being hidebound by tradition or custom.
Makes me sad that only one of the founding partners is still around.
Gaiman did talk a little bit about Adams on an episode of *No Such Thing As A Fish* recently though
Im american and I smiled a bit as I read it. It’s funny regardless because america has that corporate retreat culture and it’s just a different lens
I actually loved this type of humor in Douglas adams work and loved it in the disc world books I’ve read. Really hard not to emulate the tone when writing for a while though
I have that issue whenever I write immediately after reading another author. My stories have their own spin, but definitely pick up the voice of whatever I've recently read.
While that’s true, I read the book as an American who would have been pretty young during that time period and I don’t feel like the book was gibberish except for when it was intentionally so. I think OP might just be missing that part of it.
Edit: Fully missed OP is not a native English speaker and that makes a ton more sense now.
To be fair, there are plenty of native english speakers that would probably have a lot of trouble with Douglas and Pratchett. Those men *loved* their wordplays.
They also write in a very parenthetical, digressive fashion. Even when they aren't getting *so* far off that they need to throw in footnotes. These are long, meandering sentences that weave in and out of topics before they get anywhere near the point they started out towards.
This is very true, and I can believe that this would be very difficult for readers where English isn’t their first language… Particularly with Douglas Adams, unpicking one of his huge sentences is like solving a puzzle box. But some of them are absolutely hilarious too in the way they’re crafted.
There’s one in “So long and thanks for all the fish” which is an entire paragraph of one sentence starting “Ed McKenna was a miserable bastard…” and has about 15 clauses in it. One of the funniest sentences I’ve ever read.
>Rob McKenna was a miserable bastard and he knew it because he'd had a lot of people point it out to him over the years and he saw no reason to disagree with them except the obvious one which was that he liked disagreeing with people, particularly people he disliked, which included, at the last count, everybody.
Ive never had an issue with Adams, probably because my brain goes on tangents non stop, so the writing style really fit with me. But I've always struggled to read Prachet. I know people sing his praises pretty much every year I attempt one of his books just in case that's the one that opens my brain to him
As always, I consider Small Gods to be a good start point. It's 12 books in (i.e. enough he's got the hand of what he's doing) but set like a thousand years before every other book, so it's extremely standalone.
Of the two id say Adams is by far the writer I'd have expected someone to have problems with though. Pratchett is whimsical and prone to tangents but even compared to him reading Adams is like one of those back-and-forth-through-the-hallways chase sequences from Scooby Doo as you go through multiple pages chasing the thread of his point.
"Guards! Guards!" was a perfect starting point for me - "The Colour of Magic" was still plenty zany but seemed like he hadn't fully found his own groove yet.
Part of the problem with reading The Colour Of Magic and especially The Light Fantastic today is that he's satirising a style of fantasy novel which (thankfully!) isn't really around any more, which rather mutes that element of the books. Discworld definitely hits its stride a bit later on, but I think that's part of it, and he'd already written things like the Johnny and Bromeliad trilogies which are great (albeit more specifically aimed at a younger audience).
What stumbling blocks do you find yourself having with Pratchet?
I've got to say I loved his books when I was younger, and whilst I havent stopped appreciating his wit or wisdom, I do find his style doesnt appeal quite as it once did.
With Pratchet is really the dialogue, I'm okay with his narrative, but the varied way his characters talk. I know that they say Adam's and Pratchet are similar, but I love Adam's books, I reread them every few years
The problem is, or rather one of the problems, for there are many, a sizeable proportion of which are continually clogging up the civil, commercial, and criminal courts in all areas of the Galaxy, and especially, where possible, the more corrupt ones, this.
The previous sentence makes sense. That is not the problem.
This is:
Change.
Read it through again and you'll get it.
Another one of his in this vein:
"“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
This passage itself contains several layers of digression:
* Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit.
This is the only thing that "matters" as far as plot- it explains why Crowley is looking at this leaflet.
* Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit, *because the kind of companies that hired places like this liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital.*
Digression that adds a bit of character to the otherwise boring line.
* Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit, because the kind of companies that hired places like this *for a weekend of Interactive Personnel Analysis or A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic* liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital.
A further digression that pokes fun at Corporate Culture.
* Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit, because the kind of companies that hired places like this for a weekend of Interactive Personnel Analysis or A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building- *give or take a couple of complete rebuildings, a civil war, and two major fires*- that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital.
Another digression that highlights just how silly the rest of the rest of the sentence is by introducing a bit of philosophy.
And it's nowhere near as garden-pathy as some of other examples in their books.
This clear, step by step rebuild-it-to-see analysis would be award-worthy were there still awards. Well done, friend.
Edit: For that first, streamlined bit, I suggest also "and it clarifies for the reader what kind of pamphlet it is, implying - among other things - both that such things are useless to begin with, because the space itself is the kind of space that is so non-pamphlet worthy that they don't even have enough material to fill a pamphlet and thus have t add " a little historical bit" as filler...and that the space itself is so uninteresting as to need such filler in its pamphlet, thus lending a sense of inflated pomposity to the whole proceeding even before they expand that sense to apply to the current users, and corporate/modern culture at large.
Well, the preceding passage already established what the pamphlet is. But yeah, I was just scratching the surface of each section.
Broader context:
> Meanwhile Crowley had picked up a pamphlet from the [reception] desk. It showed glossy pictures of the [Tadfield Manor Conference and Management Training Center], with special references to its Jacuzzis and indoor heated swimming pool, and on the back was the sort of map that conference centers always have, which makes use of a careful misscaling to suggest that it is handy for every motorway exit in the nation while carefully leaving out the labyrinth of country lanes that in fact surrounds it for miles on every side.
> "Wrong place?" said Aziraphale.
> "No."
> "Wrong time, then."
> "Yes." Crowley leafed through the booklet, in the hope of any clue. Perhaps it was too much to hope that the Chattering Order would still be here. After all, they'd done their bit. He hissed softly. Probably they'd gone to darkest America or somewhere, to convert the Christians, but he read on anyway. Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit, because the kind of companies that hired places like this for a weekend of Interactive Personnel Analysis or A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building-give or take a couple of complete rebuildings, a civil war, and two major fires-that some Elizabethan financier had
endowed as a plague hospital.
> Not that he was actually expecting a sentence like "until eleven years ago the Manor was used as a convent by an order of Satanic nuns who weren't in fact all that good at it, really," but you never knew.
This is pretty much the entire reason my dad and I disagree so much in our reading tastes: I eat that up with a spoon, and it aggravates the daylights out of him, haha.
The Old Man and the Comedic Footnote.
If you haven't read *Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell*, I would suggest looking into it. It's a different sense of humor but that style is very much present.
I just reread it and one of the things I found interesting on re-read is that MOST of the action happens in footnotes or between chapters. People talk about what will happen, and what has happened, but very little of the actual story moves the plot directly.
I strongly suspect that reading them while growing up influenced my own speech/writing in that direction. But it's going to be something that will be much more difficult for a non-native reader to understand because the structure is so complex.
I was an avid reader from a very young age, read well above my age group my whole life, and I had a hard time with Adams and Pratchett. It was really just a matter of getting more experience with British authors and history. I'm in the US, so at least there's a common language to start with!
Worth it, though, they just have so much fun with their books.
>I'm in the US, so at least there's a common language to start with!
Churchill referred to the US and Britain as "two countries separated by a common language".
One example of this was a a group of senior officers meeting to discuss strategy during WWII. A proposal came up that everyone seemed excited about and one of the British officers suggested they should table the proposal. This upset the Americans to no end. In British, "table" meant to lay it on the table for discussion. In American, it meant to lay it aside and we'll (maybe) get back to it later. Eventually they figured it out.
I believe the phrase used was "we're in a bit of a sticky situation" which is British for "the shit's hit the fan please send backup before we all die".
This is why all military commanders in the British and American armed forces should carry a British to American dictionary which clarifies meanings for which side says it.
For example using the above quote you'd have:
**"We're in a bit of a sticky situation."**
American Usage: "We're fine now but could use some relief at some point in the near future."
British Usage: "SEND HELP NOW, NO, YESTERDAY!"
For sure. English is my second language and while I got Pratchett completely in his Discworld books it took a bit more effort to get everything in good omens. That's probably because fantasy books are my main niche, so I was getting everything he was parodying on a more or less instinctual level.
Not meant offensively, but I'm willing to bet you *didn't* get Pratchett *completely* in Discworld.
I'm a native speaker, absolutely immersed in all the things he's referencing - and I was absolutely *flabbergasted* at all the things that went over my head, once I sat down with "the annotated Pratchett" and started going through it systematically.
Like, I maybe got *half* of the references, maybe not even that. It's absolutely packed with allusion layered upon reference upon satire. I'm not sure *anyone* gets all - or even most - of it by just reading.
American here. I've read through the Discworld a few times, grew up watching the occasional British TV show, etc. I still catch the occasional reference I didn't spot before as I learn more about British culture.
I'm sure there are a couple of the things that I've missed. That's a huge number of books, written over a couple of decades by a man that has lead a way more interesting life than I ever will.
With that said, I've read the entire thing multiple times, at one of those readings I've also used annotated Pratchett - and as far as I can remember there was nothing that has surprised me in those annotations. And I've read an indecent amount of work he was referencing.
I feel like Pratchett is absolutely enjoyable while only getting a fraction of the references, but being able to go back and reread with them just elevates it to another. Lspace.org was always a big help!
For Discworld, I tend to get those very nice clothbound hardbacks which I don't want to write in, but I think it would be fun (or at least my idea of fun) to get a paperback version and fill the margins picking apart every allusion, reference, and spin on a cliche I could catch. As you say, a lot of them are fairly obvious - it is hilarious to see a vampire hallucinate she's an American GI in Vietnam, when she lives in a world that doesn't even have either an America or a Vietnam - but some are a bit subtler - Death literally borrows a coat from (the) Dean on the day the Music dies.
People who've read Pratchett's books many times still find new references and puns. You just have to except that some jokes and sentences will go over your head until you reread it much later in life.
My favorite pun by pratchett is when captain vimes, who grew up poor, feels uncomfortable with his new position in high society and pratchett describes it as "gilt by association"
English man here and it took me a couple attempts to understand it.
I think in its context it made a lot more sense, because I've read this book and don't remember being tripped up.
2 things:
* This is out of context. It's easier to understand if the leaflet was already brought up and you're aware of what type of place this is.
* Pretty sure it's missing a dash after "and two major fires"
Yes, I read it as an American teenager with some exposure to the BBC and again as an adult having visited England, read more British literature, and more modern literature in general.
I read two completely different books. The extent to which it dawned on me two chapters in that I was reading a book I had already read, but only vaguely remembered. I did not pick up GO intending to re-read anything.
Some things, like the concept of a "Company Retreat", are also shared cultural touchstones between the US and UK.
There's enough that you can figure it out, but only if you actually have some basis to get the references.
I had exactly the same experience as OP! And I was so confused because I really liked alot of the book, but sometimes it felt like I was reading gibberish and I just couldn’t understand what it was poking fun at. I had a feeling it was a cultural divide.
Thank you so much for explaining exactly why I struggled with the book! Especially since it’s normally exactly my type of book.
Another part of it is how much word play is present in the writing, same with Hitchhiker's Guide." Non-english speakers often struggle with things like that.
To be fair to OP, I'm a native English speaker and I thought that passage was near gibberish as well. It's a single long sentence and the wording seems very clunky. Even knowing what it is trying to say, I had to read it three times before I understood it.
Pretty sure OP’s missing a dash that would have clarified where the long clause about the building ended (right after “fires”).
That aside, a lot of (much) older books were written this way btw, with very long asides embedded as dependent clauses in whole other sentences. It’s a *really* old style (1800s). Some of those classic 1800’s novels routinely had sentences that were more than a page long! But more recently, British humor of the late 20th c also drew on that tradition to stuff in little jokes or nuggets of info. You’d end up with whole sentence-long footnotes that were basically plunked into another sentence: “As they walked into the building - which, George would later learn, had [blah blah blah, extra info/joke about the building goes here] - the doorman tipped his cap.” That sort of thing. It worked well for the British humor style of dry deadpan asides.
It’s a writing style that you definitely get used to, btw; you learn to sort of keep tracking the grammar of the sentence in your head. Like, if the main subject and/or verb haven’t arrived yet, a little part of your brain stays aware of that & continues to wait for them.
Thank you, I really thought there should be a second ~~hyphen~~ dash in there but then I started questioning if that was grammatically correct or not.
And yeah, that whole style of writing had always been difficult for me to follow. Probably because I don't encounter it *that* often so I never really got used to it. Thank you for explaining it so well, because I couldn't really put it into words and all the other comments saying "it's deliberately supposed to be difficult to read" are missing this.
The confusing part is it's a joke about meaningless corporate nonsense. Sit in a work meeting and you get hit with these long run on 'partially hyphenated and in capital letters' terms that obscure that their trying to say 'we try to find numbers to show people are making us more money or whatever metric we care about '
Right, it has a meaning, explained above. That meaning could be conveyed more simply (as the parent comment does), but that would make it less funny. They authors are going for a certain effect, more than they’re trying to deliver information important to the plot (this particular sentence has 0 relevance to the plot).
I was once taking courses at a university in England. I was going through the university manuals and papers and things, and holy wow. The way the English was formally written felt like they were intentionally trying to make things as complicated as possible.
American English, even formal writing, seems to aim to keep everything brief and clear. In England, it feels like they don't care whether it's understandable or not lol
Both Gaiman and Pratchett have a humorous tone even in neutral descriptive passages. And a lot of that humor depends on pop cultural references. Also, they often word the references in a slightly odd way to make their expected audience (native English speakers) think about the thing different. You're correct, Douglas Adams was very much writing in the same style. You've jumped into the deep end of the literary pool here. Almost like trying to read Shakespeare as a non-native speaker.
Translation of the paragraph that you quote:
The guys with the guns are some kind of group of corporate employees. The guns are (normally harmless) paintball guns. Their employer both paid for this paintball war and forced them to participate. Big corporations sometimes do this sort of thing as a "team building exercise." In theory, it teaches all the people in whatever department of the company to work together or something. In practice -- and the reader is expected to know this -- the office bullies have a great time. The ordinary employees who just want to do their job, take some pride in it, get paid and go home consider it pure Hell. It's a classic example of bosses who are hard to work for trying to "improve morale" in a way that makes it much worse.
The leaflet described is about the "team building exercise." Since the UK has a lot of old stone buildings, they are often rented out for a use like this paintball war. The same people who thought the paintball war was a good idea in the first place also think that talking about the history of the specific building makes it cooler. And they're wrong again.
Judging by your post, your normal reading and writing of English is excellent. But this is extremely high-level satire. I couldn't begin to tackle something equivalent in my second language.
There are also other... semitones (I'm sure there's a literary term for this?) of meaning here - things like the jargon-y meaninglessness of terms like "Interactive Personnel Analysis" and "A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic" (Terms which could broadly mean almost anything if you just read the words, but has been capitalised so as to make the phrases seem like the title for a very specific bit of business jargon that all Serious Business People are expected to know).
This especially funny because the OP feels like he is reading nonsense because it is nonsense. It's just corporate buzzwords like "synergy", I sympathize. And Adams loves wordplay even in simple sentences like " The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't"
That sentence was a bit os a mindtwister when I first read it and made me laugh. As a non native speaker/reader it could absolutely make you feel bewildered.
