Terry Pratchett (4)

quote:

Op dinsdag 28 september 2010 20:39 schreef Neelix het volgende:

[..]

Dat zou ik echt geweldig vinden.
Misschien dat ik het me inbeeld, maar ik heb toch het idee dat Pratchett laatste tijd wat minder sterk is geworden in zijn schrijven.

Nation gelezen? Unseen Academicals? Ik zie er geen verzwakking in, hoor.

Welk scheldwoord dan? Ik lees de Tiffany boeken niet namelijk.

Aha. Tja, folkloristisch niks mis mee, maar ik kan me de schok wel voorstellen.

Overigens: het gebruik van 'seamstresses' is niet zozeer preutsheid als wel gebaseerd op de werkelijkheid. Met name in de Victoriaanse tijd gebruikte de beroepsgroep nogal wat covernamen.

Terry Pratchett: 'I'm open to joy. But I'm also more cynical'



When, not very long ago, Terry Pratchett's father was given a year to live, Pratchett père took it, on the whole, philosophically. Father and son had plenty of time to "have those conversations that you have with a dying parent", and to reminisce about his father's time in India during the war. At one point, said Pratchett, in last year's Dimbleby lecture, his father suddenly said, "'I can feel the sun of India on my face,' and his face did light up rather magically, brighter and happier than I had seen it at any time in the previous year. If there had been any justice or even narrative sensibility in the universe, he would have died there and then, shading his eyes from the sun of Karachi."

If the universe refused to display narrative sensibility, then Pratchett Jr would: that moment returns early in his new novel, I Shall Wear Midnight, in which a gruff, essentially kindly old man is vouchsafed a vision of youth and sunlight (though, instead of Karachi, the sunbeams glint off a leaping hare) and expires as he describes it. Even Pratchett knows this is a tad too neat, however, so, this being Discworld, his fantasy kingdom on a flat planet sailing through space on the backs of four elephants who in turn stand on a giant turtle, Death makes a lugubrious wisecrack about it: "WASN'T THAT APPROPRIATE?"

Pratchett, when he arrives at his idyllic local pub in Wiltshire, turns out to be full of this type of humour – deliberate, slightly coercive, very self-aware. He seems a man used to being listened to: his sentences unspool evenly, sometimes a shade irascibly, from beginning to end, often as anecdotes topped and tailed and full of random facts, gloried in for their own sake – annual expenditure on farmers' boots in the 19th century; the ubiquity then of shoe trees; did you know that in Victorian England, most of the women read and most of the men didn't?

Partly, though, this is because he's been writing all morning: I Shall Wear Midnight, a young adult novel, was launched in central London at midnight on Tuesday, but, as has been the way throughout a career that has so far produced 50 novels (38 of them set on Discworld) and generated more than 65m book sales – Pratchett is already 60,000 words into the next book.

And for the last two and a half years, ever since he was diagnosed with posterior cortical atrophy, a rare form of Alzheimer's, and lost the physical ability to write, he has dictated those words into voice-recognition software. At first, in fact, he talks to me about the machine as if I am a machine (which is not entirely unwarranted: there is a tape recorder sitting on the table between us). ". . . And the nice thing is, contrary to what you might initially expect, comma" – we both burst out laughing – "yes, sorry about this, full stop."

Pratchett has announced that his new book will be the last in his Tiffany Aching series (Aching is a young witch), and the novel, a bridge between childhood and the adult world, is full of worldly darkness – death, domestic abuse, old women's corpses being eaten by their pets, depression. "I'm a fantasy writer," he says. "Called a fantasy writer. But there's very little, apart from one or two basic concepts in I Shall Wear Midnight, which are in fact fantasy. You have sticks that fly, but they're practical broomsticks, with a bloody great strap that you can hold on to so you don't fall off. And you try not to use them too often."

Aching is, in effect, a young social worker, and much of her supposedly witchy wisdom comes simply from being near to people in the moments when others are not, or from making mistakes. At one point, in exasperation, she gets her familiars, the Nac Mac Feegles, to whizz around a depressed woman's very messy kitchen and clean it up – succeeding only in terrifying her.

"Tiffany's parents got it right," says Pratchett, sounding for all the world like a promoter of Cameron's Big Society: "mobilise the village to deal with [somebody like that]." Aching has First Sight and Second Thoughts (and occasionally third and fourth) – but they are, respectively, "seeing what's really there, rather than what you want to see," and "thinking about what you are thinking": self-awareness by other names.

