The Light Fantastic

10

When someone on the net wondered if this scene had been influenced by Monty Python (who also do a Death-at-a-party sketch), Terry replied:

“No. I’m fairly honest about this stuff. I didn’t even see the film until long after the book was done. Once again, I’d say it’s an easy parallel — what with the Masque of the Red Death and stuff like that, the joke is just lying there waiting for anyone to pick it up.”

The Masque of the Red Death is a well-known story by Edgar Allan Poe, in which the nobility, in a decadent and senseless attempt to escape from the plague that’s ravishing the land, lock themselves up a castle and hold a big party. At which a costumed personification of Death, of course, eventually turns up and claims everyone anyway.

It is perhaps also worth pointing out that the quoted sentence looks very much like a classic Tom Swiftie (if you can accept Death as a shade). Tom Swifties (after the famous series of boys’ novels which popularised them) are sentences of the form “xxx, said he zzz-ly”, where the zzz refers back to the xxx. Examples:

“Pass me the shellfish,” said Tom crabbily.

“Let’s look for another Grail!” Tom requested.

“I used to be a pilot,” Tom explained.

“I’m into homosexual necrophilia,” said Tom in dead earnest.