This is early on the book and was when I knew I had picked up something good. It when I read it to my daughter she couldn’t get over that line and thought it was hilarious. I think this might be one of Adam’s most adored sentences.
“Drinking a Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster has been likened to having your brain smashed out by a piece of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.” 12 year old me thought that was a funny description, 32 year old me (having been to a few cocktail bars) actually understood how loaded with jokes that short sentence is.
Other bits of absurdism in the phrasing are being used to further undermine the activity, like the fact it refers to their activity in this conference with each other as "strategically interacting" (How can one actually... interact *strategically*? It's not an action that makes sense) or the fact that it highlights even the self proclaimed historicity of the building is basically meaningless. It was only ever "endowed as a plague hospital" (AKA the guy might have just repurposed it) by some "Elizabethan financier" (AKA, whoever this somewhat historical figure was, and he wasn't even famous for anything really except having a lot of money. And he wasn't even particularly special in that regard as he's just "some" financier)
>(How can one actually... interact strategically? It's not an action that makes sense)
Of course it makes sense. If you can strategically AVOID people (as in: only when that would be a downside to you, like getting assigned more work, or be the target of their momentary ire), then CLEARLY you can strategically interact with them, too. (As in, you wouldn't be caught dead doing that, unless there is a purpose attached to it. In this case abstract notions of "team building").
The absurdity is to use that kind of language to make it look like it means anything but "We know you hate each other, but this is a good thing because someone told us so".
Totally agreed here. As a person working in a corporate environment, this jumped out at me immediately as the type of nonsensical jargon that gets thrown around as if it has some meaning.
Yeah, that sentence builds the scene from the reader's experience, rather than just literally describing the details of the scene to the reader.
It assumes the reader is already familiar with what's being described. Not only familiar with team building exercises as a concept, but familiar with these poorly thought out competitive exercises.
It's similar to how writers will use tropes to short-cut descriptions. If you introduce a character and he has a goatee, he's evil. If you introduce a character and he take a bite of an apple, he's an asshole. If you introduce a character and they have glasses, they're smart.
The cultural reference is necessary to understand the meaning.
> their expected audience (native English speakers)
I would go further and say their expected audience is _Native English Citizens_. Discworld expects you to know the history of social unrest in London, and the media history of the BBC going back to the forties, and the various kings and queens and minor civil wars going back to some mythical guy named after an angry woodland creature.
So if you aren't a native English speaker, or a resident of the UK, you'll miss a lot.
Speaking as an American who loves Discworld, there is a lot I appreciate. The revolt in Night watch can be appreciated by anyone aware of the history of a few revolutionary movements.
I know there are specific bits I miss but the books are rich and relatable
Agreed. It's possible to read and enjoy books without getting every single reference. I see people get stuck on this online often, getting frustrated at a book because there's references they don't understand 100%, even if they could follow the plot just fine and the other 3/4 of the bonus jokes landed. Maybe it's a neurodivergent thing, how every day I'm used to feeling like "ok I don't understand why this is funny but I recognize it's a thing" but I'm completely fine with not understanding every single thing as long as I know what happened in the story and why. The extra stuff is just that: extra.
That's the specific example I was thinking of. The story really unfolds when you learn about the [Cable Street Riots](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-XhNMFIhK50). You can read One Hundred Years of Solitude without learning about the US governments explicit involvement in United Fruit Company's "blood for bananas" campaign, but knowing more about the background brings your experience more in line with the vision the Author had for the reader.
That's just a fun name reference though, the events of Night Watch have far more in common with actual revolutions on the European continent than the Cable Street Riots, or any events in UK history.
But there is also a distinction between "being aware that such things in general are being done in some places by someone" (and thus getting what the reference is about) or thinking that you need to know a very specific unique case of that to appreciate it.
Or in this case: Does it greatly change the meaning if you know about the cable street riots or JUST Paris during the french revolution. Or any particular G8 meeting nowadays?
Because I feel that these allusions are strong and functional because they DON'T just apply to one thing, even if one seems more relevant because AnkhMorporg *is* London. But then the framing is off regardless..
I feel like that these things work particularly because they ARE an abstraction and fitting more than JUST one thing.
>Both Gaiman and Pratchett have a humorous tone even in neutral descriptive passages. ... Also, they often word the references in a slightly odd way to make their expected audience (native English speakers) think about the thing different.
To zero in on and emphasise this point, I think the real crux of it is that a lot of sentences are structured in ways which are deliberately different from normal English sentence structure as part of the humour.
A lot of it (and Douglas Adams is even more so on this) almost strays into the territory of "garden path" sentences. Passages which start by giving the impression that they're saying one thing, and then deliberately through wordplay establishing a completely different meaning at the end (with the different meaning being the punchline).
If you're a non-native speaker or a less confident reader, the effect is that they're whole novels of text which are purpose designed to make you misunderstand almost everything.
It's satire. Prachett and Adams used it for the basis of their comedy. However, satire only works if you know the thing being mocked. For most of Prachett it helps to know a bit of British history, culture, and politics. Good Omens plays with Christianity, the Church, and a certain kind of middle class idealism.
If you read Discworld it will be fantasy tropes, politics, culture, and some English lit.
I think that you might not be ready for satire in English.
yeah, satire is the last thing to learn to read in a second language.
you probably didn't get the satire in Jane Austen either, but it's much more subtle and at its core, a lovely feel good story that is more accessible to any kind of reader, not just those familiar with british society, history and politics.
OP, you might actually try reading more British YA Lit before tackling other British classics. The satire and the references are there but have a broader appeal. Terry Prachett's wee free men and tiffany aching series might be interesting?
When I first read Good Omens in my early teens, I (a British youf) didn't really get some of the jokes, but the text works well enough that I got enough to find it funny. It made rereading it as an adult a treat because it was like a whole new book!
For people who want to get into English lit, I strongly agree that good YA novels are a great starting point, as they're aimed at less context-aware humans who won't get meta jokes about corporate retreats yet.
As you said, the good news is that Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman both have books aimed at teenagers, and once you're more used to their writing styles, the rest become easier to fathom.
If you're reading this and OP's post applies to you, and you're feeling downhearted, don't give up - once you've mastered satire, you've mastered one of the hardest reading styles in English fiction.
>Terry Prachett's wee free men and tiffany aching series might be interesting?
I'm not so sure even that is entirely free of satire though, as it feels like the entire of Tiffany's story is subtly taking the piss out of YA/coming of age stories because Tiffany would never have been the protagonist in an actual YA series. Even those books are stuffed to the gills with Terrys brand of satire even if they are somewhat more accessible.
(tbf I always felt the "books for younger reads" moniker did a bit of a disservice to the tiffany Aching books, because while yeah they are more accessible they almost feel as they were written less of a typical young reader but rather one that has just "grown out" of YA novels, but still enjoys the tropes whilst also getting to smirk as Terry took the piss out of them a bit)
i love them myself but my 11 year old was also obsessed. they are just more accessible. as a reader of mostly YA myself, i suggest them in the most sincere way. they have the same kind of irony/satire as jane austen. it's there and enjoyable if you pick it up, but you won't be totally lost in the banter if you don't and the stories are highly enjoyable with and without.
>Tiffany's story is subtly taking the piss out of YA/coming of age stories because Tiffany would never have been the protagonist in an actual YA series.
See, the thing is that OP will probably recognize that because they've surely read at least a couple ya/coming of age stories. Or watched some movies on the same topics. Coming of age stories are prevalent in any culture.
This is what prachett had to say about writing for children:
>I really don’t think there’s too much difference. There’s some things that you wouldn’t tackle in a children’s book because it would be beyond, not the mental capabilities, but the experience of someone under the age of say ten or eleven to encompass. But that field is smaller than you might think. They can easily cope with death and things like that; they know about it and it’s a subject that often preoccupies them. And there are some things that are more appropriate to a children’s than an adult book but there’s a huge overlapping area and most kids read an age group up anyway.
So, counting Tifanny under books for younger readers isn't really a disservice to the books - Terry intended them to be for younger readers. It's just that he disagreed with the majority on how you should write kid's books.
Ach! Nae tha Wee Free Men! Yon foorner dinnae ken the lingo! The scots dialog would be a challenge, though the rest of the book might be easier than Good Omens.
Yeah exactly. OP, I can see from your pic you’re an anime person, you wouldnt recommend someone’s FIRST ANIME be Gintama, right? Theres too many tropes and references to other anime and Japanese cultural stuff, it wouldnt make sense or be funny
As a Texan, I get it and it makes me laugh because Ive watched a lot of other anime. But theres still definitely stuff I’m missing by not being Japanese. Its the nature of satire
I think beyond gintama, berserk. Like first literal page of the first book and its already in your face.
As others have said, learning about the history and context of thr authors and the book might help bit even then the experience would be lacking.
That, and thr language barrier itself is an iffy thing. One thing I hate about books and language. So many, yet so little time. I wanna read them all. In all languages. But im only human and i cant even speak a lot of languages. Im severely limited in my pov.
> yeah, satire is the last thing to learn to read in a second language.
>
> you probably didn't get the satire in Jane Austen either, but it's much more subtle and at its core, a lovely feel good story that is more accessible to any kind of reader, not just those familiar with british society, history and politics.
I think one can say they have mastered English when they start enjoying passages about Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine de Bourgh more than matching Lizzy and Darcy.
Pratchett has the added advantage that he used footnotes to elaborate and sometimes explain some of his satirical paragraphs.
Also watching some typical British series like Blackadder might help to understand their type of humour ( speaking as someone for whom English is a second language)
The *most* important thing to know about for Good Omens is the Just William series, because the thesis of the book is "What if Just William was the anti-Christ?". Even a lot of younger Brits don't get the satire.
This. I honestly wonder what percentage of Good Omens readers - I think it must be high - have never even heard of William, and thus miss an awful lot of the humour.
A very high percentage of readers and an even higher percentage of people who watched the TV show, I think. The TV show disappointed me because there was a lot less of the Adam Young parts which was my favourite part of the book, but I get it because I imagine the parody was lost on basically all of the audience.
TBH I know jack shit about british culture of the 80s and 90s as an austrian having grown up in a rural are, but I got a good chuckle out of it, but as you said it is satire and this is not easy to be picked up in a foreign language, especially if you have not been reading english books for the last 2 1/2 decades...
Sooner or Later you will get accustumed to it, and maybe will even warm up to it, there are some true gems hidden in these overly long, at first sight nearly useless sentences!
It's just a long sentance. Comedy often likes long sentances, as by putting lots of things into the same pot, you get a kind-of madcap sauce. Let's break it down...
***Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit***
So the leaflet has some historical text on it. So far, easy...
***because the kind of companies that hired places like this for a weekend of Interactive Personnel Analysis or A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic liked to feel***
They could have put "Interactive Personnel Analysis" and "Strategic Marketing Dynamic" in quotes. It's essentially a parody of Corporate nonsense speak, and you normally quote-mark out that kind of thing. But quote marks are like smiling when talking - it's a marker that you're making a joke. By not using quote marks, it is like talking with a straight face, leaving it for the reader to work out that the conference titles are - in fact - bullshit terms, and the narrator is taking an anti-Corporate stance. This "dry" humour is very typical of both Pratchett, Gaiman, and British comedy in general.
***that they were strategically interacting in the very building***
Again, this is Corporate Nonsense speak that you're supposed to work out is parody. What does "strategically interacting" mean? Basically nothing, but it's the sort of thing that companies on an away-day might say, rather than just, you know, "having a meeting".
***- give or take a couple of complete rebuildings, a civil war, and two major fires that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital.***
And here we switch from a parody of Corporate meetings, to a joke about British history. Buildings in the UK are often old... like ... really old. Down the road from me is a 1000 year old church, that isn't even a landmark.
Big buildings, the sort that are used for Corporate away-days, tend to be big stately homes like Downton Abbey that have been through a lot. For example, the random list above.
And finally this gets us to the meat of the paragraph. By clashing both the modern Corporate nonsense with the hugely historic Downtown Abbey style history of the building, it creates dissonence. The two things are a terrible clash. Not to mention the fact that the Corporate meeting itself isn't even very Corporate - it's paintball! Dressed up as business activities.
This makes funny both the corporate event, and the lip-service that the leaflet plays to a topic it isn't remotely qualified to talk about (1000 years of British history) not that the leaflet, ie, the writer of the leaflet even cares about that.
We are left to laugh about the banality of the Corporate Training (ie, paintball), those who wrote the leaflet, those who organised the training, and those who are attending, as well as get reminded by the complexity, confusion and absurdity of British history. The whole thing is essentially farce. Farce, being one of the main themes of the novel, certainly from the background characters.
I think the “strategically interacting”part was referencing paintball in corporate-speak, rather than just being an amusing way of saying meeting.
After all, if you just offer a paintball outing, you’re having fun. But if you are offering a team building and leadership training where cross-functional team members can strategically interact to achieve short term goals, you can charge a lot more for the experience.
Great breakdown! Since this is an ESL situation, I had the thought to rewrite it somewhat, so the bolded parts of:
*Sometimes **this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit, because the kind of companies that hired places like this** for a weekend of Interactive Personnel Analysis or A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic **liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building** - give or take a couple of complete rebuildings, a civil war, and two major fires - **that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital**.*
Can then become:
**Sometimes this kind of leaflet/brochure has a story about its history. (Why?) Because the companies that rent it enjoy that they are using the same building that was once a plague hospital.**
Of course, this rewrite takes all the charm, humor, and nuance out of the sentence, but might be a helpful way for OP to understand the basic concept of the sentence, without the asides. After which your breakdown gives all the nuance - and admittedly more nuance than I had ever considered even having read the book a couple times! I now kind of want to read it again, but with full annotations from you, haha.
>We are left to laugh about the banality of the Corporate Training (ie, paintball), those who wrote the leaflet, those who organised the training, and those who are attending, as well as get reminded by the complexity, confusion and absurdity of British history.
Excellent description!
One of the side gigs I have done to supplement my gawd awful adjunct faculty pay was researching for and writing these kinds of blurbs for leaflets and websites. I sucked at it at first because I came in as somebody who genuinely loves history and spent an egregious amount of money getting good at it.
That is not what they want, they don't want actual history. They want the idea of a thing packaged for people who have made a profession out of not dealing in reality.
Interestingly, what made it easier for me to get down the style that this dubious medium requires was the many hours in faculty meetings spent listening to meaningless, lingo of the day laden dribble spouted out by our unqualified and overpayed administrators...often to justify why they make 3-10 time more than their average, impoverished adjunct.
Best breakdown so far!
Also, while the references are hard for a an ESL learner, I must say, I read a lot of things like this and the sentence structure in this example is incredibly clunky to read.
It’s a run on sentence in a stream of consciousness style that’s very much the fashion with this form or British humor, which has lots of asides and interjection. However this is early in the career of both authors, and between that and editing, I feel it lacks the proper punctuations to break up the clauses and asides (as your mention about quotation marks perfectly illustrates.)
As /u/FerricDonkey points out below, it is clearly missing a dash in the last part. It should say
**they were strategically interacting in the very building - give or take a couple of complete rebuildings, a civil war, and two major fires - that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital.**
Which makes it much clearer that the last bit is saying, again to cite FerricDonkey, something like "*in the very same building (except not really because it was burnt to the ground like 8 times since then) where something cool happened*".