Pratchett knows there are strict rules about making things so dark when you are writing for children – "a child's instinctive grasp of narrativium [sic] is that this has got to end well" – but he is also very clear that, while his witch can take away physical pain (she draws it out into a ball, then dumps it), she cannot, and will not, take loss, sadness, or grief.

"I've lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff," says Pratchett. "That's the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother's funeral, but you don't switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill. Who was it said – one of the famous lady novelists – 'unhappy is the family that contains an author'?"

He doesn't say it in so many words, but that must also be combined with grief for the loss of his ability to write longhand, or type with anything other than one finger at a time (although, weirdly, he is still perfectly able to sign his name — "the bit that knows how to sign my name is an entirely different bit of the brain"); the grief of knowing that while he may have years yet, most of his other mental faculties will go the same way. But probably not suddenly.

"Every day must be a tiny, incrementally . . . incremental . . . incremental . . . – he stumbled over a word; you must write that one down," Pratchett says with a dark, almost-laugh. (Having been a journalist himself, before becoming a PR in the nuclear industry and thence a novelist, he rarely passes up a chance to remind you that he knows how journalists work) ". . . incremental . . . change on the day before. So what is normal? Normal was yesterday. If you lose a leg, one day you're hopping around on one leg, so you know the difference.

"The last test I did was the first where I wasn't as good as the previous time. I actually forgot David Cameron. I just blanked on him" – this time the laugh contains, what – a kind of ironic approval? "What happens is, I call it the ball bearing. It's there, it just hasn't gone into the slot." He cannot begin to do tests that require him to scribble shapes, but asked to list names of animals, "I industriously say more than you can possibly imagine" – you can just see the pleasure of the earnest nerd in school – "and we go on for a little while until she smiles and says, 'Yes, we know, we know.'

"And then there was the time with dear Claudia with the Germanic accent – which is always good if someone's interrogating you – and she said, 'What would you do with a hammer? And I said, 'If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning. I'd hammer in the evening, all over this land.' And by the end I was dancing around the room, with her laughing. The laugh will be on the other foot, eventually, and I'm aware of that. But it shows how different things can be: I can still handle the language well, I can play tricks with it and all the other stuff – but I have to think twice when I put my pants on in the morning."

How does it change his sense of self? "Well – no one's policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes. I think – this is going to follow me for ages – I'm open to moments of joy: the other day, it was just a piece of rusty barbed wire in the hedge. Something had grown over it, and the whole pattern, the different shades of brown, the red – everything made a superb construction. And I was just happy that I'd seen it. But then I think – and it may just be because I'm 62 – it's also made me more . . . cynical? About government. And more sure, which is why I'm doing the Dignity in Dying."

For nearly as long as he has been public about his illness, Pratchett has been public about his wish to choose when he goes, and his puzzlement that British law does not see the sense of his position. "I feel embarrassed that people from this country have to go, cap in hand, to die in Switzerland. Apart from anything else, it makes it a rich man's – or a soon to be much poorer man's – possibility." And people have to go earlier than they intended. "Exactly."

He has a lot of time for the law in Oregon, where doctors can give a terminally ill patient a "potion to take when life gets too bad. I believe something like 40% or more of the patients die without taking it. Which means that every day they're thinking, 'Hmmmm – today's worth living.' And then one day they don't, and they die. That seems to me a very human thing, and a very good thing, because they can think, 'OK, that's sorted, I've got the potion, now I can get on and try and get the most out of life.'"

Ideally, Pratchett would like things to be even more official than that: there should be tribunals – here he leans forward, looking intently at me over his glasses – of mental health professionals, lawyers etc, all over the age of 45, who would question the patient and try to ascertain that no one was coercing them, and that the choice was not "a passing fixation".

But that's incredibly difficult; in illness you're often dealing with depression. "Yes. Yes, I know. I know," he says impatiently. Of course he knows. "Nothing I can say or devise, and nothing anybody else can say or devise, is going to be perfect. But anything is better than some poor half of a couple in some house, devising something with ropes and pulleys, saying, 'If he pulls this and we use that . . .' – that's obscene."

Currently, that half of the couple can, in theory, be prosecuted for murder. At least with a tribunal, "it would mean that whoever is left behind is at somewhat less risk – they're probably still at some risk, but at least there would be some proof that the situation was there."

