I read The Colour of Magic when I was pretty young. I remember my older brother bringing it home from the library. I liked the story, I guess, but it didn’t really reach out and grab me – it was too adult, in a way that I wouldn’t understand until I had grown up – and I think a lot of the humour in the book went straight over the head of a boy who was looking for stories that involved lots of sword-fighting, bloodshed and heroic deeds.
It wasn’t until I read ‘Guards, Guards’ that I really began to understand Terry Pratchett’s writing – or at least, I began to understand myself through his writing. It takes a special kind of author to reach out through the pages of the book, and sit there next to you on the couch, explaining not just the story, but something about the essence of being human, and in the character of Sam Vines, drunken captain of the Ankh-Morpork Guard, Terry Pratchett had created a character who could do just that.
I remember arguing – loudly and for long enough that I eventually got sent out of the classroom – with my high school English teacher about the respective merits of Magwitch, the convict made good in Great Expectations, and Sam Vimes. I had dutifully read Great Expectations, and I wanted to argue about the similarities between the two characters – reformed individuals, just trying to make good in a cynical world, but, to my horror, the teacher in question hadn’t lived up to her end of the bargain and read Pratchett’s book. I called her out for her calumny, and discovered, much like Vetinari, that being right is no substitute for authority.
Strangely enough, I enjoyed the stories when I was older – and read them, time and again, until my copies were dog-eared and tattered, for all the reasons that I hadn’t enjoyed them previously. There was something subversive about the stories – and not just sneakily subversive, but wilfully destructive in their abandonment of the stereotypes and tropes that are so prevalent in fantasy writing. Sure, everyone knows that he’s the rightful king, but that’s not the way we work, around here. So a captain he will stay.
And that subversion let Pratchett do things that other writers might have found far too confronting. Before anyone else ever thought of it, he had trolls finding their way into the city guard, becoming members of society. So too with werewolves and vampires – and all of that was carried along by a bubbling mirth: of course the undead would find a natural home as the lawyers in the city. It was a fantastical vision that was somehow made the more real because of the simple humanness of it all. It’s because of Pratchett that I think the best fantasy, even the best fiction, is that which is set in cities. There is no greater conglomeration of people than the modern city, and there were few greater observers of human nature than Pratchett. And it mattered little that Pratchett’s characters weren’t human, that they were trolls or werewolves or even personifications of death, because they all were, deep down. Even Death. Who doesn’t like cats?
I don’t remember laughing out loud at many books – but Pratchett’s always worked for me, often because of the antics of the Unseen University. In the bumbling academics, I felt I saw a little bit of all of us. Sure, they wore robes and carried staffs, but they bumbled through life in moments of abstract terror and crazed abandon as much as the rest of us. In their adventures, I saw my own life – and the life of those around me, reflected, and I shared their successes while I imagined they shared mine.
The best comedies are based on truth, and there is a fine line between comedy and tragedy. Ancient Greek philosophers understood that, and so, too, did Terry Pratchett. For him, though, the tragedy wasn’t so much as what was happening in his books, as what was happening in the world around him. If you look closely, Pratchett’s anger streams through the books, on every page: anger at people who are cruel, people who are prejudiced or bigoted, anger at people who are just not decent. I don’t know, but I imagine that Pratchett was as frustrated as I am, perhaps more so, at the increasing incivility present in today’s world. Perhaps Discworld was an escape for him. I know it was – and remains so – for me.
And it is for that reason I will take down my signed copy of Feet of Clay tonight, and sit on the couch, and read it again. Probably end to end in one sitting. And I will think of Terry, and hope that, wherever he is, it’s somewhere comfortable, there is plenty of wine, and he has his carnivorous plants close by – but not too close.