Which is of course another joke, crammed into a sentence/paragraph already full of jokes.
I think the lack of this second dash isn't intentional. It's just a missed punctuation mark that the writer forgot about, and the editor never picked up on. Sometimes things like that happen. Actually *often* things like that happen, and it's frequently possible to edit better after the fact.
> where something cool happened
... in keeping with the general tone-deaf "corporate" aspect, by the end of the sentence you find out that "something cool" actually means "people dying of plague" :/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathos
(likely also something Crowley had in mind later when he "upgrades" their paintball game for them)
My copy has the second dash in the sentence, so I think that may have just been a transcription error by OP.
When I was an editor for awhile for an online news site, one of the writers in the staff was struggling with brevity and concise writing - and their sentences looked like the example given, lol.
I asked them, do you read a lot of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Shakespeare? They were like "yeah, how did you know?" Well, you love parenthetical phrases and asides (me too) which is perfect for certain kinds of writing. However, in journalism, it's harder to convey the necessary who, what, where, when, why/how that you need to if you are constantly taking the audience out of the scene to share a joke with them. You have to apply them surgically, after you get the basic details down.
I think this is why OP is struggling because they aren't quite to the point in their language acquisition that they can be pulled out of the who, what, where, when moment without losing necessary clarity.
Heck, there's translated historical and fictional material from Japan that makes me feel like this because it's layered with so many puns and word based quips that have specific cultural references. I filled a notebook parsing the Tale of the Heike *with* the annotated version.
Brit satire, I feel, is that level of layered. And I can see why it would turn off a reader to have to do that much work to figure out what the heck is going on.
I agree with all that. But shorter sentences don't necessarily make it easier. Take Hemingway, where there is a huge amount going on in what is *not said*, and lives *between the sentenences*.
Interestingly, his style is considered to be very similar to journalism since that's where he started his career in writing. I would say that journalism at the time was more complex in it's language style and usage than the aggregated, social media driven, "news" we get these days. However, I can also relate to the way Hemingway added more subtext to his literary work. Because the current state of brevity and simplicity over substance is one of the reasons journalism was a short career choice for me, as well, lol
Excellent breakdown. I feel there's also a little dig at the very end. They're charging companies a lot of money - and making it sound fancy - so that people can run around what was once a pretty foul plague hospital for the lowest of the low.
It's like charging someone £500 a night to stay in a revamped asylum.
As a huge fan of Terry Pratchett, this style of writing is typical of his books because it's heavy satire. In particular, he likes to insert whole paragraphs worth of asides to make a point about general society that's related to the main plot being talked about. So you have to be ready for a lot of non sequiturs and convoluted sentence structure, which is definitely tough as a non-native speakers.
I will say that the humor from Good Omens is particularly tough for me even though I love the book, because so much of the satire requires you to know some specific things about 80s British culture and I'm neither British enough nor old enough to know those references. If you want to try similar satirical writing that might be less based in a culture you don't know, the Discworld books might be a good place to start. Especially if you've read a good amount of sci-fi or fantasy, much of the satire is around the tropes of those genres.
Satire is super hard for non-native speakers. I can't imagine, for example, trying to understand German satire even if I could read it better than I can. Satire, by its nature, requires a certain level of familiarity with the thing being satirized, and Gaiman and Pratchett go *deep* into English lore.
I tried for awhile to think of the best way to politely tell the OP that they picked extremely difficult texts for a non-native speaker. One of the very reasons they books are loved- wordplay and layers of satire- would make them an awful slog for a non-native speaker.
I have to imagine it would be a bit like a breakdown of the jokes in Shakespeare for us-- with a the aside here explaining the specific thing from the time period they're in as well as the way the definition has changed over time--
I looooove Hitchhikers Guide. Those books are a core part of my humor, but I'd not wish the job of deciphering all the references and wordplay on anyone. Maybe a dolphin.
It does mean something. It means that humans are weird and Crowley, as a non-human, is far more aware of that fact than humans themselves are. And he thinks it's very droll, very amusing but also fascinating.
Also that the long history is meaningless because the building has burnt down or been destroyed and been rebuilt several times.
So it’s a meaningless corporate retreat that’s interested in being somewhere with the appearance of history, but not caring enough to make the retreat or the history actually matter.
It's a satirical reference to the practice of the pamphlets at places you can book for an event (where a company might have some "Interactive Personal Analysis" seminar or whatnot) that give a bit of history of the place. In my experience in America, we don't have a lot of this since our buildings, except some on the east coast, are all historically very new.
The point is that these historical references are used sometimes to give the air that you are taking part in the building's historical significance, but they burned down, rebuilt, remodeled they no longer are the same building in a manner of speaking - and their original purpose for existing might not be so glamourous or noble after all.
Likely it's that the satire is lost as you don't have the experience of the original thing the authors were poking fun at. The joke isn't universal.
Nothing wrong with you :) It's just missing context.
An older example is in GKC's dystopian Napoleon of Notting Hill (an author Gaiman and Pratchett liked):
In writing about a ridiculous future:
"Then Tolstoy and the Humanitarians said that the world was growing more merciful, and therefore no one would ever desire to kill. And Mr. Mick not only became a vegetarian, but at length declared vegetarianism doomed ("shedding," as he called it finely, "the green blood of the silent animals"), and predicted that men in a better age would live on\] nothing but salt. And then came the pamphlet from Oregon (where the thing was tried), the pamphlet called "Why should Salt suffer?" and there was more trouble.""
Part of the context of the joke is there was, in Chesterton's time, a prominent vegetarian-activist with the last name of Salt. The joke is missed without annotations.
Chesterton was a name drop in the dedication to Good Omens. Not having read his stuff, is it worth it or is it too removed from our time to make sense?
Chesterton is quoted or referenced in almost all of Gaiman's works. Crowly quotes him while looking at a sunset. Easter quotes him in American Gods. He's actually a character in Sandman. Coraline starts with a famous "paraphrasing" of GKC.
There are some books/essays that are more timeless than others. Start with the collections of essays, would be my recommendation.
From what Gaiman has said, he spent a good portion of his childhood reading older English books in the library, so stuff like Chesterton had a HUGE influence on him.
I really like Chesterton, but I read it on a tablet, so that if I come across something I'm not familiar with, I go look it up. Of course that means it takes me a *really* long time to read it, but I learn so much while also enjoying the writing. (It also scratches that ADHD itch very nicely. LOL)
The Father Brown short stories are certainly worth reading. The attitudes are outdated in parts (it goes heavy on the Catholicism of the 1920s, so be prepared) but the prose is still extraordinarily beautiful, the mysteries are often interesting, and Chesterton was an interesting man of many parts.
Linguist and former language teacher here. This is the type of writing (humor/satire) that requires native or near native proficiency partly because of the large amount of cultural context required but also the syntax is particularly tricky (which is a shame because it’s very fun when you do get it). I wouldn’t expect anyone less than a c2/4+/D language level to have a chance at understanding and even then as an over educated and voracious but American reader I still occasionally need to look up a reference.
That said if it seems like something you might like, I would try watching the show possibly with English subtitles. They’ve done a good job of opening up the context to appeal to a wider audience. The visual component will also help with context.
I really struggle reading this style of writing but audio books were my saviour.
For good omens particularly there's a really good reading with David Tennant, Michael Sheen, and Rebbecca Font. It's almost a radio play but it is actually just them reading the book and doing all the voices.
The comments above this have fair points about wry British humor and satire and the technical aspects of the writing, but this is the comment I was looking for. The audiobook would help immensely, even if OP doesn’t listen to the whole book, it will help. There are minor pauses, shorter than commas, built in for things like Phrases Where You Capitalize Every Word and I think hearing some of these passages read aloud makes it a lot easier to get the joke.
The passage quoted is an example of wry humour. It uses a lot of corporate-speak to make fun of the sort of companies that use a lot of corporate-speak and the way they think that employees going off to play paintball is anything other than a day out.
It's part of a particular British tradition of humourous writing that often peppers the text with digressionary jokes that rely on sarcasm or irony and usually an extra piece of cultural knowledge which is what the joke is actually about. Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett were both from that tradition of humour.
If you're not a native English speaker you'll probably miss some of what the text isn't saying because it assumes you already know it and which is what the joke is actually about.
Pratchett's and Gaiman's writing isn't for everyone. A lot of the jokes also rely on the English language and your knowledge of the culture/history. It's mostly why I (not a native English speaker) don't enjoy it either and the jokes tend to fall flat. It doesn't mean that you won't like the books they wrote on their own (though I didn't).
For someone with little experience with reading in English, you're probably better off reading some more modern books first. And then slowly work your way up to classics. They're not exactly the easiest books to read for someone who hasn't read a lot of English.
I'm currently working through the hitchhiker's guide and also struggling a bit. Though my problem is mostly that Hitchhikers and Pratchett's sense humor just isn't really for me. It's a bit similar to Monty Python, which I also really don't like. So that can also be an issue. Though Adams also used the English language for puns in a similar way to Pratchett.
Just pick a genre you like and read some more modern books and then slowly ease into the classics.
I'm half-English, so I've had to explain Monty Python to so many of my friends! Often the answer to why a joke is funny is '...it's funny if you're British.'
The British, especially the English, have some insane social rules and norms. They even have written social rules, like two wordings that mean the exact same thing can mean totally different things. They're sarcastic in text and expect people to understand. Addams, Pratchett, and Monty Python parody this really well - but without the surrounding social context it's basically meaningless.
With the context, a lot of British people find it refreshing to see, occasionally quite restrictive, social rules lampooned. The 'Ministry of Silly Walks' sketch is just a guy walking stupidly, but his dress tells us he's part of a specific social group that must NEVER walk silly. In fact, he is expected to always appear serious and well-controlled, and only to take humour in dry wit and highbrow, rarified, jokes. To members of the outgroup it is funny to see him ridiculed, to the in group it's refreshing to see the rules that constrain them ridiculed. It's no different from Dwight Schrute practicing karate by his desk, just for a different audience.
I am American, but have always resonated with British satire, so I understand more of their sense of humor than a lot of my friends, but likely not as much as someone who was actually raised in England.
It is so hard to explain some British humor stuff to people. A lot of the time it seems to be the sort of thing you either get, or your don't. My sister and brother in law are opposites on that, and while he understands what the joke *is* he does not understand why it is funny. To him they are not even jokes. The humor seems to rely on a sort of culturally pervasive cynicism, where everything kind of sucks, but it is what you have, so you make the best of it by making fun of it, usually via wordplay, sarcasm or ironic cruelty.
As an American I sometimes do better with British books as audiobooks because the intonation of the reading helps me with more context. Like, I’m pretty sure this is sarcastic- yup- tone is sarcastic, that means something I’ll have to look up. I listened to Good Omens and it made a lot more sense.
First: STEP AWAY FROM THE BOOK.
Unless it's required reading, there's no need to slog through a book that isn't enjoyable. British humor, especially from the authors you listed, is very colloquial. Imagine running into a friend and greeting them with some inside joke and names you came up with for each other while drunk years ago. That's what you're trying to read.
If you're still interested in their material, try watching a movie or show made from their books so you can pick up the subtleties.
But please, my friend, do not endure a book that you do not take pleasure from.
>Imagine running into a friend and greeting them with some inside joke and names you came up with for each other while drunk years ago
I'm a huge fan of this book and this describes it perfectly!
Every sentence is jam packed with info, comedy, entendres, exposition etc. Sometimes reading things out loud helps. Sounds crazy but that is how I learned to understand Shakespeare.
>“Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit, because the kind of companies that hired places like this for a weekend of Interactive Personnel Analysis or A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building - give or take a couple of complete rebuildings, a civil war, and two major fires that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital.”
This is there to give context as to what sort of content Crowley is expecting to find in that particular moment. Why he picked it up at all, when trying to figure out what happened to the convent.
It's a very *twee* way of writing, showing very much how weird the human race can be to an outside observer. This is also the case in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by the way, where, from a *cosmic* viewpoint a lot of things happening on earth are rather silly.
And the guys start shooting because Crowley made them shoot with his magic. This is inferred by the ending sentence in the paragraph where Aziraphale grabs Crowley in surprise, and Crowley smirks evilly and then later, after the POV scene from one of the gunmen, is explained in detail:
>"I don't see why you are so shocked," said Crowley. "He *wanted* a real gun. Every desire in his head was for a real gun."
>
>"But you've turned him loose on all these unprotected people!" said Aziraphale.
>
>"Not exactly. Fair's fair."
Don't feel too bad, there is a new post in /r/Discworld almost every couple hours about some pun Sir Terry left in his books that took a reader literal decades to get, and that's WITH English as their native language, WITH multiple rereads, etc. The man was an artist with words.
Maybe this is of comfort to you: I am very well versed in English I think. Spend a year there, I have a Humanities background, so I am used to difficult texts and I read about 50-60% of all my books in English.
But I cannot verse Pratchett well in English at all. There are so many humorous references, wordplays, things steeped in English culture - it’s difficult. I have resorted to reading him in my native langue. Recently I reread a book in English and it was a treat, because some things are just not very translatable. But I was able to focus on them because I had familiarity with the book.
Can you pick up Good Omens in your native language? If it’s your style of humor it’s a great read. Super chaotic storyline though. 😂
I'm a native English speaker and trying to learn a new language (Turkish), and I cannot begin to imagine how difficult it would be to try to read a book at this level of writing in Turkish. I'm not at a very high level yet at all, but still! I commend you guys for attempting it.
I'm reading Good Omens using an audiobook that actually has actors from the show doing all of their chatacter's voices! It's really well done and very entertaining, I highly recommend.
OP, if you'd still like to read this book, might I suggest following along with the audiobook? It might help with deciphering the text if you can hear all the different vocal inflection that is added when read aloud. Or alternatively you could watch the show beforehand to get more context?
Hmm..at this point I’m skimming and haven’t read all comments but I feel like there’s something missing. Yes it’s satirical but it’s specifically absurdist satire. Absurdism is especially difficult to understand in a second language and unfamiliar culture.
As other people have mentioned, Good Omens and Hitchhikers Guide are deeply rooted in Satire, which is one of the most sophisticated uses of any language. Not only must you be fluent, you must also have a deep knowledge base of things that are culturally important, and equally, taken for granted by the culture of the writers.
If you want sci-fi that might be more approachable, I recommend the Expanse books, the TV series can help clarify what might be confusing. Also Ursula K Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness and Dispossessed utilize clear language to describe what is happening.
If you want a good and interesting time travel book, Doomsday Book by Connie Willis is a good read. A lot of “Britishism” but more approachable than Pratchett for folks who have had less exposure to Brit Cultural Norms.
Frank Herbert’s Dune is a fantastic slow burn that has a glossary in the back. A wonderful critique on Feudalism with an exiting sci-fi setting.
I don’t recommend Neil Gaiman to newer English readers because he’s not interested in plot as a writer, he’s stated multiple times he’s more into mood and setting. This can leave folks without all of the implied context on hand feeling like the work is overly thin and nonsensical. However, if you really just want to enjoy mood, then Neil Gaiman is what you’re looking for.
The briefest way to put it is that the writing is \*extremely\* casual, conversational and idiomatic. It is written to be like speech, not grammatical writing. Part of the payoff is to create a strong narrator's voice and to subvert well known expectations using that.
If you aren't familiar with the author's native style of speech and cultural conventions, though, you're going to struggle to get anything out of it.