Part of me wonders if the publicness of Pratchett's discussions might, on some level, be trying to achieve this too – getting us to act as an unwitting tribunal and witnesses, if or when the need arises. What does Lyn, his wife of more than 40 years, think of all this? "I think my wife takes the view that . . . Actually, I think in her heart of hearts she takes the view that a hand will come out of the sky with a big flask, saying, 'Just the stuff you were after.' I think she takes the view that, um . . . that she would look after me. And I have not said to her – I have absolutely not said to her – 'I want you to do this, or I want you to do that.'" What about his daughter (Rhianna, 33, a successful games scriptwriter and, as she describes herself on her website, "general narrative paramedic")? "My daughter thinks, 'If Dad wants it, that's OK.' I don't think she has any particular interest in seeing me lying there like a baby."

That was certainly the way he felt about his own father. It was even, it seems, something his father wanted. Had it been legal, Pratchett says, and "if he could have sat up in bed and said goodbye, I'd have pressed the button. I wouldn't have been able to see for crying, but I would have considered that a duty."

http://www.guardian.co.uk(...)ers-assisted-suicide

Terry was recently interviewed by the BBC for their Meet the Author
series to talk about I Shall Wear Midnight.

You can see the interview at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11170374

============

Terry's daughter Rhianna is set to write the screenplay for her
first feature film, a London-based drama about a group of female
vigilantes, to be produced by Simple Productions.

http://discworldmonthly.co.uk?redir=SCREEN162

=============

Terry recently recorded a radio interview with Radio New Zealand
where he talks about PCA.

http://podcast.radionz.co(...)ry_Pratchett-048.mp3

==============

Terry was also interviewed by the BBC 5live about being Britain's
biggest niche author.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/5live/2010/09/terry-practchett.shtml

================

In an open letter to The Guardian, Terry is one of many celebrities
that felt that the recent visit of the Pope to the UK should not be
funded by UK tax payer:

We, the undersigned, share the view that Pope Ratzinger should not be given the honour of a state visit to this country. We believe that the pope, as a citizen of Europe and the leader of a religion with many adherents in the UK, is of course free to enter and tour our country. However, as well as a religious leader, the pope is a head of state, and the state and organisation of which he is head has been responsible for:

Opposing the distribution of condoms and so increasing large families in poor countries and the spread of Aids.

Promoting segregated education.

Denying abortion to even the most vulnerable women.

Opposing equal rights for lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Failing to address the many cases of abuse of children within its own organisation.

The state of which the pope is head has also resisted signing many major human rights treaties and has formed its own treaties ("concordats") with many states which negatively affect the human rights of citizens of those states. In any case, we reject the masquerading of the Holy See as a state and the pope as a head of state as merely a convenient fiction to amplify the international influence of the Vatican.

Stephen Fry, Professor Richard Dawkins, Professor Susan Blackmore, Terry Pratchett, Philip Pullman, Ed Byrne, Baroness Blackstone, Ken Follett, Professor AC Grayling, Stewart Lee, Baroness Massey, Claire Rayner, Adele Anderson, John Austin MP, Lord Avebury, Sian Berry, Professor Simon Blackburn, Sir David Blatherwick, Sir Tom Blundell, Dr Helena Cronin, Dylan Evans, Hermione Eyre, Lord Foulkes, Professor Chris French, Natalie Haynes, Johann Hari, Jon Holmes, Lord Hughes, Robin Ince, Dr Michael Irwin, Professor Steve Jones, Sir Harold Kroto, Professor John Lee, Zoe Margolis, Jonathan Meades, Sir Jonathan Miller, Diane Munday, Maryam Namazie, David Nobbs, Professor Richard Norman, Lord O'Neill, Simon Price, Paul Rose, Martin Rowson, Michael Rubenstein, Joan Smith, Dr Harry Stopes-Roe, Professor Raymond Tallis, Lord Taverne, Peter Tatchell, Baroness Turner, Professor Lord Wedderburn of Charlton QC FBA, Ann Marie Waters, Professor Wolpert, Jane Wynne Willson

[ Bericht 36% gewijzigd door Lord_Vetinari op 29-09-2010 20:12:51 ]

Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, bestselling fantasy novelist Terry Pratchett reserves the right to choose his time of death before the disease can kill his mind – and to go out writing.

Sir Terry Pratchett has just forged a sword. He has also just slain a dragon. The “life imitates art” principle can yield odd results when you write fantasy.

