I Am Begging You to Read Terry Pratchett - The Atlantic

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Will we ever live to see a successful screen adaptation of a Terry Pratchett novel? The Amazon television series Good Omens, which ended this month, came closest—but that book, a comedy about an angel and a devil teaming up to avert Armageddon, was co-written with Neil Gaiman, and the source material ran out after the first season in any case.<br>Pratchett is the funniest English writer since P. G. Wodehouse, with a sharp, satirical edge disguised by the trappings of the fantasy genre—vampires, dwarfs, witches, and wizards. Many fans thought the original covers of Pratchett’s novels went too heavy on busty maidens and strapping men with big swords, undermining their literary merit, and a similar problem has beset the various screen adaptations from Sky and the BBC. I suspect that casual viewers can’t compute the idea of watching something with the comic tone of a Charles Dickens or Tobias Smollett novel while being distracted by CGI trolls.<br>To some extent, Good Omens bucked the trend because the chemistry between the lead actors, Michael Sheen and David Tennant, was so strong. (The pair enjoyed each other’s company so much that they even made a lockdown drama, Staged, filmed in their own houses with their own real-life partners.) But I worry that the persistent unfilmability of most of Pratchett’s work will mean that he fades out of public consciousness. At his peak, Pratchett was Britain’s best-selling novelist, but he died from early-onset Alzheimer’s in 2015, and left clear instructions with his assistant that the hard drive containing his unfinished work should be run over with a steamroller. He therefore cannot be turned into the Tupac Shakur of fantasy literature, with his estate bringing out new novels to satisfy demand. So I’m begging people to try the existing canon.<br>The literary novelist A. S. Byatt once suggested that all 12-year-olds should be issued a Pratchett book to get them into the habit of reading. Pratchett had, she said, “caused more people to read books than anyone else—because he tells them something they want to know, that they can laugh at, and because he writes really good English.” As it happens, I was around 12 when I picked up my first Pratchett—Mort, the story of Death recruiting an apprentice to lighten his load of harvesting the souls of the departed. I loved it instantly. Pratchett’s gift was to blend deep philosophy and complete silliness. His answer to the question “What happens when we die?” is that everyone chooses their own path, and the wicked are stuck in hells of their own making. At the same time, he gives Death a white horse called Binky.<br>Mort is the fourth book in a long series set on a disc-shaped planet resting on the back of a sky turtle. I subsequently read the remaining 40 Discworld books—and most of Pratchett’s other work, including his early journalism. I have even read a biography of him, which suffered from the fact that Pratchett was happiest writing novels in his study, rather than, say, having doomed affairs or shooting his wife or having an intense relationship with bullfighting, like some other great male writers I might mention. Whenever someone asks me to recommend an author to read on a long flight, I suggest Pratchett. His books careen along on an unfurling narrative tide, making an eight-hour journey feel short. Some of the jokes will make you wince. Some require a working knowledge of classic films, Shakespearean tragedies, or Norse mythology. Some of them you will only get 20 years later.<br>Julie Beck: Terry Pratchett’s joyful, absurd, human fantasy<br>Where should you start? Not at the beginning. Pratchett took a while to warm up, and his first few Discworld books feature stock characters and a lot of sword-and-sandals pastiche. (One features a riff on Conan the Barbarian, called Cohen. The joke is that he’s old and wheezy, unlike the famous Arnold Schwarzenegger character.) Mort will take you neatly to the other books that follow the character of Death. Reaper Man, a reworking of the 1934 film Death Takes a Holiday, is among the first Discworld novels to incorporate real pathos alongside the gags. That will lead you to a much later book in the series, Hogfather, which deals with Pratchett’s greatest theme, the power of stories to bend reality. In the book, Death learns that if children stop believing in the Hogfather, their version of Father Christmas, then the world will end. So when the Hogfather is kidnapped, Death has to fill in. Being a terrifying skeleton with very little understanding of human nature, he is not very good at it.<br>If you don’t want to commit to a series, then the best stand-alone novel is Small Gods, set in a theocracy, Omnia, where the state religion is enforced by a brutal inquisition. Despite all the violent bureaucracy devoted to worshipping the god Om, only one simple monk, Brutha, actually believes in him. In the book, Pratchett sketches...