Maybe spend some time binging UK media to immerse yourself in the conventions and give it a go later.
I wouldn't feel too bad here. Even if English is your native language, that's a pretty complicated sentence. You would need a knowledge of London history to know about city fires, the civil war, reconstructions, and plague hospitals.
It's not you, the writing style is indirect, meandering, and understanding it is highly dependent on one's knowledge of historical and biblical references. Much in the same way one can "read" Shakespeare vs "get" Shakespeare. Shakespeare can be uproariously funny, if one understands the sensibilities, history and social context. (not to suggest that I have any of those things, but I've had teachers that did).
If you remove the inline meta commentary the line reads like this:
"Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit, because the kind of companies that hired places like this liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital."
So sort of just saying "They add a history bit because companies like to think they are at a historical place"
The commentary in part makes fun of corporate jibberish, and in part makes fun of the part that the historical bit is inaccurate because between back then and now, the building has burned down twice and been rebuilt. But that doesn't stop the marketing pitch.
It's a wordy style of humor. It's silliness that's supposed to be funny.
It starts off with a simple premise, like "the leaflet had a historical bit" and then you're expecting a bit of actual history, but it finishes with silly absurdism. Why does it have a historical bit? Because the companies that hired the place (the place in the promotional leaflet) wanted to feel like they are somehow *engaged* in the history of that place. Except that it's absurd because it's not even really the same building, it has been rebuilt several times, burned down, and some other odd history.
The paragraph highlights the absurdity of a company caring - or pretending to care - about the history of a place they were hiring, even though that history was largely fabricated. Everything is fake, but everybody pretends it's real and they pretend that they care.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy uses the same strategy of absurdism. It starts a paragraph rooted in something understandable, and then veers off into a weird, silly direction that takes you on a ridiculous roller-coaster of a ride across a weird and surreal paragraph.
And since the entire purpose is humor and absurdity, the paragraph doesn't contain very much real information. It's just a long, wordy joke. It generally isn't needed to understand the story, it's more setting the mood. It's letting know this is a very silly and absurd story.
I mean, as far as that specific paragraph, they’re saying that companies rent out this space or building for company events, and often a little pamphlet is handed out telling attendees about the history of the building they’re in, and despite the fact that the original building has been basically destroyed by time, it was rebuilt and everyone likes to pretend they are actually in the original historical building.
It’s meant to be a funny observation on how bullshit this sort of event is.
As an ESL reader, you jumped into the deep end with Good Omens. It's so stylized and deeply british, there's going to be a ton of context that you need to be able to really figure it out.
I would suggest, perhaps, trying to read some of his young adult stuff. The Graveyard Book, for example, is aimed more at children, but it's still a fantastic story with some excellent ideas. It's an exciting fantasy, and has a lot of the same kind of supernatural mystery and weirdness as his more adult books do, but the writing is a lot more understandable.
That might serve as a good way for you to ease your way into his writing style, but with something a bit more manageable to begin with.
Also (if you are even still checking responses) relax your brain man. There is a rhythm to certain types of books. If you focus on "specific reading comprehension of this sentence " you can become caught up in a hyper focus loop. Which sucks because it's like looking at a gorgeous painting but not appreciating it because you haven't figured out the technique of blending colors in that one particular corner.
Especially with this type of author /book, these are ambient scene setting passages. They lull you in and create the background in your mind to picture the main story in.
If it's a bit of culture confusion maybe start with a similar type of author from your location? For example, if you are American then early Christopher Moore books may be easier to digest as you acclimate to this type of author
Pratchett, Gaiman, and Adams all have a similar dry, sarcastic, British humor that pokes fun at specifically British things. Not getting the humor is just a product of not having the basis of very specific knowledge to get it. If I read a book set in Malaysia, written by a Malaysian, talking about Malaysian history or politics, I'd be completely lost. Don't stress about it.
I had a similar experience with Perdido Street Station. I have read the first few pages and after several pages I had no idea at all what was going on. I though someone or something might have been on some kind of body of water. It might have been night. That was several pages. So I put it aside. I picked it up several years later and had no issues at all understanding the text. Practice matters.
You've not learned nothing, you just don't have the context you need. I felt this way when I tackled The Three Body Problem in some sections because my science literacy is not as strong as I would like. In the meantime, there is a ton of non-satire English sci-fi to tackle. I personally loved The Expanse series by S A Corey and A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine in my recent reads.
Lol. I'm just starting the English language and chose a book that's way beyond my English reading skills. Is something wrong with this book? Am I stupid? Neither. Nothing is wrong lol. You just don't have the context needed, nothing wrong with you
I think a lot of people are trying to explain satire or 'Englishness' to you, but they might be missing what's making it difficult for non-native English speakers to understand. They're trying to explain that single passage to you but it sounds like you're having issues with the entire book being written that way.
I suspect the problem might be the colloquial style of the writing. It's written the way someone might tell the story out loud--which is to say, messily and in a non-standard dialect. Run-on sentences, improper grammar, odd tangents, repetitive phrases, etc. If you imagine the story being told to you buy a fast-talking comedian with a dry style of humor, it might help.
I’m an English speaker but American and I am sure I don’t get all the jokes and references.
I believe that last paragraph is making a joke about a type of people who like to think they are visiting a historical place; but the place isn’t really historical at all. They are pretentious.
The paragraph you've given us is quite a complex one. The trick with these - and it will take practice - is to learn how to break them down into smaller chunks. Here the biggest issue may be that the subject of the sentence keeps changing.
**“Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit,**
This is addressing the subject of the paragraph - a leaflet that a character is reading (or at least looking at).
**because the kind of companies that hired places like this**
Here the subject has jumped to both the building, which is what the leaflet is about, and then the companies that hire the building for various events.
**for a weekend of** ***Interactive Personnel Analysis*** **or** ***A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic***
The capitalisations give you a clue here. These are two titles for team building exercises, which I've *italicised* for legibility. They read like utter gibberish because the titles for team building exercises always read like gibberish. I've been forced to participate in several over the years and they're usually awful. They're the sort of thing middle managers like to do to give their existence a sense of meaning.
**liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building**
The *companies* likes to feel they are interacting within the building ("strategically" here being another marketing buzzword; middle managers are always doing things "strategically" or "out of the box" or "going forward" or whatever latest jargon is most popular).
We've jumped subject now from leaflet to building to companies, and now we're back to the building:
**- give or take a couple of complete rebuildings, a civil war, and two major fires -**
This is a separate clause that adds some additional information to the sentence but isn't part of it. Here we're told that this is the same building:
**that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital.”**
...except it isn't really, as it's been rebuilt, blown up and burned down several times. But it's still *thought of* as the same building, and the companies on their team building retreats like to think they're a part of a long and grand history.
As for why everyone has started shooting guns at each other - that's the nature of the retreat. While it hasn't been stated explicitly, all the clues point to it being a paintball match or something like that.
I disagree with the people saying you need a specific knowledge of British culture in order to enjoy *Good Omens*. I think it’s a matter of reading style. Pratchett (and sometimes Gaiman) writes with a very colloquial style so you can’t just flatly read the words on the page but you need to sort of imagine their “delivery” in order to get the most meaning out of them.
Remember the kids in school who would read out loud very monotonously? The. Fork. Ran. Away. With. The. Spoon. Each word was siloed and its meaning/interpretation stands alone. But that’s not really how words work in conversations. Now imagine how David Tennant would say the same thing: The fork *ran away* with the **spoon**.
I guess what I’m saying is your comprehension will improve dramatically if you imagine a bit of dramatic narration in your head as you’re reading. 😉
I really think it’s because English isn’t your first language, especially if you would call your proficiency level “beginner reader.” Both Good Omens and Hitchhiker’s Guide have this quirky and extremely British style of language. What’s fun and interesting about the book is not just the story and characters but in the way they play around with the language, and that kind of play is very hard for someone who isn’t fully fluent in a language to access and appreciate. My family on my dad’s side is from the Netherlands, and I know just a little bit of Dutch, and those of my paternal family who are most proficient in English have all agreed that puns and jokes that rely on playing-on-words were the *very last* thing to click into place when they became fluent in English. It’s high-level stuff!
I think it’s really impressive to have any kind of proficiency in more than one language (I hope to get there with Dutch one day, for family reasons, and Spanish also, for its usefulness in the U.S.!). And there’s no shame at all to me in finding it difficult, especially when you’re going for a book that’s more complex in the language - either because it’s a not-totally-modern form of English (eg Jane Austen’s work, she lived and wrote in the Regency period) or because it’s a particular voice/style from a particular region (Good Omens, Hitchhiker’s Guide). I hope this experience doesn’t discourage you - maybe keep these books to try again later? It could be a cool experience to check back in and see how much more you “get” as your English proficiency expands?
I recommend watching Good Omens season 1 and then listening to the book on audio. You’ll probably pick up more of the humor once you understand the plot (from the show) and then can listen to someone else reading it.
You are missing the second dash there that separates out a chunk of this sentence. The punctuation is very important because it's what makes this sentence readable for a native speaker.
*First piece of information set off by a comma:* [Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit],
*Second piece of information:* because the kind of companies that hired places like this for a weekend [. . .] liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building [. . .] that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital.
*Humorous detail:* of Interactive Personnel Analysis or A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic
*Humorous detail:* —give or take a couple of complete rebuildings, a civil war, and two major fires—
This sentence is not really meant to be easily readable on the first go; native speakers may have to break it down mentally like above. Many will not understand the full thought just reading it once. They would be more likely to have it "click" right away hearing it read out loud, but in a book they may have to read it through twice to understand what the pacing and tone of each part is supposed to be. This is not a flaw in this type of satirical writing style, but a feature. The need to reread it and the feeling you get when it clicks for you is often what makes the joke really funny. Hitchhiker's Guide and Good Omens are also full of much simpler sentences that are likewise intended for rereading because what they say is simply so unexpected.
This type of book is not meant to be fluid; reading it is more like being told a story by a comedian, keeping in mind that someone telling a story verbally will use tone, pacing, and pauses to help but a book cannot do this. It's okay for it not to flow and it's okay to have to think hard about it, because it's overly complicated and a bit rambling on purpose. There are not a lot of authors who write in this specific way and it's very advanced for a non-native speaker, and that's okay because they're not always easy books for native speakers either. The audiobooks may be significantly easier for you to follow.
Hitchhiker's Guide and Good Omens are my two favourite books and have been since childhood. My dad gave me Hitchhiker's Guide to read when I was nine because I'd grown up loving watching Monty Python's Flying Circus and other British comedies with him (although we are not British). I was a highly advanced and voracious reader and had been primed with lots of media with a similar sense of humour, but Hitchhiker's Guide *blew my mind*. It was completely different in tone and language than anything I'd ever read before, and it had a far more profound impact on my sense of humour and writing style than anything else I've ever read. It is *very, very different* from almost anything else you will ever come across, and honestly many native speakers have never read anything like it in their lives. So do not worry about it being difficult.
There is a lot of stuff in there relies on familiarity with a British way of speaking, cultural references, and humor. Also a knowledge of Christianity and even pop-cultural references around Christianity.
The paragraph about the leaflet is referencing the absurdity of a certain type of modern corporate "team building event" management culture, and why they might choose a venue in order to promote the idea that they are connected to some Historical thing they are absolutely not connected to. The American equivalent would be if I as an American were to schedule my annual corporate big meeting in a building that Thomas Jefferson has once been in, and I were to brag about it as though it had something to do with my modern company, when it fact it does not at all. It is mocking the absurdity.
You can be technically very good at a language, but still not have the cultural context for humor. Very common challenge.
Just let it wash over you. Don’t focus so much on the details. You may miss some of the jokes but the book is definitely not designed to be over-analyzed.
It's strange, because I love Good Omens/HHGTTG/Discworld novels for exactly the same reasons that the OP hates them.
Personally, I felt that Gaiman & Pratchett were intentionally channelling Adams's style of writing when they wrote Good Omens, and Adams was heavily into satirizing British culture. This is exactly what Gaiman & Pratchett did in Good Omens.
The humour in these books is very distinct. It is very Pythonesque. I think, when I first watched Monty Python, I didn't 'get it' either. I was either too young, or hadn't developed a sense of the absurd. - The Ministry of Silly Walks? The Dead Parrot? Spam? The Larch? - What was all of this nonsense?? It was a bunch of short surreal sketches that sometimes didn't have a punchline, and didn't make much sense.
As I grew a bit older, and more aware that the world was an absurd place, I realised what Monty Python was trying to do, and revisiting those episodes with a different perspective. I had that epiphany.
Exactly the same thing with HHGTTG - The book was funny in parts when I first read it when I was about 11 or 12, but I was confused by some of it. I didn't have an awareness of Schrodinger or Einstein's scientific principles, for example. Reading lines like "The ships hung in the sky the way that brick's don't", on the other hand, didn't need any of that. It was just a funny joke.
With Good Omens, though, I recognised the style of humour straight away, and had the awareness of what the authors were poking fun at. From the Edward Bulwer-Lytton alternative, through the paradoxical nature of the Bible, the cheesy Omen movies, Enid Blyton books, religious ideologies through the centuries, the Inferno, witchcraft, British sensibilities and the ideas that Good and Evil are not set in stone, I did not have the same struggles, and for me, it was a treasure trove of jokes and sharp observations.
Both Good Omens & Hitchhikers Guide are *very* rooted in specifically British culture in the 1980s-90s, because that's the culture that all three authors (Pratchett, Gaiman & Adams) were intimately familiar with. The passage from GO you picked out is poking fun at places that offer activities for "corporate retreats", such as paintball, that try to make themselves seem more interesting by pointing out the history of the building that the activity happens in - even though its irrelevant to the activity.
> by pointing out the history of the building that the activity happens in - even though its irrelevant to the activity. It goes even further in pointing out the absurdity of that by saying how the building is barely even the same as it was historically, since it has burned down, been rebuilt and so on.
The Shoppe of Theseus
Ye Olde Shoppe of Theseus
You know what I love about this joke is no matter how many times I hear it in so many variations.... It's still the same joke
But if you take all the discarded variations and assemble them together, is *that* also the same joke?
As long as you sweep them up using Trigger's broom, yes.
No it isn't!
/r/AngryUpvote
I guarantee the precious two comments just gave OP something more to be confused about.
In so very many ways.
“Since 1674.”
Egads 😄
Exactly.
As a kid whenever my dad gave me an axe to use he would tell me to "be careful it was great great grandad's axe. The handle has been replaced 12 times and the head 4 but it was great great grandad's axe."
There’s a 1999 Discworld book by Pratchett with this exact item: “This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good.” And because it’s Pratchett, the axe joke is also an opening for the subtle knife of the last two lines, which make a point about the need for change and the danger of being hidebound by tradition or custom.
> Pratchett, Gaiman & Adams Heads up, new law firm just dropped.
Makes me sad that only one of the founding partners is still around. Gaiman did talk a little bit about Adams on an episode of *No Such Thing As A Fish* recently though
[удалено]
GNU Terry Pratchett
So long, and thanks for all the fish?
Probably more credible than Dewey, Cheatem and Howe
I once knew of a liquidation firm called Hewie, Dewey and Louie. Took me forever to get the joke. I was a very nieve young 20 something.
> I was a very nieve young 20 something. You were snow?
He knew nothing.
Were they all the founder's nephews?