At 62, Pratchett is in his third decade as a top-tier bestselling writer – I am using “top-tier” as shorthand for “sales sufficiently high in the millions that the precise figure matters only if Stephen King wants to keep score” – and early-career comparisons to PG Wodehouse have given way to ones to Charles Dickens. He was knighted in 2009. And as well as the sword he made himself, there are two others in his life: the one hanging over his head, and the one he believes he should be allowed to throw himself on some day.

Pratchett made his Alzheimer’s diagnosis public not long after he learnt of it himself in 2007. Earlier this year, he was invited to give the BBC’s annual Richard Dimbleby lecture; he used the occasion to announce his desire to be allowed to die before the disease can kill his mind and leave his body an empty husk. These are the subjects I most want to discuss with him, and he is demonstrably willing to discuss them, but the first three times I open my mouth to initiate that conversation the duck-for-cover reflex takes over. I ask about the sword he made instead. Was there anything … symbolic about his decision to go out into a local farmer’s fields, find some ore, dig it up, smelt it into high-grade iron in a kiln made from the clay in his own garden, and hammer out an edged weapon?

Of course there wasn’t. “If you need to ask why I did it, you wouldn’t understand the answer. I just thought, ‘Okay, I’m a knight now. I want to make a sword!’”

Which you might imagine would be significantly more easily said than done; but in fact it was just a matter of finding the necessary loonies.

Pratchett is very fond of loonies. “The right kind of loony, by which I mean the kind of people who are open to life, the people who will pick up an idea and run with it. People who are squeezing the last drop out of the fun of being human.”

In this case, a brief chat with an artisan friend turned up the names of a swordsmith and an international expert in iron-age smelting methods, who enthusiastically launched themselves into the project. “I said, ‘Look, there’s no way you can teach me to be a swordsmith, but I would like to help you sufficiently that I can say I was involved in every part of this.’ No individual part was particularly difficult; most of what we were doing was just belting things very hard with a hammer … the trick is to do it in the right place.”

The end product is sufficiently authentic that Pratchett can’t legally wear it in public. It has a gleaming blade and a gorgeous hilt made of black horn and silver, which was the only part Pratchett couldn’t work on himself. “That’s serious high-end craftsman stuff. I used to work very well with gold when I was younger, but with PCA I don’t think I’d have trusted myself even with silver.”


PCA: posterior cortical atrophy, Pratchett’s rare form of early-onset Alzheimer’s. “And let’s cut to the chase here, because sooner or later you’re going to ask me about it. It bugs me when people get bashful about this; I mean, for heaven’s sake, I stood there and told people I’ve got it. Which itself was a pretty good way of fighting it.”

All forms of Alzheimer’s ultimately end the same way, but PCA – which Pratchett describes dryly as “one of the better ones to get, lucky me” – initially manifests as a disruption of complex visual processing. “Anything to do with topology becomes problematic. If I took off my shirt and tossed it on the floor like most men do, it would take me a bit of studying to get the sleeves right again before I could put it on. And I might need someone to tell me whereabouts on the floor it was, even if I was looking right at it.”

His short-term memory is shot to pieces. “I’ve already forgotten your name.” He can’t drive. “Because my eyes are fine, but I could be coming up to a zebra crossing and the PCA would give a little flutter, and my brain wouldn’t post up the message ‘there is a girl on the crossing’.” Public toilets are a hazard, because the only difference between the door to the men’s and the door to extreme embarrassment tends to be a picture. “To make certain, and I’ve never done it yet, that I never go into the wrong one, I have a mnemonic, which is Always Go into the One Which Shows the Woman in the Slacks, Not the Scotsman in the Kilt. Because that’s so stupid, I remember it.”

http://www.listener.co.nz(...)die_another_day.html

Terry was recently interviewed by SFX magazine in the UK. Some of
the questions that didn't make it into the magazine were published
on their website including one where Terry had to teach a swearword
to his dictation software:

The Discworld author chats to SFX on many other topics including how to teach the word “arsehole” to a computer

SFX is on sale now for just one more week. In it you’ll find an interview with the hugely popular novelist – and one-time guest editor of SFX - Terry Pratchett, in which we put your questions to him. But we spent a lot of time with Sir Terry this summer, and here are some of the other fantastic things we talked about:


Sir Terry Pratchett

‘My head is full of so much stuff I read as a kid! Remember all the names it would be unthinkable to leave out of any list of greats. Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Philip K Dick. And then there are people like Jack Vance who used to move backwards and forwards between science fiction and fantasy, although it was all written in the same tone of voice. The Dying Earth was very, very influential because he kind of invented a lot of the language that fantasy was written with subsequently. I read JRR Tolkien aged about 13 I think, but I had read many other things before him!’

