In Depth
On 'embuggerance' and humour
17.04.08 Alison Flood
Two cheerful robotic Hoovers are circling the room, letting out low, contented purrs. At least three big black hats are scattered about, resting on piles of books, nestled among assorted Discworld paraphernalia. Terry Pratchett's house is exactly as his legions of fans would imagine it to be: timbered beams, roaring (eventually, after much prodding) fire, model of Death on one wall, map of Discworld on another.
Pratchett himself is unexpected. Dressed all in black, he conforms in some ways to the image that has built up around him, but he's not as touchy as I'd been led to believe. Even in the midst of a barrage of media interest (he must have given more interviews in the few weeks after announcing the "embuggerance" of his early onset Alzheimer's than he has for years), he retains a cheerfulness. In fact, he often appears in the grip of a barely suppressed hilarity, peppering his anecdotes—he's a great raconteur—with impressions and sound effects.
You can see where a reputation for a certain perverseness might have built up though. He'll talk at length about occasions when his books were relegated to the back of stores despite topping the charts, or about the snobbish way fantasy is perceived by the literati—but will temper irritation with a roar of laughter.
"I was in this bookshop, and there was a big, big, big queue of fans, and just opposite there was a bookshelf with the top 10 bestsellers on. I knew I was number one that week, I recognised the other names in there, so I said to the manager: 'I can’t help but notice that my book's not up there'. She said: 'Well, Terry, you're not exactly bestseller material, are you?'"
He chuckles. The situation was soon rectified by a horrified publicist: "I didn't have to do a thing except grin—it struck me as incredibly funny."
Tour de force
Pratchett is a veteran of author tours, and he also has lots of stories about great bookshops—a favourite is Red Lion Books in Colchester, which he visited on his first big signing tour in 1988. He has stories about queues stretching round the block ("It's never a good signing unless it blocks the entrance to Mothercare, no matter how far away Mothercare is"); and then there are a fair few tales about how much bigger his signings are than those for other, what he describes as "real", authors.
Another signing, this time at a literary festival in Washington, US. "They were absolutely desperate for my signing to finish—'You mustn't have it sticking out of the tent because it upsets the poets.' " He’s in the grip of laughter again. "We all made our decisions; they chose poetry, I can't help it."
He says he finds all this funny, but there’s definitely a chippiness there, an irritation at the way he can be viewed by the literary establishment. "I, whatever others might say [A S Byatt said he should have been nominated for the Booker Prize for Thief of Time], have never claimed to have any literary merit whatsoever. It would be a foolish author who did. But bestsellers—that's all about numbers, and that's all it is. It's one of those things—the big literary people get the kudos and the chance at the big literary prizes. The rest of us can go off with the money."
Making money
In the 37 years since his first book was published, and particularly in the 25 years of Discworld, Pratchett has certainly gone off with the money. The numbers are staggering: since Nielsen's records began in 1998, Pratchett has sold almost 10 million books in the UK, generating more than £70m in revenue. His agent Colin Smythe says he has either written, co-written or been creatively associated with 100-plus books—the majority are Discworld titles, but there’s also a range of books for children including the Carnegie Medal-winning The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents.
This interview is ostensibly part of Transworld’s planned celebrations for 25 years of Discworld in June ("stickers on books—there will be dancing in the streets"), and we talk for a while about how the books have changed over time. Pratchett wrote his first novel, The Carpet People, while working for a local paper. It was published by small publisher Colin Smythe in 1971; Smythe later became his agent after he was unable to cope with the demand for the novels, and Pratchett was "painlessly transferred" to Gollancz in 1987.
The first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic (which has just aired as a two-part Sky One adaptation, starring David Jason), was published in 1983. Pratchett left Gollancz for Transworld—his paperback publisher—in 1998 after being unimpressed with its ability to cope internationally.
"There were a number of occasions that I was in foreign English-speaking countries, and I was there but the books weren't. I'd be signing paperbacks but not hardcovers—they'd get there halfway through a tour. This happened a few times, and I thought, 'I just can't tolerate this'. If you're going to fly halfway round the bloody world, then you want your books there."
Over the years, Pratchett says, he has become a better writer. "The first few books were gag books, they were jokey. Once I discovered the joy of plot, which was around about Mort, the books have lost some of the knockabout gag tendency, and stand more by themselves as books."
He points to Nation, a non-Discworld children's book due out from Transworld in September, in which everyone the young hero knows dies within the first 15 pages. "And yet there's humour throughout the book, not jokes. I think that's my style now—humour can exist in the most dreadful trials. In fact, often that's where people need humour the most; somehow that gets them through."
The embuggerance
Humour in the darkest places: this approach is remarkably apt in his own situation. Pratchett talks willingly, sometimes with a dab of comedy, about the devastating news that he has early onset Alzheimer's. He has been throwing himself into the fight to raise the profile of the disease, and pledged $1m (£500,000) to Alzheimer’s research in March.
"The strange thing was, everyone was saying I was so brave. I thought no, if I’d admitted to wearing a French maid’s outfit and dancing around churchyards, that would be brave, and admitting to liking Harry Potter would be suicidal, but saying I’ve got Alzheimer’s—it’s not like you do anything bad to get it, so I can’t quite put my finger on it."
Despite the disease, the subsequent media blizzard, and his appearance at an Alzheimer’s conference (“Personally I’d eat the arse out of a dead mole if it offered a fighting chance,” he memorably said), Pratchett has already started on the next Discworld novel, Unseen Academicals. It satirises the world of football—“Jesus, though, how could you satirise modern football? Talk about a target-rich environment”—in the same manner as Making Money (16th June, p/b, £7.99) took on banking, and The Truth took on journalism.
Pratchett is fairly confident he is going to be able to type his way, key-by-key, through it. Touch-typing, he revealed on Radio Four’s “Today” programme, was one of the first things he lost the ability to do. “My memory is still pretty good. I can write, and actually I’ve no problem with plotting; the plot for Unseen Academicals has come together in my head beautifully. But like a lot of writers, I love the therapy of hitting the keys, with my brain going at the pace of the typewriter. It’s very frustrating to lose a skill like that. [But] while I still think I can write with my brain, we’ll find ways of getting round not being able to write with my hands.”
He’s planning to dictate the next novel after Unseen Academicals. He can’t imagine not writing: he says it’s a death of sorts for an author. It’s easier writing the Discworld books, as he knows the world. “In theory, the thing is whether the brain can coherently come up with a plot and know how to do it. I sat down the other night and the plot for Unseen Academicals was just unrolling. Nation was hard. It’s not Discworld, and I had to build a toolbox. I really had to feel my way.”
The words, he says, are “just queueing up to be said”, and it’s true—our interview ranges from pattern-book conventions for people who create their own corsets (“and I’m not talking about the sexy stuff”) to Jane Austen, celebrity authors, Victorian financier family the Fuggers (he chuckles like a schoolboy at the name), and a special hockey move his father learnt in India as a child.
Pratchett is determined to get people talking about Alzheimer’s, as he believes it will be one of the first steps towards beating the disease. “One of the precepts of magic, that you find almost everywhere in the world, is that if you know something’s true name you begin to have control of it.”
He is raging about the fact people have to pay for drugs to stave it off, and suspects it’s because Alzheimer's largely strikes down the elderly. "Alzheimer's has been considered an old person's disease. It seems to me that if you're very old you've spent your entire life paying into the NHS, and unfortunately—I hope unfortunately—for the disease, then it picks on someone like me who's got just enough clout, and a bottomless pit of rage, to see if he can do something about it.” If anyone can do something, it has to be Pratchett. "We shall just see. Ask me again in 10 years." I hope to.
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