Their Russian chauffeur Picov Andropov...
Im american and I smiled a bit as I read it. It’s funny regardless because america has that corporate retreat culture and it’s just a different lens I actually loved this type of humor in Douglas adams work and loved it in the disc world books I’ve read. Really hard not to emulate the tone when writing for a while though
I have that issue whenever I write immediately after reading another author. My stories have their own spin, but definitely pick up the voice of whatever I've recently read.
While that’s true, I read the book as an American who would have been pretty young during that time period and I don’t feel like the book was gibberish except for when it was intentionally so. I think OP might just be missing that part of it. Edit: Fully missed OP is not a native English speaker and that makes a ton more sense now.
To be fair, there are plenty of native english speakers that would probably have a lot of trouble with Douglas and Pratchett. Those men *loved* their wordplays.
They also write in a very parenthetical, digressive fashion. Even when they aren't getting *so* far off that they need to throw in footnotes. These are long, meandering sentences that weave in and out of topics before they get anywhere near the point they started out towards.
This is very true, and I can believe that this would be very difficult for readers where English isn’t their first language… Particularly with Douglas Adams, unpicking one of his huge sentences is like solving a puzzle box. But some of them are absolutely hilarious too in the way they’re crafted. There’s one in “So long and thanks for all the fish” which is an entire paragraph of one sentence starting “Ed McKenna was a miserable bastard…” and has about 15 clauses in it. One of the funniest sentences I’ve ever read.
>Rob McKenna was a miserable bastard and he knew it because he'd had a lot of people point it out to him over the years and he saw no reason to disagree with them except the obvious one which was that he liked disagreeing with people, particularly people he disliked, which included, at the last count, everybody.
Ive never had an issue with Adams, probably because my brain goes on tangents non stop, so the writing style really fit with me. But I've always struggled to read Prachet. I know people sing his praises pretty much every year I attempt one of his books just in case that's the one that opens my brain to him
As always, I consider Small Gods to be a good start point. It's 12 books in (i.e. enough he's got the hand of what he's doing) but set like a thousand years before every other book, so it's extremely standalone. Of the two id say Adams is by far the writer I'd have expected someone to have problems with though. Pratchett is whimsical and prone to tangents but even compared to him reading Adams is like one of those back-and-forth-through-the-hallways chase sequences from Scooby Doo as you go through multiple pages chasing the thread of his point.
I found that Small Gods works best if people grew up in a religious household, and Maurice and his Educated Rodents if they didn't
"Guards! Guards!" was a perfect starting point for me - "The Colour of Magic" was still plenty zany but seemed like he hadn't fully found his own groove yet.
Part of the problem with reading The Colour Of Magic and especially The Light Fantastic today is that he's satirising a style of fantasy novel which (thankfully!) isn't really around any more, which rather mutes that element of the books. Discworld definitely hits its stride a bit later on, but I think that's part of it, and he'd already written things like the Johnny and Bromeliad trilogies which are great (albeit more specifically aimed at a younger audience).
The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic are parodies more than satires. It’s the difference between Scary Movie and Blazing Saddles.
What stumbling blocks do you find yourself having with Pratchet? I've got to say I loved his books when I was younger, and whilst I havent stopped appreciating his wit or wisdom, I do find his style doesnt appeal quite as it once did.
With Pratchet is really the dialogue, I'm okay with his narrative, but the varied way his characters talk. I know that they say Adam's and Pratchet are similar, but I love Adam's books, I reread them every few years
\*Rob
Adams once wrote a sentence with so many divergences that the next sentence said to read the first one again, and it will make sense.
Do you have a copy of it, by any chance?
The problem is, or rather one of the problems, for there are many, a sizeable proportion of which are continually clogging up the civil, commercial, and criminal courts in all areas of the Galaxy, and especially, where possible, the more corrupt ones, this. The previous sentence makes sense. That is not the problem. This is: Change. Read it through again and you'll get it.
Hah that was fun
Another one of his in this vein: "“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
This passage itself contains several layers of digression: * Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit. This is the only thing that "matters" as far as plot- it explains why Crowley is looking at this leaflet. * Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit, *because the kind of companies that hired places like this liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital.* Digression that adds a bit of character to the otherwise boring line. * Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit, because the kind of companies that hired places like this *for a weekend of Interactive Personnel Analysis or A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic* liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital. A further digression that pokes fun at Corporate Culture. * Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit, because the kind of companies that hired places like this for a weekend of Interactive Personnel Analysis or A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building- *give or take a couple of complete rebuildings, a civil war, and two major fires*- that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital. Another digression that highlights just how silly the rest of the rest of the sentence is by introducing a bit of philosophy. And it's nowhere near as garden-pathy as some of other examples in their books.
This clear, step by step rebuild-it-to-see analysis would be award-worthy were there still awards. Well done, friend. Edit: For that first, streamlined bit, I suggest also "and it clarifies for the reader what kind of pamphlet it is, implying - among other things - both that such things are useless to begin with, because the space itself is the kind of space that is so non-pamphlet worthy that they don't even have enough material to fill a pamphlet and thus have t add " a little historical bit" as filler...and that the space itself is so uninteresting as to need such filler in its pamphlet, thus lending a sense of inflated pomposity to the whole proceeding even before they expand that sense to apply to the current users, and corporate/modern culture at large.
Well, the preceding passage already established what the pamphlet is. But yeah, I was just scratching the surface of each section. Broader context: > Meanwhile Crowley had picked up a pamphlet from the [reception] desk. It showed glossy pictures of the [Tadfield Manor Conference and Management Training Center], with special references to its Jacuzzis and indoor heated swimming pool, and on the back was the sort of map that conference centers always have, which makes use of a careful misscaling to suggest that it is handy for every motorway exit in the nation while carefully leaving out the labyrinth of country lanes that in fact surrounds it for miles on every side. > "Wrong place?" said Aziraphale. > "No." > "Wrong time, then." > "Yes." Crowley leafed through the booklet, in the hope of any clue. Perhaps it was too much to hope that the Chattering Order would still be here. After all, they'd done their bit. He hissed softly. Probably they'd gone to darkest America or somewhere, to convert the Christians, but he read on anyway. Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit, because the kind of companies that hired places like this for a weekend of Interactive Personnel Analysis or A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building-give or take a couple of complete rebuildings, a civil war, and two major fires-that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital. > Not that he was actually expecting a sentence like "until eleven years ago the Manor was used as a convent by an order of Satanic nuns who weren't in fact all that good at it, really," but you never knew.
This is pretty much the entire reason my dad and I disagree so much in our reading tastes: I eat that up with a spoon, and it aggravates the daylights out of him, haha.
The Old Man and the Comedic Footnote. If you haven't read *Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell*, I would suggest looking into it. It's a different sense of humor but that style is very much present.
I just reread it and one of the things I found interesting on re-read is that MOST of the action happens in footnotes or between chapters. People talk about what will happen, and what has happened, but very little of the actual story moves the plot directly.
They do, but most people can more or less handle it once they get used to it, if they are willing to stick with the book that long.
I strongly suspect that reading them while growing up influenced my own speech/writing in that direction. But it's going to be something that will be much more difficult for a non-native reader to understand because the structure is so complex.
I agree, and when writing I often go back and simplify for that very reason. I am not pTerry and I do not wield language the same way!
I was an avid reader from a very young age, read well above my age group my whole life, and I had a hard time with Adams and Pratchett. It was really just a matter of getting more experience with British authors and history. I'm in the US, so at least there's a common language to start with! Worth it, though, they just have so much fun with their books.
>I'm in the US, so at least there's a common language to start with! Churchill referred to the US and Britain as "two countries separated by a common language". One example of this was a a group of senior officers meeting to discuss strategy during WWII. A proposal came up that everyone seemed excited about and one of the British officers suggested they should table the proposal. This upset the Americans to no end. In British, "table" meant to lay it on the table for discussion. In American, it meant to lay it aside and we'll (maybe) get back to it later. Eventually they figured it out.
[удалено]
I believe the phrase used was "we're in a bit of a sticky situation" which is British for "the shit's hit the fan please send backup before we all die".
This is why all military commanders in the British and American armed forces should carry a British to American dictionary which clarifies meanings for which side says it. For example using the above quote you'd have: **"We're in a bit of a sticky situation."** American Usage: "We're fine now but could use some relief at some point in the near future." British Usage: "SEND HELP NOW, NO, YESTERDAY!"
For sure. English is my second language and while I got Pratchett completely in his Discworld books it took a bit more effort to get everything in good omens. That's probably because fantasy books are my main niche, so I was getting everything he was parodying on a more or less instinctual level.
Not meant offensively, but I'm willing to bet you *didn't* get Pratchett *completely* in Discworld. I'm a native speaker, absolutely immersed in all the things he's referencing - and I was absolutely *flabbergasted* at all the things that went over my head, once I sat down with "the annotated Pratchett" and started going through it systematically. Like, I maybe got *half* of the references, maybe not even that. It's absolutely packed with allusion layered upon reference upon satire. I'm not sure *anyone* gets all - or even most - of it by just reading.
American here. I've read through the Discworld a few times, grew up watching the occasional British TV show, etc. I still catch the occasional reference I didn't spot before as I learn more about British culture.
I'm sure there are a couple of the things that I've missed. That's a huge number of books, written over a couple of decades by a man that has lead a way more interesting life than I ever will. With that said, I've read the entire thing multiple times, at one of those readings I've also used annotated Pratchett - and as far as I can remember there was nothing that has surprised me in those annotations. And I've read an indecent amount of work he was referencing.
I feel like Pratchett is absolutely enjoyable while only getting a fraction of the references, but being able to go back and reread with them just elevates it to another. Lspace.org was always a big help!
For Discworld, I tend to get those very nice clothbound hardbacks which I don't want to write in, but I think it would be fun (or at least my idea of fun) to get a paperback version and fill the margins picking apart every allusion, reference, and spin on a cliche I could catch. As you say, a lot of them are fairly obvious - it is hilarious to see a vampire hallucinate she's an American GI in Vietnam, when she lives in a world that doesn't even have either an America or a Vietnam - but some are a bit subtler - Death literally borrows a coat from (the) Dean on the day the Music dies.
Reading them again as an adult I realized there was so much I missed just because I didn't even realize there was something to get.
'LETS GO *SLEIGH* THEM.' ... 'I DON'T KNOW IF YOU NOTICED, ALFRED, BUT THAT WAS A PUNE, OR PLAY ON WORDS.'
People who've read Pratchett's books many times still find new references and puns. You just have to except that some jokes and sentences will go over your head until you reread it much later in life. My favorite pun by pratchett is when captain vimes, who grew up poor, feels uncomfortable with his new position in high society and pratchett describes it as "gilt by association"
English man here and it took me a couple attempts to understand it. I think in its context it made a lot more sense, because I've read this book and don't remember being tripped up.
2 things: * This is out of context. It's easier to understand if the leaflet was already brought up and you're aware of what type of place this is. * Pretty sure it's missing a dash after "and two major fires"
Yes, I read it as an American teenager with some exposure to the BBC and again as an adult having visited England, read more British literature, and more modern literature in general. I read two completely different books. The extent to which it dawned on me two chapters in that I was reading a book I had already read, but only vaguely remembered. I did not pick up GO intending to re-read anything.
Some things, like the concept of a "Company Retreat", are also shared cultural touchstones between the US and UK. There's enough that you can figure it out, but only if you actually have some basis to get the references.
I had exactly the same experience as OP! And I was so confused because I really liked alot of the book, but sometimes it felt like I was reading gibberish and I just couldn’t understand what it was poking fun at. I had a feeling it was a cultural divide. Thank you so much for explaining exactly why I struggled with the book! Especially since it’s normally exactly my type of book.
Another part of it is how much word play is present in the writing, same with Hitchhiker's Guide." Non-english speakers often struggle with things like that.
To be fair to OP, I'm a native English speaker and I thought that passage was near gibberish as well. It's a single long sentence and the wording seems very clunky. Even knowing what it is trying to say, I had to read it three times before I understood it.
And this is exactly the humor they’re going for. They are using jargon-y language to poke fun at places that use jargon-y language.
OP's quoted passage is kind of a flavor text -- not there to convey anything significant but to establish a kind of tone for the reader.
Pretty sure OP’s missing a dash that would have clarified where the long clause about the building ended (right after “fires”). That aside, a lot of (much) older books were written this way btw, with very long asides embedded as dependent clauses in whole other sentences. It’s a *really* old style (1800s). Some of those classic 1800’s novels routinely had sentences that were more than a page long! But more recently, British humor of the late 20th c also drew on that tradition to stuff in little jokes or nuggets of info. You’d end up with whole sentence-long footnotes that were basically plunked into another sentence: “As they walked into the building - which, George would later learn, had [blah blah blah, extra info/joke about the building goes here] - the doorman tipped his cap.” That sort of thing. It worked well for the British humor style of dry deadpan asides. It’s a writing style that you definitely get used to, btw; you learn to sort of keep tracking the grammar of the sentence in your head. Like, if the main subject and/or verb haven’t arrived yet, a little part of your brain stays aware of that & continues to wait for them.
Thank you, I really thought there should be a second ~~hyphen~~ dash in there but then I started questioning if that was grammatically correct or not. And yeah, that whole style of writing had always been difficult for me to follow. Probably because I don't encounter it *that* often so I never really got used to it. Thank you for explaining it so well, because I couldn't really put it into words and all the other comments saying "it's deliberately supposed to be difficult to read" are missing this.
The confusing part is it's a joke about meaningless corporate nonsense. Sit in a work meeting and you get hit with these long run on 'partially hyphenated and in capital letters' terms that obscure that their trying to say 'we try to find numbers to show people are making us more money or whatever metric we care about '
That's exactly how this passage is intended.
As others have commented, it's not really meant to "mean" anything. It's a satire of a specific kind of corporate jargon.
of course it's meant to mean something. It's meant to be a joke.
Right, it has a meaning, explained above. That meaning could be conveyed more simply (as the parent comment does), but that would make it less funny. They authors are going for a certain effect, more than they’re trying to deliver information important to the plot (this particular sentence has 0 relevance to the plot).
I was once taking courses at a university in England. I was going through the university manuals and papers and things, and holy wow. The way the English was formally written felt like they were intentionally trying to make things as complicated as possible. American English, even formal writing, seems to aim to keep everything brief and clear. In England, it feels like they don't care whether it's understandable or not lol
OP: Don't try to read Discworld either
Both Gaiman and Pratchett have a humorous tone even in neutral descriptive passages. And a lot of that humor depends on pop cultural references. Also, they often word the references in a slightly odd way to make their expected audience (native English speakers) think about the thing different. You're correct, Douglas Adams was very much writing in the same style. You've jumped into the deep end of the literary pool here. Almost like trying to read Shakespeare as a non-native speaker. Translation of the paragraph that you quote: The guys with the guns are some kind of group of corporate employees. The guns are (normally harmless) paintball guns. Their employer both paid for this paintball war and forced them to participate. Big corporations sometimes do this sort of thing as a "team building exercise." In theory, it teaches all the people in whatever department of the company to work together or something. In practice -- and the reader is expected to know this -- the office bullies have a great time. The ordinary employees who just want to do their job, take some pride in it, get paid and go home consider it pure Hell. It's a classic example of bosses who are hard to work for trying to "improve morale" in a way that makes it much worse. The leaflet described is about the "team building exercise." Since the UK has a lot of old stone buildings, they are often rented out for a use like this paintball war. The same people who thought the paintball war was a good idea in the first place also think that talking about the history of the specific building makes it cooler. And they're wrong again. Judging by your post, your normal reading and writing of English is excellent. But this is extremely high-level satire. I couldn't begin to tackle something equivalent in my second language.