‘Stories are based on other stories, that’s what we all do. And if everybody is stealing off everybody else then it all works quite well. Because what happens is that stuff is bouncing around and getting better, as people explore how to do things! Even Dungeons & Dragons changed the language of fantasy because they wanted to do certain things – and then writers were influenced by D&D. Everybody influences everyone else – it’s better to say that than “stealing”…’

On dictating his novels

‘At the moment it’s a wee bit difficult to listen to music when I work because I have to dictate to the computer, my typing is so bad now. I use Talking Point, which goes on top of Dragon Naturally Speaking.’

‘It learns you – not the other way round. I spent 45 minutes reading from a book. Arthur C Clarke as it happens, probably a bad choice in the circumstances! Uncle Arthur is difficult to read aloud. He’ll put in equations! The software knows what all those words in that piece should sound like. It knows that’s how you pronounce the syllables. I’ve got a voice like David Bellamy with his hand stuck in an electric fire, but it knows how I pronounce particular syllables. Then we dumped all my Discworld books into the computer over night and it chewed them up and it has algorithms which enable it to work out broadly what most of the words would sound like. Simply because it knows how certain letter formations are supposed to sound. The upshot is that seldom do I have to introduce it to a new word. I had to teach the computer the word “arsehole”. Typed it in, highlighted it, and repeated “arsehole” about three times.’

‘It has it’s funny little ways. I try not to go too fast for it, because if it gets something wrong going all the way back to change something can be a bit of a pain. I speak in long thoughtful sentences. It’s fine, it feels natural, you learn to play it.’

On looking after his famous hats

‘I did a signing once in a little town where you might not normally sign. It was a self-sufficient little place. And the bookshop had been a haberdashery and gents outfitters initially and it still had, in the manager’s office, the hat stretching machine! And I just had a new hat and it was slightly tight. I offered to buy the machine off him but he didn’t want to sell it – but he did bring it down, and while I was signing I got the hat on it, and every now again I gave it a little twist. You don’t want to burst it! Just a little turn. I told the local paper’s photographer that seeing all these people was making me so swollen-headed that I’d better make my hat larger!’

On book tours of America

‘My first US publisher gave me bad covers, bad printing, my name spelt wrong on every other page… you couldn’t give my books away in the US! I’d be going to conventions and I’d have huge queues… with people having their British hardcovers signed. Things started to change when I got Ralph Vicinanza as my agent.’

‘Early American tours worked like this: you go from one city to another by yourself, and you’re picked up by a minder when you arrive at the city. And the minder knows the bookshops and places where you’re going to do your signing, and at the end of the day they just decant you back onto the plane. Once you’ve got through check-in you’re by yourself! I always thought, “This is ridiculous. It means if anything goes wrong after that, if the plane’s delayed, I’m stuffed.” About 1996 I did a signing tour from hell, absolutely nothing to eat, most of the time flying from hub to hub, getting into hotels late and finding no help.’

‘But later, with a new agent, new editor and new publisher and new covers, the books began to move. In 2000 they invited me to come over for another book tour, and that worked incredibly well. The worst leg of the 2000 signing tour was better than the best leg of my previous 1996 experience. Seattle has always been a great gig for me. Always. I always get the most people there, more than New York! The bookshop that does it, run by Tall Dwayne, always just draws the customers in from the whole of the state. Microsoft people from Redmond perhaps! The US generally is now very good for me. I was WorldCon guest of honour a couple of years ago in America and the fans were superb.’

On the inspiration for standalone book Nation

‘I came up with the idea about six months before the first big Asian tsunami. And that’s on record because I have a witness! Sarah LeFanu (who wrote a book on how to write science fiction and fantasy) introduced me when I did a signing in Waterstone’s one time. And it was on the day that I said, “I’ve got to write this book!” and she said, “Sounds great, hope you do it.” And she’s my witness that I didn’t base Nation on the terrible 2004 tsunami. It’s all based on Krakatoa of course – there are certain similarities. After the tsunami I put it on one side for a while because I didn’t want people to think I was taking advantage. And then that lasted for about a year or so and I thought, “To hell with this I’ve got to get it down.” I just identified with it in some way! I don’t quite know why. Mau is such a good character, you spend all the time in his head, and you know that this kid is one step away from actually going insane – that’s good material to work with.’

