The End Is Nigh (Again)

1001 Books To Read Before Your Kindle Battery Dies, Part 86
Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

The Apocalypse is coming. Every sign points toward the End of Days, as Four Horsemen (actually motorcyclists) crisscross the countryside, leaving devastation behind. Armies of angels and demons stalk Earth, and their march appears headed toward a cataclysmic confrontation. Only a small number of True Believers follow the signs, watching as everything appears headed towards… a suburban back garden in bucolic Oxfordshire, England. Are the prophecies off-kilter, or has God simply lost His eternal mind?

British novelists Terry Pratchett (“Discworld”) and Neil Gaiman (American Gods) wrote this strange, fast-paced comedy as a labor of love. Both grew up with lightly held spiritual values, which they largely abandoned later. But religion, and the near-universal belief among religions that the current age will pass away, colored their thinking; Satan has been a recurrent image in both authors’ works. A vaudeville retelling of the Book of Revelation played into both authors’ shared interests.

Aziraphale, Heaven’s least-virtuous angel, and Crowley, Hell’s least-vice-ridden demon, have established a truce, enjoying one another’s company in Aziraphale’s used-book shop. They like humans, and human company; they’re probably the last true humanists. So when they realize the Last Battle has begun, neither wants everything to end. They track the last known address of the Antichrist, whom they believe is the American ambassador’s bratty, self-satisfied son. But apparently, somebody has misplaced the son of Satan.

Behind this supernatural farce lies a book. In the 17th Century, soothsayer Agnes Nutter published a book of Nostradamus-like prophecies covering three centuries. (Because the word “nutter” doesn’t exist in American English, imagine she’s named Agatha Wingnut.) Nutter’s predictions are completely and wholly accurate. Unfortunately, they’re so specific that they’re not particularly useful, and they describe only her own descendants. Agnes’ last heir, Anathema Device, races to save humanity using Agnes’ strange, bleakly inscrutable aphorisms.

This novel works in its own right, as a slapstick “idiot plot” device where Heaven could avoid Armageddon if somebody just spoke up. The frenetic comedy reflects more Terry Pratchett’s classic style, infused with hints of Gaiman’s drier, more erudite wit. (This was Gaiman’s first novel; he hadn’t perfected his prose voice yet, working primarily in comics and graphic novels.) Readers can let the authors’ comedy wash over them in waves of broad, cutting laughter.

Terry Pratchett (left) and Neil Gaiman

But the satire draws on apocalyptic mentalities more broadly, too. Apocalypse, from the Greek, “revealing the concealed,” demands believers accept the hidden truth behind apparent reality. This novel reeks of concealed realities: the Antichrist reshapes reality to reflect what he reads in conspiracy theory magazines. The Witchfinder Army continues a “deep state” crusade officially abandoned centuries earlier. An order of Satanic nuns has cultivated the Dark One’s coming… but gotten bored and secularized from waiting.

Fashionable apocalypse cults want, ultimately, to understand hidden narratives behind apparently inexplicable events. They drag everything together to create a narrative through-line, as though a cosmic scriptwriter controlled everything. These authors satirize that mentality, while also tacking a second-order speculation onto that desire: what if the cosmic scriptwriter, too, doesn’t understand everything that’s going on? What if the cosmic order is so complex, that even God no longer understands everything He has set in motion?

Years before David Foster Wallace, Pratchett and Gaiman pioneered the technique of packing their prose with smug, self-satisfied footnotes to display their (putative) erudition. This novel’s narrative voice desperately wants you to know it knows how smart it is. Yet as plot points accumulate faster than backslaps in Three Stooges stories, even that voice becomes increasingly harried. Theology, prophecy, and reason all become increasingly useless. The smart voice becomes detectably harried; caution, nervous breakdown ahead.

In ancient times, humans ascribed human-like intent to thunder and lightning, wind and soil. Modern humans describe these same forces in rational terms and scientific equations. Both efforts serve the same purpose: to make reality comprehensible to human intellect. But Pratchett and Gaiman suggest a different thesis. What if things simply happen, dragging humans and our high-minded intellectual explanations along helplessly? Behind the comedy, there lingers an unstated horror that reality is indifferent to humanity.

Like the best comedy, this novel succeeds because it isn’t just silly. It addresses real fears people have. Believers and unbelievers alike know the anxiety of lying awake at night, wondering, what if I’m wrong? Pratchett and Gaiman dare push the question one step further: what if I’m wrong for the wrong reasons? This trajectory can only end in comedy, because taking it seriously would create a tragedy so pervasive, we couldn’t possibly endure it.