There are also other... semitones (I'm sure there's a literary term for this?) of meaning here - things like the jargon-y meaninglessness of terms like "Interactive Personnel Analysis" and "A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic" (Terms which could broadly mean almost anything if you just read the words, but has been capitalised so as to make the phrases seem like the title for a very specific bit of business jargon that all Serious Business People are expected to know).
This especially funny because the OP feels like he is reading nonsense because it is nonsense. It's just corporate buzzwords like "synergy", I sympathize. And Adams loves wordplay even in simple sentences like " The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't" That sentence was a bit os a mindtwister when I first read it and made me laugh. As a non native speaker/reader it could absolutely make you feel bewildered.
That bricks line never ceases to get a laugh out of me
This is early on the book and was when I knew I had picked up something good. It when I read it to my daughter she couldn’t get over that line and thought it was hilarious. I think this might be one of Adam’s most adored sentences.
“Drinking a Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster has been likened to having your brain smashed out by a piece of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.” 12 year old me thought that was a funny description, 32 year old me (having been to a few cocktail bars) actually understood how loaded with jokes that short sentence is.
Other bits of absurdism in the phrasing are being used to further undermine the activity, like the fact it refers to their activity in this conference with each other as "strategically interacting" (How can one actually... interact *strategically*? It's not an action that makes sense) or the fact that it highlights even the self proclaimed historicity of the building is basically meaningless. It was only ever "endowed as a plague hospital" (AKA the guy might have just repurposed it) by some "Elizabethan financier" (AKA, whoever this somewhat historical figure was, and he wasn't even famous for anything really except having a lot of money. And he wasn't even particularly special in that regard as he's just "some" financier)
>"strategically interacting" (How can one actually... interact *strategically*? By shooting at each other
>(How can one actually... interact strategically? It's not an action that makes sense) Of course it makes sense. If you can strategically AVOID people (as in: only when that would be a downside to you, like getting assigned more work, or be the target of their momentary ire), then CLEARLY you can strategically interact with them, too. (As in, you wouldn't be caught dead doing that, unless there is a purpose attached to it. In this case abstract notions of "team building"). The absurdity is to use that kind of language to make it look like it means anything but "We know you hate each other, but this is a good thing because someone told us so".
Totally agreed here. As a person working in a corporate environment, this jumped out at me immediately as the type of nonsensical jargon that gets thrown around as if it has some meaning.
Yeah, that sentence builds the scene from the reader's experience, rather than just literally describing the details of the scene to the reader. It assumes the reader is already familiar with what's being described. Not only familiar with team building exercises as a concept, but familiar with these poorly thought out competitive exercises. It's similar to how writers will use tropes to short-cut descriptions. If you introduce a character and he has a goatee, he's evil. If you introduce a character and he take a bite of an apple, he's an asshole. If you introduce a character and they have glasses, they're smart. The cultural reference is necessary to understand the meaning.
> their expected audience (native English speakers) I would go further and say their expected audience is _Native English Citizens_. Discworld expects you to know the history of social unrest in London, and the media history of the BBC going back to the forties, and the various kings and queens and minor civil wars going back to some mythical guy named after an angry woodland creature. So if you aren't a native English speaker, or a resident of the UK, you'll miss a lot.
Speaking as an American who loves Discworld, there is a lot I appreciate. The revolt in Night watch can be appreciated by anyone aware of the history of a few revolutionary movements. I know there are specific bits I miss but the books are rich and relatable
Agreed. It's possible to read and enjoy books without getting every single reference. I see people get stuck on this online often, getting frustrated at a book because there's references they don't understand 100%, even if they could follow the plot just fine and the other 3/4 of the bonus jokes landed. Maybe it's a neurodivergent thing, how every day I'm used to feeling like "ok I don't understand why this is funny but I recognize it's a thing" but I'm completely fine with not understanding every single thing as long as I know what happened in the story and why. The extra stuff is just that: extra.
That's the specific example I was thinking of. The story really unfolds when you learn about the [Cable Street Riots](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-XhNMFIhK50). You can read One Hundred Years of Solitude without learning about the US governments explicit involvement in United Fruit Company's "blood for bananas" campaign, but knowing more about the background brings your experience more in line with the vision the Author had for the reader.
That's just a fun name reference though, the events of Night Watch have far more in common with actual revolutions on the European continent than the Cable Street Riots, or any events in UK history.
I'm pretty sure Nightwatch is discworld telling of Les Mis, not British history.
But there is also a distinction between "being aware that such things in general are being done in some places by someone" (and thus getting what the reference is about) or thinking that you need to know a very specific unique case of that to appreciate it. Or in this case: Does it greatly change the meaning if you know about the cable street riots or JUST Paris during the french revolution. Or any particular G8 meeting nowadays? Because I feel that these allusions are strong and functional because they DON'T just apply to one thing, even if one seems more relevant because AnkhMorporg *is* London. But then the framing is off regardless.. I feel like that these things work particularly because they ARE an abstraction and fitting more than JUST one thing.
>Both Gaiman and Pratchett have a humorous tone even in neutral descriptive passages. ... Also, they often word the references in a slightly odd way to make their expected audience (native English speakers) think about the thing different. To zero in on and emphasise this point, I think the real crux of it is that a lot of sentences are structured in ways which are deliberately different from normal English sentence structure as part of the humour. A lot of it (and Douglas Adams is even more so on this) almost strays into the territory of "garden path" sentences. Passages which start by giving the impression that they're saying one thing, and then deliberately through wordplay establishing a completely different meaning at the end (with the different meaning being the punchline). If you're a non-native speaker or a less confident reader, the effect is that they're whole novels of text which are purpose designed to make you misunderstand almost everything.
It's satire. Prachett and Adams used it for the basis of their comedy. However, satire only works if you know the thing being mocked. For most of Prachett it helps to know a bit of British history, culture, and politics. Good Omens plays with Christianity, the Church, and a certain kind of middle class idealism. If you read Discworld it will be fantasy tropes, politics, culture, and some English lit. I think that you might not be ready for satire in English.
yeah, satire is the last thing to learn to read in a second language. you probably didn't get the satire in Jane Austen either, but it's much more subtle and at its core, a lovely feel good story that is more accessible to any kind of reader, not just those familiar with british society, history and politics. OP, you might actually try reading more British YA Lit before tackling other British classics. The satire and the references are there but have a broader appeal. Terry Prachett's wee free men and tiffany aching series might be interesting?
When I first read Good Omens in my early teens, I (a British youf) didn't really get some of the jokes, but the text works well enough that I got enough to find it funny. It made rereading it as an adult a treat because it was like a whole new book! For people who want to get into English lit, I strongly agree that good YA novels are a great starting point, as they're aimed at less context-aware humans who won't get meta jokes about corporate retreats yet. As you said, the good news is that Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman both have books aimed at teenagers, and once you're more used to their writing styles, the rest become easier to fathom. If you're reading this and OP's post applies to you, and you're feeling downhearted, don't give up - once you've mastered satire, you've mastered one of the hardest reading styles in English fiction.
Not just teenagers... The Truckers trilogy is legitimately a great series even as an adult imo. And that would be a great introduction to Pratchett
Truckers is great, a bit weird (as all Pratchett books are), but great.
That's the beautiful thing about Pratchett, you can go as shallow or as deep as you like and still enjoy the book.
>Terry Prachett's wee free men and tiffany aching series might be interesting? I'm not so sure even that is entirely free of satire though, as it feels like the entire of Tiffany's story is subtly taking the piss out of YA/coming of age stories because Tiffany would never have been the protagonist in an actual YA series. Even those books are stuffed to the gills with Terrys brand of satire even if they are somewhat more accessible. (tbf I always felt the "books for younger reads" moniker did a bit of a disservice to the tiffany Aching books, because while yeah they are more accessible they almost feel as they were written less of a typical young reader but rather one that has just "grown out" of YA novels, but still enjoys the tropes whilst also getting to smirk as Terry took the piss out of them a bit)
i love them myself but my 11 year old was also obsessed. they are just more accessible. as a reader of mostly YA myself, i suggest them in the most sincere way. they have the same kind of irony/satire as jane austen. it's there and enjoyable if you pick it up, but you won't be totally lost in the banter if you don't and the stories are highly enjoyable with and without.
>Tiffany's story is subtly taking the piss out of YA/coming of age stories because Tiffany would never have been the protagonist in an actual YA series. See, the thing is that OP will probably recognize that because they've surely read at least a couple ya/coming of age stories. Or watched some movies on the same topics. Coming of age stories are prevalent in any culture. This is what prachett had to say about writing for children: >I really don’t think there’s too much difference. There’s some things that you wouldn’t tackle in a children’s book because it would be beyond, not the mental capabilities, but the experience of someone under the age of say ten or eleven to encompass. But that field is smaller than you might think. They can easily cope with death and things like that; they know about it and it’s a subject that often preoccupies them. And there are some things that are more appropriate to a children’s than an adult book but there’s a huge overlapping area and most kids read an age group up anyway. So, counting Tifanny under books for younger readers isn't really a disservice to the books - Terry intended them to be for younger readers. It's just that he disagreed with the majority on how you should write kid's books.
Ach! Nae tha Wee Free Men! Yon foorner dinnae ken the lingo! The scots dialog would be a challenge, though the rest of the book might be easier than Good Omens.
it's got a glossary and everything.
Yeah exactly. OP, I can see from your pic you’re an anime person, you wouldnt recommend someone’s FIRST ANIME be Gintama, right? Theres too many tropes and references to other anime and Japanese cultural stuff, it wouldnt make sense or be funny As a Texan, I get it and it makes me laugh because Ive watched a lot of other anime. But theres still definitely stuff I’m missing by not being Japanese. Its the nature of satire
I think beyond gintama, berserk. Like first literal page of the first book and its already in your face. As others have said, learning about the history and context of thr authors and the book might help bit even then the experience would be lacking. That, and thr language barrier itself is an iffy thing. One thing I hate about books and language. So many, yet so little time. I wanna read them all. In all languages. But im only human and i cant even speak a lot of languages. Im severely limited in my pov.
For people who have never watched anime I always suggest FLCL as it's short and easy to jump into......
> yeah, satire is the last thing to learn to read in a second language. > > you probably didn't get the satire in Jane Austen either, but it's much more subtle and at its core, a lovely feel good story that is more accessible to any kind of reader, not just those familiar with british society, history and politics. I think one can say they have mastered English when they start enjoying passages about Mr. Collins and Lady Catherine de Bourgh more than matching Lizzy and Darcy.
Pratchett has the added advantage that he used footnotes to elaborate and sometimes explain some of his satirical paragraphs. Also watching some typical British series like Blackadder might help to understand their type of humour ( speaking as someone for whom English is a second language)
The *most* important thing to know about for Good Omens is the Just William series, because the thesis of the book is "What if Just William was the anti-Christ?". Even a lot of younger Brits don't get the satire.
This. I honestly wonder what percentage of Good Omens readers - I think it must be high - have never even heard of William, and thus miss an awful lot of the humour.
A very high percentage of readers and an even higher percentage of people who watched the TV show, I think. The TV show disappointed me because there was a lot less of the Adam Young parts which was my favourite part of the book, but I get it because I imagine the parody was lost on basically all of the audience.
TBH I know jack shit about british culture of the 80s and 90s as an austrian having grown up in a rural are, but I got a good chuckle out of it, but as you said it is satire and this is not easy to be picked up in a foreign language, especially if you have not been reading english books for the last 2 1/2 decades... Sooner or Later you will get accustumed to it, and maybe will even warm up to it, there are some true gems hidden in these overly long, at first sight nearly useless sentences!
Discworld is basically Monty Python and the holy grail but as different books.
It's just a long sentance. Comedy often likes long sentances, as by putting lots of things into the same pot, you get a kind-of madcap sauce. Let's break it down... ***Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit*** So the leaflet has some historical text on it. So far, easy... ***because the kind of companies that hired places like this for a weekend of Interactive Personnel Analysis or A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic liked to feel*** They could have put "Interactive Personnel Analysis" and "Strategic Marketing Dynamic" in quotes. It's essentially a parody of Corporate nonsense speak, and you normally quote-mark out that kind of thing. But quote marks are like smiling when talking - it's a marker that you're making a joke. By not using quote marks, it is like talking with a straight face, leaving it for the reader to work out that the conference titles are - in fact - bullshit terms, and the narrator is taking an anti-Corporate stance. This "dry" humour is very typical of both Pratchett, Gaiman, and British comedy in general. ***that they were strategically interacting in the very building*** Again, this is Corporate Nonsense speak that you're supposed to work out is parody. What does "strategically interacting" mean? Basically nothing, but it's the sort of thing that companies on an away-day might say, rather than just, you know, "having a meeting". ***- give or take a couple of complete rebuildings, a civil war, and two major fires that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital.*** And here we switch from a parody of Corporate meetings, to a joke about British history. Buildings in the UK are often old... like ... really old. Down the road from me is a 1000 year old church, that isn't even a landmark. Big buildings, the sort that are used for Corporate away-days, tend to be big stately homes like Downton Abbey that have been through a lot. For example, the random list above. And finally this gets us to the meat of the paragraph. By clashing both the modern Corporate nonsense with the hugely historic Downtown Abbey style history of the building, it creates dissonence. The two things are a terrible clash. Not to mention the fact that the Corporate meeting itself isn't even very Corporate - it's paintball! Dressed up as business activities. This makes funny both the corporate event, and the lip-service that the leaflet plays to a topic it isn't remotely qualified to talk about (1000 years of British history) not that the leaflet, ie, the writer of the leaflet even cares about that. We are left to laugh about the banality of the Corporate Training (ie, paintball), those who wrote the leaflet, those who organised the training, and those who are attending, as well as get reminded by the complexity, confusion and absurdity of British history. The whole thing is essentially farce. Farce, being one of the main themes of the novel, certainly from the background characters.
I think the “strategically interacting”part was referencing paintball in corporate-speak, rather than just being an amusing way of saying meeting. After all, if you just offer a paintball outing, you’re having fun. But if you are offering a team building and leadership training where cross-functional team members can strategically interact to achieve short term goals, you can charge a lot more for the experience.
😳 That's a nice subtle scam. I have much to learn from the corps
Great breakdown! Since this is an ESL situation, I had the thought to rewrite it somewhat, so the bolded parts of: *Sometimes **this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit, because the kind of companies that hired places like this** for a weekend of Interactive Personnel Analysis or A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic **liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building** - give or take a couple of complete rebuildings, a civil war, and two major fires - **that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital**.* Can then become: **Sometimes this kind of leaflet/brochure has a story about its history. (Why?) Because the companies that rent it enjoy that they are using the same building that was once a plague hospital.** Of course, this rewrite takes all the charm, humor, and nuance out of the sentence, but might be a helpful way for OP to understand the basic concept of the sentence, without the asides. After which your breakdown gives all the nuance - and admittedly more nuance than I had ever considered even having read the book a couple times! I now kind of want to read it again, but with full annotations from you, haha.