Thank you Terry!

http://www.sfx.co.uk/2010(...)nd-swearing-at-a-pc/

Sir Terry Pratchett is one of the world's most successful authors. He talks to John Gilbey about auto-didacticism, the tyranny of higher education and whether writers are born, not made

Terry Pratchett - Sir Terry Pratchett, creator of one of fiction's premier higher education establishments - didn't go to university.

"University would have been an absolute tragedy for me," he confides. "I would have found out about beer far too early."

He is the architect and author of the immensely popular Discworld novels (38 titles to date) and has sold more than 65 million books. Discworld is a complex, surreal and yet intriguingly familiar environment where few things reliably are what they seem. A central setting in the series is that venerable academic institution, Unseen University, whose wizard- infested precincts are to be found - or, occasionally, not to be found - in the twin city of Ankh-Morpork.

"UU", as it is known to its myriad fans, appeared in the first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, in 1983.

"Why did I write it? Because I thought fantasy was getting silly," Sir Terry says. "So since it was getting silly, somebody who was silly should start to write fantasy - because I got fed up with the post-Tolkien stuff. You know: 'Ho, landlord! A pint of your finest ale!' No one ever says that who is not on drugs ... And so I said, let's write fantasy as if the people are actually real - even if the situations are not."

Since UU first appeared, it has got through an embarrassing number of arch-chancellors, often in distinctly messy and deeply terminal ways, but now it has gained a level of stability under the firm hand of crossbow-toting Mustrum Ridcully.

"It started off as your basic wizarding thing, but you simply know, as a given, that the head wizard has got to be a man with some punch - they are such a rowdy lot. The reason Ridcully has been there so long, and not been knocked off like they used to be in the early days, is that I like him because he is big and brusque, a kind of James Robertson Justice character, but maxed ... ".

But if Sir Terry never went to university, where does he get these memorable - and utterly believable - academic characters and scenarios?

"I worked for the Central Electricity Generating Board - so I know how committees work, and I know how committees can be manipulated - generally around the time the chocolate biscuits turn up.

"Probably these days", he adds with regret, "there are no more chocolate biscuits - because we are all 'tightening our belts'."

The wrangling that goes on in academic committees certainly forms a strong thread through the novels - and once even appeared in the pages of Times Higher Education ("A collegiate casting-out of devilish devices", 13 May 2005), when UU was threatened with the implementation of a quality assurance process.

Another painfully familiar line of narrative is the rather strained relationship between UU and the upstart Brazeneck College in the city of Pseudopolis. This tension came dramatically to a head in the last few pages of his recent novel, Unseen Academicals (2009).

"I liked writing the end where, of course, Brazeneck - I'm very pleased with Brazeneck - has poached people and is trying to muscle in, but it hasn't quite understood everything that it has picked up and now it has this giant chicken running around the place," he says. The chicken is 70ft tall and lays eggs 9ft high.

This flock-up was probably caused by a lack of experience among the staff of the Higher Energy Magic Building at Brazeneck - and provides the arch-chancellor of UU with an excellent platform to demonstrate the preeminence of his staff.

Sir Terry assumes the voice of Ridcully: "We are going to help a fellow university, of course, as we would obviously do - but we are going to let them get a little further in the cacky before doing so ... ".

So does Sir Terry have any views on the current state of higher education in the non-fantasy world?

"Yes, I think we should cut away at it a bit," he says. "I think that when we lost the secondary moderns, we lost our way in dealing with students - first of all, they were thought of as 'students' - and now we seem to believe that everyone will benefit from a university education. They don't, a lot of them - it's a waste of bloody time.

"I think, if a kid in his teens would like to be a fireman, you don't say to him: 'Ah, but you could be an opera singer.' Well, if he hasn't found that out by then, let him go and be a fireman - for heaven's sake, we know we need firemen. And if this kid is good at going up ladders and stuff, well, he is doing a job he wants to do - and that means he will be a happy person and that is going to add to the gaiety of nations."

Inevitably, the reverse is also true.

"We now have lots of people with university degrees who don't think they are doing the jobs they should be doing - because they have got a degree. They haven't quite realised that, tough shit, this was just a way of fiddling the employment figures: 'Did you think that you were going to come out with a career?'"

Sir Terry is keen to remind us that there are other models.

"One of the happiest guys I've ever known was a brickie. One day, he said he wouldn't be in for two weeks as he was going on holiday. I said: 'Where are you going?' He said: 'Oh, I'm going to Egypt. I like scuba diving among the sunken temples in the Red Sea - I've been doing a lot of mapping and that.' It's great! This is a happy man - he had his choices, and I don't think the kids are offered choices now."

