He Did No Harm
(Or, at least, not much!)
Of my three greatest heroes, I have written of two; Fred Dibnah (the subject of my very first post), and 'The Last Great American', Mr. Johnny Cash. The title of this post is a phrase used by Hero 3, and he wanted it to be his epitaph; I don't know whether he got his wish, or whether Death was as kind as he had portrayed him, but I hope so - on both counts.
The mention of Death, complete with capital letter, may possibly have given a clue to those who know me, because Death became a character with some very human traits, which is not surprising, since he's been around humans from, well, the start, really. In short, Death became what this hero described as "an anthropomorphic personification", and the man to whom I am referring is the late and very great Sir Terry Pratchett.
When he first started writing, the incredibly snobbish so-called 'Literary Circle' pooh-poohed his material, laughingly dismissing it as "something no woman would ever read", and sneeringly deriding him as "a complete amateur - doesn't even write in chapters". An art critic, the late Brian Sewell, simply did what he did best; he sneered and drawled "who's Terry Pratchett?" It seems curious now that I cannot remember the names of those TV critics (although I will never forget Terry's), and Sewell died without ever receiving a knighthood, and is usually remembered for all the wrong reasons.
Fortunately for us, Terry Pratchett's rage at the establishment and his headmaster was channelled into an imaginative energy that produced some of the most popular books ever written. Possessed of an incredible imagination, an uncanny knowledge of human nature, and a whacky and witty sense of humour, Terry's cocktail of darkness, wisdom, and hilarity spawned a whole industry and a huge fan base. It was all richly-deserved.
A self-effacing, gentle and kindly man who always had time for the fans he knew had put him where he was, he was never rude, arrogant or disdainful. He never rubbished other authors, although some were not so kind to him - possibly because he out-sold most of them many times over. He was not a man with a huge ego, and possessed, in spades, that most endearing human trait of all; the ability not to take himself too seriously. This was apparent in the slogan on one of his t-shirts, which said, simply "Tolkien's dead, J K Rowling said no, Philip Pullman couldn't make it, Hi, I'm Terry Pratchett". Typically of the man, the Terry Pratchett line was in the smallest font.
Terry's discworld characters must be among the most loved on the planet, and there cannot be a reader of his books who doesn't have his own very personal image of what these characters looked like. He had a wonderful way of making the most ghastly and shifty examples of humanity fairly lovable - or at least understandably ghastly.
So thank you, Sir Terry, for being the writer and person you were, for making us see ourselves for what we are, and teaching us that a ridiculous view of the world is the only sane option.
A flat disc supported by four elephants standing on the back of a giant space-turtle? I don't see anything wrong with that.
As long as you stay away from the edges.