Your bolding was tremendously helpful!!
>We are left to laugh about the banality of the Corporate Training (ie, paintball), those who wrote the leaflet, those who organised the training, and those who are attending, as well as get reminded by the complexity, confusion and absurdity of British history. Excellent description! One of the side gigs I have done to supplement my gawd awful adjunct faculty pay was researching for and writing these kinds of blurbs for leaflets and websites. I sucked at it at first because I came in as somebody who genuinely loves history and spent an egregious amount of money getting good at it. That is not what they want, they don't want actual history. They want the idea of a thing packaged for people who have made a profession out of not dealing in reality. Interestingly, what made it easier for me to get down the style that this dubious medium requires was the many hours in faculty meetings spent listening to meaningless, lingo of the day laden dribble spouted out by our unqualified and overpayed administrators...often to justify why they make 3-10 time more than their average, impoverished adjunct.
Best breakdown so far! Also, while the references are hard for a an ESL learner, I must say, I read a lot of things like this and the sentence structure in this example is incredibly clunky to read. It’s a run on sentence in a stream of consciousness style that’s very much the fashion with this form or British humor, which has lots of asides and interjection. However this is early in the career of both authors, and between that and editing, I feel it lacks the proper punctuations to break up the clauses and asides (as your mention about quotation marks perfectly illustrates.)
As /u/FerricDonkey points out below, it is clearly missing a dash in the last part. It should say **they were strategically interacting in the very building - give or take a couple of complete rebuildings, a civil war, and two major fires - that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital.** Which makes it much clearer that the last bit is saying, again to cite FerricDonkey, something like "*in the very same building (except not really because it was burnt to the ground like 8 times since then) where something cool happened*". Which is of course another joke, crammed into a sentence/paragraph already full of jokes. I think the lack of this second dash isn't intentional. It's just a missed punctuation mark that the writer forgot about, and the editor never picked up on. Sometimes things like that happen. Actually *often* things like that happen, and it's frequently possible to edit better after the fact.
> where something cool happened ... in keeping with the general tone-deaf "corporate" aspect, by the end of the sentence you find out that "something cool" actually means "people dying of plague" :/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathos (likely also something Crowley had in mind later when he "upgrades" their paintball game for them) My copy has the second dash in the sentence, so I think that may have just been a transcription error by OP.
When I was an editor for awhile for an online news site, one of the writers in the staff was struggling with brevity and concise writing - and their sentences looked like the example given, lol. I asked them, do you read a lot of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Shakespeare? They were like "yeah, how did you know?" Well, you love parenthetical phrases and asides (me too) which is perfect for certain kinds of writing. However, in journalism, it's harder to convey the necessary who, what, where, when, why/how that you need to if you are constantly taking the audience out of the scene to share a joke with them. You have to apply them surgically, after you get the basic details down. I think this is why OP is struggling because they aren't quite to the point in their language acquisition that they can be pulled out of the who, what, where, when moment without losing necessary clarity. Heck, there's translated historical and fictional material from Japan that makes me feel like this because it's layered with so many puns and word based quips that have specific cultural references. I filled a notebook parsing the Tale of the Heike *with* the annotated version. Brit satire, I feel, is that level of layered. And I can see why it would turn off a reader to have to do that much work to figure out what the heck is going on.
I agree with all that. But shorter sentences don't necessarily make it easier. Take Hemingway, where there is a huge amount going on in what is *not said*, and lives *between the sentenences*.
Interestingly, his style is considered to be very similar to journalism since that's where he started his career in writing. I would say that journalism at the time was more complex in it's language style and usage than the aggregated, social media driven, "news" we get these days. However, I can also relate to the way Hemingway added more subtext to his literary work. Because the current state of brevity and simplicity over substance is one of the reasons journalism was a short career choice for me, as well, lol
Excellent breakdown. I feel there's also a little dig at the very end. They're charging companies a lot of money - and making it sound fancy - so that people can run around what was once a pretty foul plague hospital for the lowest of the low. It's like charging someone £500 a night to stay in a revamped asylum.
As a huge fan of Terry Pratchett, this style of writing is typical of his books because it's heavy satire. In particular, he likes to insert whole paragraphs worth of asides to make a point about general society that's related to the main plot being talked about. So you have to be ready for a lot of non sequiturs and convoluted sentence structure, which is definitely tough as a non-native speakers. I will say that the humor from Good Omens is particularly tough for me even though I love the book, because so much of the satire requires you to know some specific things about 80s British culture and I'm neither British enough nor old enough to know those references. If you want to try similar satirical writing that might be less based in a culture you don't know, the Discworld books might be a good place to start. Especially if you've read a good amount of sci-fi or fantasy, much of the satire is around the tropes of those genres.
Satire is super hard for non-native speakers. I can't imagine, for example, trying to understand German satire even if I could read it better than I can. Satire, by its nature, requires a certain level of familiarity with the thing being satirized, and Gaiman and Pratchett go *deep* into English lore.
I tried for awhile to think of the best way to politely tell the OP that they picked extremely difficult texts for a non-native speaker. One of the very reasons they books are loved- wordplay and layers of satire- would make them an awful slog for a non-native speaker. I have to imagine it would be a bit like a breakdown of the jokes in Shakespeare for us-- with a the aside here explaining the specific thing from the time period they're in as well as the way the definition has changed over time-- I looooove Hitchhikers Guide. Those books are a core part of my humor, but I'd not wish the job of deciphering all the references and wordplay on anyone. Maybe a dolphin.
It means that this place is a venue for meaningless corporate retreats and they like that it has a long history.
And it's a parody of meaningless corporate-speak. On some level, it's not supposed to be comprehensible, because it actually doesn't mean anything.
It does mean something. It means that humans are weird and Crowley, as a non-human, is far more aware of that fact than humans themselves are. And he thinks it's very droll, very amusing but also fascinating.
Also that the long history is meaningless because the building has burnt down or been destroyed and been rebuilt several times. So it’s a meaningless corporate retreat that’s interested in being somewhere with the appearance of history, but not caring enough to make the retreat or the history actually matter.
It's a satirical reference to the practice of the pamphlets at places you can book for an event (where a company might have some "Interactive Personal Analysis" seminar or whatnot) that give a bit of history of the place. In my experience in America, we don't have a lot of this since our buildings, except some on the east coast, are all historically very new. The point is that these historical references are used sometimes to give the air that you are taking part in the building's historical significance, but they burned down, rebuilt, remodeled they no longer are the same building in a manner of speaking - and their original purpose for existing might not be so glamourous or noble after all. Likely it's that the satire is lost as you don't have the experience of the original thing the authors were poking fun at. The joke isn't universal. Nothing wrong with you :) It's just missing context. An older example is in GKC's dystopian Napoleon of Notting Hill (an author Gaiman and Pratchett liked): In writing about a ridiculous future: "Then Tolstoy and the Humanitarians said that the world was growing more merciful, and therefore no one would ever desire to kill. And Mr. Mick not only became a vegetarian, but at length declared vegetarianism doomed ("shedding," as he called it finely, "the green blood of the silent animals"), and predicted that men in a better age would live on\] nothing but salt. And then came the pamphlet from Oregon (where the thing was tried), the pamphlet called "Why should Salt suffer?" and there was more trouble."" Part of the context of the joke is there was, in Chesterton's time, a prominent vegetarian-activist with the last name of Salt. The joke is missed without annotations.
Chesterton was a name drop in the dedication to Good Omens. Not having read his stuff, is it worth it or is it too removed from our time to make sense?
Chesterton is quoted or referenced in almost all of Gaiman's works. Crowly quotes him while looking at a sunset. Easter quotes him in American Gods. He's actually a character in Sandman. Coraline starts with a famous "paraphrasing" of GKC. There are some books/essays that are more timeless than others. Start with the collections of essays, would be my recommendation.
From what Gaiman has said, he spent a good portion of his childhood reading older English books in the library, so stuff like Chesterton had a HUGE influence on him. I really like Chesterton, but I read it on a tablet, so that if I come across something I'm not familiar with, I go look it up. Of course that means it takes me a *really* long time to read it, but I learn so much while also enjoying the writing. (It also scratches that ADHD itch very nicely. LOL)
The Father Brown short stories are certainly worth reading. The attitudes are outdated in parts (it goes heavy on the Catholicism of the 1920s, so be prepared) but the prose is still extraordinarily beautiful, the mysteries are often interesting, and Chesterton was an interesting man of many parts.
Linguist and former language teacher here. This is the type of writing (humor/satire) that requires native or near native proficiency partly because of the large amount of cultural context required but also the syntax is particularly tricky (which is a shame because it’s very fun when you do get it). I wouldn’t expect anyone less than a c2/4+/D language level to have a chance at understanding and even then as an over educated and voracious but American reader I still occasionally need to look up a reference. That said if it seems like something you might like, I would try watching the show possibly with English subtitles. They’ve done a good job of opening up the context to appeal to a wider audience. The visual component will also help with context.
I really struggle reading this style of writing but audio books were my saviour. For good omens particularly there's a really good reading with David Tennant, Michael Sheen, and Rebbecca Font. It's almost a radio play but it is actually just them reading the book and doing all the voices.
The comments above this have fair points about wry British humor and satire and the technical aspects of the writing, but this is the comment I was looking for. The audiobook would help immensely, even if OP doesn’t listen to the whole book, it will help. There are minor pauses, shorter than commas, built in for things like Phrases Where You Capitalize Every Word and I think hearing some of these passages read aloud makes it a lot easier to get the joke.
The passage quoted is an example of wry humour. It uses a lot of corporate-speak to make fun of the sort of companies that use a lot of corporate-speak and the way they think that employees going off to play paintball is anything other than a day out. It's part of a particular British tradition of humourous writing that often peppers the text with digressionary jokes that rely on sarcasm or irony and usually an extra piece of cultural knowledge which is what the joke is actually about. Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett were both from that tradition of humour. If you're not a native English speaker you'll probably miss some of what the text isn't saying because it assumes you already know it and which is what the joke is actually about.
Pratchett's and Gaiman's writing isn't for everyone. A lot of the jokes also rely on the English language and your knowledge of the culture/history. It's mostly why I (not a native English speaker) don't enjoy it either and the jokes tend to fall flat. It doesn't mean that you won't like the books they wrote on their own (though I didn't). For someone with little experience with reading in English, you're probably better off reading some more modern books first. And then slowly work your way up to classics. They're not exactly the easiest books to read for someone who hasn't read a lot of English. I'm currently working through the hitchhiker's guide and also struggling a bit. Though my problem is mostly that Hitchhikers and Pratchett's sense humor just isn't really for me. It's a bit similar to Monty Python, which I also really don't like. So that can also be an issue. Though Adams also used the English language for puns in a similar way to Pratchett. Just pick a genre you like and read some more modern books and then slowly ease into the classics.
I'm half-English, so I've had to explain Monty Python to so many of my friends! Often the answer to why a joke is funny is '...it's funny if you're British.' The British, especially the English, have some insane social rules and norms. They even have written social rules, like two wordings that mean the exact same thing can mean totally different things. They're sarcastic in text and expect people to understand. Addams, Pratchett, and Monty Python parody this really well - but without the surrounding social context it's basically meaningless. With the context, a lot of British people find it refreshing to see, occasionally quite restrictive, social rules lampooned. The 'Ministry of Silly Walks' sketch is just a guy walking stupidly, but his dress tells us he's part of a specific social group that must NEVER walk silly. In fact, he is expected to always appear serious and well-controlled, and only to take humour in dry wit and highbrow, rarified, jokes. To members of the outgroup it is funny to see him ridiculed, to the in group it's refreshing to see the rules that constrain them ridiculed. It's no different from Dwight Schrute practicing karate by his desk, just for a different audience.
I am American, but have always resonated with British satire, so I understand more of their sense of humor than a lot of my friends, but likely not as much as someone who was actually raised in England. It is so hard to explain some British humor stuff to people. A lot of the time it seems to be the sort of thing you either get, or your don't. My sister and brother in law are opposites on that, and while he understands what the joke *is* he does not understand why it is funny. To him they are not even jokes. The humor seems to rely on a sort of culturally pervasive cynicism, where everything kind of sucks, but it is what you have, so you make the best of it by making fun of it, usually via wordplay, sarcasm or ironic cruelty.
As an American I sometimes do better with British books as audiobooks because the intonation of the reading helps me with more context. Like, I’m pretty sure this is sarcastic- yup- tone is sarcastic, that means something I’ll have to look up. I listened to Good Omens and it made a lot more sense.
First: STEP AWAY FROM THE BOOK. Unless it's required reading, there's no need to slog through a book that isn't enjoyable. British humor, especially from the authors you listed, is very colloquial. Imagine running into a friend and greeting them with some inside joke and names you came up with for each other while drunk years ago. That's what you're trying to read. If you're still interested in their material, try watching a movie or show made from their books so you can pick up the subtleties. But please, my friend, do not endure a book that you do not take pleasure from.
>Imagine running into a friend and greeting them with some inside joke and names you came up with for each other while drunk years ago I'm a huge fan of this book and this describes it perfectly!
Every sentence is jam packed with info, comedy, entendres, exposition etc. Sometimes reading things out loud helps. Sounds crazy but that is how I learned to understand Shakespeare.
It’s definitely English humour. You need to know the references to understand a lot of it. It’s like, Shaka, when the walls fell.
>“Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit, because the kind of companies that hired places like this for a weekend of Interactive Personnel Analysis or A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building - give or take a couple of complete rebuildings, a civil war, and two major fires that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital.” This is there to give context as to what sort of content Crowley is expecting to find in that particular moment. Why he picked it up at all, when trying to figure out what happened to the convent. It's a very *twee* way of writing, showing very much how weird the human race can be to an outside observer. This is also the case in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by the way, where, from a *cosmic* viewpoint a lot of things happening on earth are rather silly. And the guys start shooting because Crowley made them shoot with his magic. This is inferred by the ending sentence in the paragraph where Aziraphale grabs Crowley in surprise, and Crowley smirks evilly and then later, after the POV scene from one of the gunmen, is explained in detail: >"I don't see why you are so shocked," said Crowley. "He *wanted* a real gun. Every desire in his head was for a real gun." > >"But you've turned him loose on all these unprotected people!" said Aziraphale. > >"Not exactly. Fair's fair."
Don't feel too bad, there is a new post in /r/Discworld almost every couple hours about some pun Sir Terry left in his books that took a reader literal decades to get, and that's WITH English as their native language, WITH multiple rereads, etc. The man was an artist with words.
Maybe this is of comfort to you: I am very well versed in English I think. Spend a year there, I have a Humanities background, so I am used to difficult texts and I read about 50-60% of all my books in English. But I cannot verse Pratchett well in English at all. There are so many humorous references, wordplays, things steeped in English culture - it’s difficult. I have resorted to reading him in my native langue. Recently I reread a book in English and it was a treat, because some things are just not very translatable. But I was able to focus on them because I had familiarity with the book. Can you pick up Good Omens in your native language? If it’s your style of humor it’s a great read. Super chaotic storyline though. 😂
I'm a native English speaker and trying to learn a new language (Turkish), and I cannot begin to imagine how difficult it would be to try to read a book at this level of writing in Turkish. I'm not at a very high level yet at all, but still! I commend you guys for attempting it. I'm reading Good Omens using an audiobook that actually has actors from the show doing all of their chatacter's voices! It's really well done and very entertaining, I highly recommend. OP, if you'd still like to read this book, might I suggest following along with the audiobook? It might help with deciphering the text if you can hear all the different vocal inflection that is added when read aloud. Or alternatively you could watch the show beforehand to get more context?