To Pratchett, the "choice" facing teenagers is a binary one.

"You either get into university or you don't - and I don't know how you don't get into university - probably by just hanging on to a stanchion and yelling: 'I don't want to go!' We seem to think that 'one size fits all'."

He appears slightly bemused by some of the effects this thinking has had.

"Near where I live is an area with a lot of coppices - old hazel coppices. And just as there were when I first started going there, there are hurdle makers. The only difference is that the hurdle makers in the old days were elderly men with moleskin trousers and their lunch in a pail; these days they are men who have gone through tertiary education. I have a suspicion that they probably tried teaching - and ran away very fast ... ".

Sir Terry's own education was based largely on his passion for reading. "Somehow I kind of shut school out of my mind - but I read absolutely every damn bloody book I could get my hands on."

He has fond memories of one of his first sources of science fiction books.

"It was an old shed, with just a window that you couldn't really see through, where a nice old lady dispensed tea and conversation - and sold eye-watering pornography ... ".

Her sideline was second-hand science fiction, which is what she supplied to the young Pratchett - possibly her one legitimate customer. Many leading science fiction authors have since confirmed to him that "the science fiction bookshop in any town is next to the porno bookshop, or somewhere where ladies of negotiable affection hang out".

When he was 17, Sir Terry left school for a writing job on the local newspaper.

"I think I probably would always have gravitated towards arranging words in order, but I never took any writing courses or anything like that - because working on a newspaper is itself a writing course. In fact, one of the best things any writer can do is work for a while on a local paper. All human life - and death - is here. It is a great shame that there are fewer and fewer local papers."

He recalls his first editor with affectionate amusement: he was apparently "the last person on God's Earth ever to utter the words 'I like the cut of your jib, young man' without being arrested".

Much of his reading over the past few decades has been non-fiction, a great deal of it very old - long-forgotten tomes with titles such as Anecdotes of the Great Financiers - but he has also found time to read every edition of Punch published between 1860 and 1960, a true labour of love. "It amazes me how many words I know - and occasionally use - which are now totally archaic," he says.

His intensely pragmatic approach to learning is graphically demonstrated by a project he recently undertook. Being newly knighted, he felt that he ought to be suitably equipped.

"At the end of last year I made my own sword. I dug out the iron ore from a field about 10 miles away - I was helped by interested friends. We lugged 80 kilos of iron ore, used clay from the garden and straw to make a kiln, and lit the kiln with wildfire by making it with a bow."

Colin Smythe, his long-term friend and agent, donated some pieces of meteoric iron - "thunderbolt iron has a special place in magic and we put that in the smelt, and I remember when we sawed the iron apart it looked like silver. Everything about it I touched, handled and so forth ... And everything was as it should have been, it seemed to me."

As I wrestle with glorious mental pictures of Sir Terry Pratchett ambling through the fields of Wiltshire, sword at his side, we turn to the vexed question of whether creative writing can truly be taught.

"Throughout my career I've pondered on that," he says. "Sometimes I've thought: 'Huh! Creative writing: how can you teach that?' But now, as I get older, I think I'm less certain. There are some people who find out in their late 70s that they are actually good at it - it is finding out what you can do.

"I think you can help someone with the makings of a writer get better. I don't know if you can get someone who isn't in their bones a writer and turn them into one. I would stand to be corrected because I don't want to be dogmatic on this. Where can these theories be tested?"

The profession of writing itself has an almost timeless quality about it, he says.

"I've always thought that the Bible, for example, was written by people like me: smart enough to get a good job in the warm with no heavy lifting."

Once again, images start to crowd into my mind - this time with Sir Terry inserted into an oil painting of the Council of Nicaea, animatedly editing screeds of text on sheets of vellum.

Before any further mental visions can take hold, I ask Sir Terry what the future holds for UU.

"Well, Unseen University is like a jewel - and so you bring it out only rarely. The whole bunch of hoary old wizards arguing with one another - you can't keep that going. It's the same as not using Death too often as a major character."

Until it is needed then, UU will quietly go about its business - until it is taken out again and polished.

"Unseen University, you see, is more or less self-financing - and Unseen University will never die!"

Referring for the first time during our conversation to his very public battle with Alzheimer's disease, he concludes: "Everything now is hinged on my own personal run-time, but I'm pretty certain I shall finish the book I've now started."

