He was regularly dismissed by critics who could not bring themselves to read books with non humans in them, already deciding for themselves that anything so obviously entertaining and colourful, must also be frivolous and asinine, that in the end we all got to keep him to ourselves. He was all the more special for it, and if you are thinking “oh that guy with the funny hat has died, must read one of his books to see what all the fuss is about “ then don't bother, you probably wouldn't get it and frankly we don't want you to. He is too precious to share.
Life is cruel but for Pratchett, Death was everything but that. The one constant that existed outside of a world that Terry created to mirror the outrageous ridiculousness and stupidity of our own. The discworld series is in itself a postmodern comment. A parody of Fantasy cliché that became a series of novels examining the classes and races of creatures and humans that sci-fi and fantasy novelists had so lazily typecast in Gothic font for generations, forgetting to invest in them the human stories and tell tale homosapien behaviours, that had made Tolkien, and previous myth makers, enthralling for both young and old.
Discworlds Death is not cruel, because he signifies the end of suffering, the removal of the veil that is human pomposity, and with workman like efficiency his scythe severs any remaining attachment to an illusory ego that may blind those freed from this mortal coil. He illuminates truth. I have just finishing re-reading a hard bound copy of Mort today. The tale of a young lad who becomes Death's apprentice and the trouble he gets into trying to change reality into a more just and kind experience. In it he reveals a great truth
“It struck Mort with sudden, terrible poignancy that Death must be the loneliest creature in the universe. In the great party of Creation, he was always in the kitchen”
For all our childhood longing to be Heroes ,or Witches, or Wizards, or Trolls (some of us succeeded there) we soon realise that life itself is easy to get trapped within. Doomed to repeat the same patterns again and again like hamsters caught in a perpetual wheel. There does not have to be a point to make life meaningful because the living of it creates it's own meaning. Again from Mort
THAT’S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY’VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. FASCINATING
I don't think Terry Pratchett spent his life in the kitchen. He went into his head to take us all out of ours and lived his life as an adventure with scant regard to being considered worthy or a creator of great literary works. He was a satirist like Woodhouse and Douglas Adams but he was also a Philosopher and had an abiding love of Science and Folklore, Literature, Prose, Cultural Phenomenons, Religion, Art, Cinema, Military Strategy, Opera, etc. He was neither generalist or polymath, he was a man that reflected the changes that transformed the world he grew up through and catered to readers that had no wish to be talked down to or told stories in clumsy language with no eloquence and brevity. Most “fantasy” had, and often still is, weighed down in the piling on of detail, because it has no prescient insights into our own world with which to present us. You can not read one Discworld novel without coming away with the smell of the place or the surprising empathy for the plight of some creature or person so different from yourself yet in the end so utterly familiar. It's his genius. He made it seem easy and so like Dickens you are walking the streets of another world but you may be led by a Tibetan Monk who discusses with you the nature of time, or you may think that you are going into a JB Priestly style whodunnit with the commander of the city Watch, but then Sam Vimes is revealed to be at once, both an efficient pragmatist and an idealistic socialist. He was also very funny and that is an essential attribute to understanding.
He was not a one for big eulogies. He believed life was for living and I can never claim to have met the bloke so forgive me for my indulgence, but I think he summed it up in Mort. In it he said
“People don't alter history any more than birds alter the sky, they just make brief patterns in it.”
It's not a hopeless thought. It's a reminder that there are always things much bigger than us. Whoever we may be. In the end there is no master plan, we just tell ourselves there is to make ourselves feel better. Life. Now. The Present. That is what is important. Not some future reward or punishment.
“He was determined to discover the underlying logic behind the universe.
Which was going to be hard, because there wasn't one.” Mort
Thanks Terry, you made a lot of people very happy and a little wiser.
RIP