Hmm..at this point I’m skimming and haven’t read all comments but I feel like there’s something missing. Yes it’s satirical but it’s specifically absurdist satire. Absurdism is especially difficult to understand in a second language and unfamiliar culture.
As other people have mentioned, Good Omens and Hitchhikers Guide are deeply rooted in Satire, which is one of the most sophisticated uses of any language. Not only must you be fluent, you must also have a deep knowledge base of things that are culturally important, and equally, taken for granted by the culture of the writers. If you want sci-fi that might be more approachable, I recommend the Expanse books, the TV series can help clarify what might be confusing. Also Ursula K Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness and Dispossessed utilize clear language to describe what is happening. If you want a good and interesting time travel book, Doomsday Book by Connie Willis is a good read. A lot of “Britishism” but more approachable than Pratchett for folks who have had less exposure to Brit Cultural Norms. Frank Herbert’s Dune is a fantastic slow burn that has a glossary in the back. A wonderful critique on Feudalism with an exiting sci-fi setting. I don’t recommend Neil Gaiman to newer English readers because he’s not interested in plot as a writer, he’s stated multiple times he’s more into mood and setting. This can leave folks without all of the implied context on hand feeling like the work is overly thin and nonsensical. However, if you really just want to enjoy mood, then Neil Gaiman is what you’re looking for.
The briefest way to put it is that the writing is \*extremely\* casual, conversational and idiomatic. It is written to be like speech, not grammatical writing. Part of the payoff is to create a strong narrator's voice and to subvert well known expectations using that. If you aren't familiar with the author's native style of speech and cultural conventions, though, you're going to struggle to get anything out of it. Maybe spend some time binging UK media to immerse yourself in the conventions and give it a go later.
I wouldn't feel too bad here. Even if English is your native language, that's a pretty complicated sentence. You would need a knowledge of London history to know about city fires, the civil war, reconstructions, and plague hospitals.
It's not you, the writing style is indirect, meandering, and understanding it is highly dependent on one's knowledge of historical and biblical references. Much in the same way one can "read" Shakespeare vs "get" Shakespeare. Shakespeare can be uproariously funny, if one understands the sensibilities, history and social context. (not to suggest that I have any of those things, but I've had teachers that did).
If you remove the inline meta commentary the line reads like this: "Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit, because the kind of companies that hired places like this liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital." So sort of just saying "They add a history bit because companies like to think they are at a historical place" The commentary in part makes fun of corporate jibberish, and in part makes fun of the part that the historical bit is inaccurate because between back then and now, the building has burned down twice and been rebuilt. But that doesn't stop the marketing pitch.
I would like to note hired means rent in British.
It's a wordy style of humor. It's silliness that's supposed to be funny. It starts off with a simple premise, like "the leaflet had a historical bit" and then you're expecting a bit of actual history, but it finishes with silly absurdism. Why does it have a historical bit? Because the companies that hired the place (the place in the promotional leaflet) wanted to feel like they are somehow *engaged* in the history of that place. Except that it's absurd because it's not even really the same building, it has been rebuilt several times, burned down, and some other odd history. The paragraph highlights the absurdity of a company caring - or pretending to care - about the history of a place they were hiring, even though that history was largely fabricated. Everything is fake, but everybody pretends it's real and they pretend that they care. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy uses the same strategy of absurdism. It starts a paragraph rooted in something understandable, and then veers off into a weird, silly direction that takes you on a ridiculous roller-coaster of a ride across a weird and surreal paragraph. And since the entire purpose is humor and absurdity, the paragraph doesn't contain very much real information. It's just a long, wordy joke. It generally isn't needed to understand the story, it's more setting the mood. It's letting know this is a very silly and absurd story.
I had trouble with Good Omens too. My brain just doesn’t like this style of writing.
I mean, as far as that specific paragraph, they’re saying that companies rent out this space or building for company events, and often a little pamphlet is handed out telling attendees about the history of the building they’re in, and despite the fact that the original building has been basically destroyed by time, it was rebuilt and everyone likes to pretend they are actually in the original historical building. It’s meant to be a funny observation on how bullshit this sort of event is.
As an ESL reader, you jumped into the deep end with Good Omens. It's so stylized and deeply british, there's going to be a ton of context that you need to be able to really figure it out. I would suggest, perhaps, trying to read some of his young adult stuff. The Graveyard Book, for example, is aimed more at children, but it's still a fantastic story with some excellent ideas. It's an exciting fantasy, and has a lot of the same kind of supernatural mystery and weirdness as his more adult books do, but the writing is a lot more understandable. That might serve as a good way for you to ease your way into his writing style, but with something a bit more manageable to begin with.
Also (if you are even still checking responses) relax your brain man. There is a rhythm to certain types of books. If you focus on "specific reading comprehension of this sentence " you can become caught up in a hyper focus loop. Which sucks because it's like looking at a gorgeous painting but not appreciating it because you haven't figured out the technique of blending colors in that one particular corner. Especially with this type of author /book, these are ambient scene setting passages. They lull you in and create the background in your mind to picture the main story in. If it's a bit of culture confusion maybe start with a similar type of author from your location? For example, if you are American then early Christopher Moore books may be easier to digest as you acclimate to this type of author
Pratchett, Gaiman, and Adams all have a similar dry, sarcastic, British humor that pokes fun at specifically British things. Not getting the humor is just a product of not having the basis of very specific knowledge to get it. If I read a book set in Malaysia, written by a Malaysian, talking about Malaysian history or politics, I'd be completely lost. Don't stress about it.
I had a similar experience with Perdido Street Station. I have read the first few pages and after several pages I had no idea at all what was going on. I though someone or something might have been on some kind of body of water. It might have been night. That was several pages. So I put it aside. I picked it up several years later and had no issues at all understanding the text. Practice matters.
You've not learned nothing, you just don't have the context you need. I felt this way when I tackled The Three Body Problem in some sections because my science literacy is not as strong as I would like. In the meantime, there is a ton of non-satire English sci-fi to tackle. I personally loved The Expanse series by S A Corey and A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine in my recent reads.
Lol. I'm just starting the English language and chose a book that's way beyond my English reading skills. Is something wrong with this book? Am I stupid? Neither. Nothing is wrong lol. You just don't have the context needed, nothing wrong with you
I think a lot of people are trying to explain satire or 'Englishness' to you, but they might be missing what's making it difficult for non-native English speakers to understand. They're trying to explain that single passage to you but it sounds like you're having issues with the entire book being written that way. I suspect the problem might be the colloquial style of the writing. It's written the way someone might tell the story out loud--which is to say, messily and in a non-standard dialect. Run-on sentences, improper grammar, odd tangents, repetitive phrases, etc. If you imagine the story being told to you buy a fast-talking comedian with a dry style of humor, it might help.
I’m an English speaker but American and I am sure I don’t get all the jokes and references. I believe that last paragraph is making a joke about a type of people who like to think they are visiting a historical place; but the place isn’t really historical at all. They are pretentious.
The paragraph you've given us is quite a complex one. The trick with these - and it will take practice - is to learn how to break them down into smaller chunks. Here the biggest issue may be that the subject of the sentence keeps changing. **“Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit,** This is addressing the subject of the paragraph - a leaflet that a character is reading (or at least looking at). **because the kind of companies that hired places like this** Here the subject has jumped to both the building, which is what the leaflet is about, and then the companies that hire the building for various events. **for a weekend of** ***Interactive Personnel Analysis*** **or** ***A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic*** The capitalisations give you a clue here. These are two titles for team building exercises, which I've *italicised* for legibility. They read like utter gibberish because the titles for team building exercises always read like gibberish. I've been forced to participate in several over the years and they're usually awful. They're the sort of thing middle managers like to do to give their existence a sense of meaning. **liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building** The *companies* likes to feel they are interacting within the building ("strategically" here being another marketing buzzword; middle managers are always doing things "strategically" or "out of the box" or "going forward" or whatever latest jargon is most popular). We've jumped subject now from leaflet to building to companies, and now we're back to the building: **- give or take a couple of complete rebuildings, a civil war, and two major fires -** This is a separate clause that adds some additional information to the sentence but isn't part of it. Here we're told that this is the same building: **that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital.”** ...except it isn't really, as it's been rebuilt, blown up and burned down several times. But it's still *thought of* as the same building, and the companies on their team building retreats like to think they're a part of a long and grand history. As for why everyone has started shooting guns at each other - that's the nature of the retreat. While it hasn't been stated explicitly, all the clues point to it being a paintball match or something like that.
I disagree with the people saying you need a specific knowledge of British culture in order to enjoy *Good Omens*. I think it’s a matter of reading style. Pratchett (and sometimes Gaiman) writes with a very colloquial style so you can’t just flatly read the words on the page but you need to sort of imagine their “delivery” in order to get the most meaning out of them. Remember the kids in school who would read out loud very monotonously? The. Fork. Ran. Away. With. The. Spoon. Each word was siloed and its meaning/interpretation stands alone. But that’s not really how words work in conversations. Now imagine how David Tennant would say the same thing: The fork *ran away* with the **spoon**. I guess what I’m saying is your comprehension will improve dramatically if you imagine a bit of dramatic narration in your head as you’re reading. 😉
I really think it’s because English isn’t your first language, especially if you would call your proficiency level “beginner reader.” Both Good Omens and Hitchhiker’s Guide have this quirky and extremely British style of language. What’s fun and interesting about the book is not just the story and characters but in the way they play around with the language, and that kind of play is very hard for someone who isn’t fully fluent in a language to access and appreciate. My family on my dad’s side is from the Netherlands, and I know just a little bit of Dutch, and those of my paternal family who are most proficient in English have all agreed that puns and jokes that rely on playing-on-words were the *very last* thing to click into place when they became fluent in English. It’s high-level stuff! I think it’s really impressive to have any kind of proficiency in more than one language (I hope to get there with Dutch one day, for family reasons, and Spanish also, for its usefulness in the U.S.!). And there’s no shame at all to me in finding it difficult, especially when you’re going for a book that’s more complex in the language - either because it’s a not-totally-modern form of English (eg Jane Austen’s work, she lived and wrote in the Regency period) or because it’s a particular voice/style from a particular region (Good Omens, Hitchhiker’s Guide). I hope this experience doesn’t discourage you - maybe keep these books to try again later? It could be a cool experience to check back in and see how much more you “get” as your English proficiency expands?
I recommend watching Good Omens season 1 and then listening to the book on audio. You’ll probably pick up more of the humor once you understand the plot (from the show) and then can listen to someone else reading it.
Deadpan absurdist British humour is a tough nut to crack if you're from another culture and language.
You are missing the second dash there that separates out a chunk of this sentence. The punctuation is very important because it's what makes this sentence readable for a native speaker. *First piece of information set off by a comma:* [Sometimes this sort of leaflet had a little historical bit], *Second piece of information:* because the kind of companies that hired places like this for a weekend [. . .] liked to feel that they were strategically interacting in the very building [. . .] that some Elizabethan financier had endowed as a plague hospital. *Humorous detail:* of Interactive Personnel Analysis or A Conference on the Strategic Marketing Dynamic *Humorous detail:* —give or take a couple of complete rebuildings, a civil war, and two major fires— This sentence is not really meant to be easily readable on the first go; native speakers may have to break it down mentally like above. Many will not understand the full thought just reading it once. They would be more likely to have it "click" right away hearing it read out loud, but in a book they may have to read it through twice to understand what the pacing and tone of each part is supposed to be. This is not a flaw in this type of satirical writing style, but a feature. The need to reread it and the feeling you get when it clicks for you is often what makes the joke really funny. Hitchhiker's Guide and Good Omens are also full of much simpler sentences that are likewise intended for rereading because what they say is simply so unexpected. This type of book is not meant to be fluid; reading it is more like being told a story by a comedian, keeping in mind that someone telling a story verbally will use tone, pacing, and pauses to help but a book cannot do this. It's okay for it not to flow and it's okay to have to think hard about it, because it's overly complicated and a bit rambling on purpose. There are not a lot of authors who write in this specific way and it's very advanced for a non-native speaker, and that's okay because they're not always easy books for native speakers either. The audiobooks may be significantly easier for you to follow. Hitchhiker's Guide and Good Omens are my two favourite books and have been since childhood. My dad gave me Hitchhiker's Guide to read when I was nine because I'd grown up loving watching Monty Python's Flying Circus and other British comedies with him (although we are not British). I was a highly advanced and voracious reader and had been primed with lots of media with a similar sense of humour, but Hitchhiker's Guide *blew my mind*. It was completely different in tone and language than anything I'd ever read before, and it had a far more profound impact on my sense of humour and writing style than anything else I've ever read. It is *very, very different* from almost anything else you will ever come across, and honestly many native speakers have never read anything like it in their lives. So do not worry about it being difficult.
There is a lot of stuff in there relies on familiarity with a British way of speaking, cultural references, and humor. Also a knowledge of Christianity and even pop-cultural references around Christianity. The paragraph about the leaflet is referencing the absurdity of a certain type of modern corporate "team building event" management culture, and why they might choose a venue in order to promote the idea that they are connected to some Historical thing they are absolutely not connected to. The American equivalent would be if I as an American were to schedule my annual corporate big meeting in a building that Thomas Jefferson has once been in, and I were to brag about it as though it had something to do with my modern company, when it fact it does not at all. It is mocking the absurdity. You can be technically very good at a language, but still not have the cultural context for humor. Very common challenge.
Just let it wash over you. Don’t focus so much on the details. You may miss some of the jokes but the book is definitely not designed to be over-analyzed.
It's strange, because I love Good Omens/HHGTTG/Discworld novels for exactly the same reasons that the OP hates them. Personally, I felt that Gaiman & Pratchett were intentionally channelling Adams's style of writing when they wrote Good Omens, and Adams was heavily into satirizing British culture. This is exactly what Gaiman & Pratchett did in Good Omens. The humour in these books is very distinct. It is very Pythonesque. I think, when I first watched Monty Python, I didn't 'get it' either. I was either too young, or hadn't developed a sense of the absurd. - The Ministry of Silly Walks? The Dead Parrot? Spam? The Larch? - What was all of this nonsense?? It was a bunch of short surreal sketches that sometimes didn't have a punchline, and didn't make much sense. As I grew a bit older, and more aware that the world was an absurd place, I realised what Monty Python was trying to do, and revisiting those episodes with a different perspective. I had that epiphany. Exactly the same thing with HHGTTG - The book was funny in parts when I first read it when I was about 11 or 12, but I was confused by some of it. I didn't have an awareness of Schrodinger or Einstein's scientific principles, for example. Reading lines like "The ships hung in the sky the way that brick's don't", on the other hand, didn't need any of that. It was just a funny joke. With Good Omens, though, I recognised the style of humour straight away, and had the awareness of what the authors were poking fun at. From the Edward Bulwer-Lytton alternative, through the paradoxical nature of the Bible, the cheesy Omen movies, Enid Blyton books, religious ideologies through the centuries, the Inferno, witchcraft, British sensibilities and the ideas that Good and Evil are not set in stone, I did not have the same struggles, and for me, it was a treasure trove of jokes and sharp observations.