He mentions, almost in passing, that he is also writing his autobiography - "because it is always a good idea to get the lies down in print before your enemies actually print the truth". Somehow, I think that it will be well worth reading.

http://www.timeshigheredu(...)storycode=413455&c=1

The first Dutch Discworld Convention takes place at Hotel NH
Atlanta in Rotterdam on 28th - 29th May 2011.

Contact details: www.dutchdwcon.nl

For further information contact: info@dutchdwcon.nl

Meditations upon the arrival of a new Discworld book

By Helen Nicholls

I was expecting it, of course. I'd been told that my limited
slipcase edition of I Shall Wear Midnight had been despatched.
However, it was still a surprise to see the innocuous Amazon package
waiting on the doorstep. The postman, unable to fit it through the
letterbox, had deemed it unnecessary to ring the doorbell. Just a
book after all. Nothing a passing delinquent might consider worth
stealing.

I opened the package and examined its contents. It's a beautiful
thing: green, with a smaller version of Paul Kidby's delightful
cover art placed discreetly on the front. The additional bit on
folklore by Jaqueline Simpson is contained in the main volume.
Perhaps I'll ask her to sign it as well as Terry. If Terry's still
signing.

I flick through it, wondering where I can find the additional
illustration but stop, fearing I'll happen upon a spoiler. I glance
at the folklore bit instead, but that may also contain clues. I want
to read it but there are things I should do. More to the point, once
I start I will struggle to put it down and that will not do.

I should be looking for jobs, or working on my dissertation. I need
to finish repainting the kitchen units too. None of those things are
urgent and they are mere excuses not to read. The real reason for my
procrastination is that once I start, it will consume me until I
finish. As a good book should. But I will finish quickly, it's a
kids' book after all. Then it will be gone. Oh, I'll re-read it,
more slowly and carefully but without the thrill that comes with the
first reading.

It's sitting on the sofa now. I'll pick it up in a minute, really I
will. There is only one thing for it; I'll open the book.

I sometimes enjoy books more on second reading anyway.

Trinity College Dublin has recently announced the appointment of Sir
Terry Pratchett as an Adjunct Professor in their School of English
and Oscar Wilde Centre and are offering tickets to see Terry's
inaugural speech on 4th November 2010.

See http://pjsmprints.com/news/ for all the details.

Routledge journals recently recorded a podcast at the Discworld
Convention in Birmingham of Sir Terry in discussion with Jacqueline
Simpson (who co-authored his book "The Folklore of Discworld"). In
the podcast (which is of some length!) Sir Terry and Jacqueline
discuss Folklore, history and the impact this has had on his life
and writing.

To listen to the first part of the podcast visit:
http://discworldmonthly.co.uk?redir=PODCAST163

----------

Terry's coat of arms and description can be found in The College of
Arms newsletter number 26 at:
http://discworldmonthly.co.uk?redir=ARMS163

The description reads:

The Arms are blazoned: Sable an ankh between four Roundels in
saltire each issuing Argent.

The Crest is Upon a Helm with a Wreath Argent and Sable On Water
Barry wavy Sable Argent and Sable an Owl affronty wings displayed
and inverted Or supporting thereby two closed Books erect Gules.

----------

Terry has been awarded one of the three World Fantasy Lifetime
Achievement Awards for 2010 (the other recipients being Brian Lumley
and Peter Straub). The award was presented on 31 October at the
World Fantasy Con in Columbus, Ohio.

Further details about the Awards can be found at
http://www.worldfantasy.org/awards/

----------

Stephen King's agent, Ralph Vicinanza, recently died at the age of
60. Ralph was also involved in getting Terry published in the US.

http://discworldmonthly.co.uk?redir=RALPH163

----------

The US military are trying to make million to one shots happen nine
times out of ten with their investment into One Shot Technology.

In an article titled 'Terry Pratchett computer sniper-scope deal
inked', The Register describes the new sniper technology.

http://discworldmonthly.co.uk?redir=1SHOT163

----------

There is an interesting review of I Shall Wear Midnight at:
http://discworldmonthly.co.uk?redir=MIDNIGHT163

----------

Hot off the rumour mill is the news that Disney may be looking to
adapt MORT in a couple of years time. According to Latino Review
the adaptation could be coming from directors Ron Clements and John
Musker who last released The Princess and the Frog and are about to
release Pooh in 2011.

More details at: http://discworldmonthly.co.uk?redir=MORT163