Terry Pratchett is a Literary Genius

 Terry Pratchett (esteemed writer of the “Discworld” series) is not officially considered as being a literary genius. The purpose of this piece of writing is quite simple. I would argue that he is in fact a literary writer and an incredibly good one at that.                                                                                         

Although he is not recognized as a great literary writer among the realms of great literature there are quite a few members of the general public that feel that he should be one. Naturally, there also are those who are outraged by the very idea that someone could even think of stating that Terry Pratchett is a literary writer. One such person is Johnathan Jones who in 2015 wrote a review proclaiming his hatred for Terry Pratchett’s work. He proclaimed Terry Pratchett as an “ordinary potboiler” and above all extremely mediocre. According to him, it is a distressing cultural phenomenon that writers like Terry Pratchett could be considered Literary. Naturally, there was a general uproar amongst Terry Pratchett’s fans when this review came out. How could one of history’s most unique authors possibly be described as mediocre? One Annie Carol Demosthenous was so outraged by Jones’s review that she even resorted to attacking other works that were considered as being great works of literary fiction. Essentially, she says that if Terry Pratchett could not and if Terry Pratchett is not literary then neither are writers like Jane Austin. Essentially this is true: if Terry Pratchett could not be a literary writer no one else deserves to be called as such.

                                                                                                                                                   

The fact is that Terry Pratchett is not a great literary writer in the traditional sense. He does not possess the grand writing style or the excellent plot that writers like William Shakespeare or Charles Dickens. If one reads Terry Pratchett expecting that it would read like other literary books one would be sourly disappointed. Terry Pratchett’s work is not described as being like traditional literature, but neither it be described as having been written for mass plebeian entertainment. When talking about Terry Pratchett with my fellow plebeians quite a few would state that they have tried to read Terry Pratchett but confess that they could not read much of it seeing as it was too difficult, and they could not understand it. One plebeian even stated that she had read and enjoyed Jane Austin, but that she could not read Terry Pratchett because she could not understand it. If Terry Pratchett’s work was intended for the masses surely it should at least have been accessible to the masses, up to the point that they could make sense of it. According to Johnathan Jones, “Actual literature may be harder to get to grips with than a Discworld novel, but it is more worth the effort,” but this is not the case. One can see this if one simply walks out and talks to the man in the street. Terry Pratchett simply is not accessible to them. Even if he was accessible to the extremely common (and supposedly stupid) plebeian I fail to see why this would make him (or any other author for that matter) any less literary. The fact is that Terry Pratchett does appeal to the masses, but only a small part of it. He appeals to those people who like to ask questions: those people who do not like to be given simple answers to complex questions.

                                                                                                                                                                                   

Other literary works tend not to be as chaotic as the works of Terry Pratchett. Although they are very intricately written their plot is usually quite easily followed. The same could not be said of Terry Pratchett. His plot and even his individual sentences could be impossible to follow. That is, you try and find a concrete meaning within them. To explain just what it is that makes Terry Pratchett’s work so unique I would like to compare it with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I have not only chosen Frankenstein because like Terry Pratchett’s work, it is a work of fantasy, but because it is outstanding for one particularly simple reason. It is completely and utterly out of the box. It presents the world to us in a way that we would not necessarily have thought of it before. If one for example looks at Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein: this novel is about a scientist called Frankenstein who succeeds in creating a new life form, only to realise that he has in fact created a monstrosity. This novel thus presents us with a situation in which man had succeeded in creating life. Frankenstein is particularly interesting because it not only presents us with a unique situation but also considers the ethical implications of that situation. It is quite clear that Mary Shelley believed that a creature that was created by mankind would not be able to function in normal human society. Towards the end of the novel, we have a clear idea of what Mary Shelly thinks might be the implications of the situation she presents us with. She provides us with a concrete ending in which both Frankenstein and his creature are destroyed. Meaning that the reader can close the book and go on with their lives knowing the basic intention of the book. Although of course there are much deeper meanings tucked away inside Frankenstein one does not feel forced to look for these meanings. 

                                                                                                  

Terry Pratchett’s books don’t have this basic singular meaning to them. They don’t seem to function only on the here and now, but on the always. Terry Pratchett does not only focus on a specific aspect of the human condition: such as poverty or inequality, etcetera. He instead focuses his books on the human condition as a whole. He for instance continually refers to the human condition, but on a cosmic scale. In tandem with the main story Terry Pratchett also describes major cosmic events that seemingly have nothing to do with the main story. All his “Discworld” books, for example, start with a description of the world in which the story takes place. The world which is a giant turtle with upon which stands four elephants, upon whose backs rest a disc which is the world upon which all the “Discworld” stories take place. To illustrate this, I would like to take an example from one of his “Discworld” novels Moving Pictures:

Against the wash of stars, a nebula hangs, vast and black, one red giant gleaming like the madness gods… And then the gleam is seen as the glint in a giant eye and it is eclipsed by the blink of an          eyelid and the darkness moves a flipper and Great A’Tuin, star turtle, swims onward trough   the void. On its back, four giant elephants. On their shoulders, rimmed with water, glittering under its           tiny orbiting sunlet, spinning majestically around the mountains at its frozen Hub, lies the       Discworld, world and mirror of worlds.

There are almost forty “Discworld” books and in all of them there are very chaotic and quite frankly do not make sense, but the turtle and the world that rides upon it remain the same. The turtle just continues to glide endlessly through space. The lesson thus being that human endeavor ultimately is pointless. No matter what we do it would not have any significant impact on the world whatsoever. No matter what any of the characters in Terry Pratchett’s books do the status of turtle remains the same. This is what would put people of from Terry Pratchett: that there is no central meaning in the book except that nothing we do really matters. When reading one of Terry Pratchett's books, one would not be greeted with the same sense of satisfaction of knowing exactly what the point of the book was one would with Frankenstein. Instead, he confuses the reader quite a bit. The reader never truly knows exactly what is going on at any given point in one of Terry Pratchett’s books. Many if not most of the matters that were raised in the book had not been resolved.

None of Terry Pratchett’s books can really be described as having a good plot. Terry Pratchett usually resorts to focusing on a number of different stories in any given book. He then slingshots between these stories, apparently at random. This coupled with the fact that Terry Pratchett never uses any chapters in his books and that he has a severely chaotic writing style makes Terry Pratchett’s extremely hard to read if you read them expecting some sense of order. Terry Pratchett’s books are chaotic, and they are meant to be that way. It is this very chaos that makes Terry Pratchett’s books literary. By making his books chaotic Terry Pratchett shows us that we live in a world that essentially is chaotic and without rules.

In this book, there are great heroes, terrible tyrants, and an incredibly big and powerful dragon sacking a city, but this is not the main focus of the book. Instead, Terry Pratchett chooses to focus on the side characters. The characters that always end up being slaughtered in any other work of fantasy: the guards. He makes this clear even to whom he dedicates this book:

They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about chapter three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No-one ever asks if they wanted to. This book is dedicated to those fine men.

As one can see what Terry Patchett here does is quite simple: he takes tropes that are commonplace and completely turns them on their head. The prospect of a hero the noble hero is one that is extremely old in literature. There are for example an abundance of ancient Greek myths that are about great heroes who essentially possess human capabilities but are able to intact feats are supper human. We can even see this as far back as the Odyssey. The Odyssey is a book that was thought to have been written roughly 800 BC. The book is about a hero called Odysseus’s adventures at sea after returning from a war. Towards the end of the book the Hero Odysseus and three companions succeed in slaughtering a hundred and twenty suitors who had invaded his home and had made attempts to marry his wife while he was away on numerous adventures. The tale of Odysseus is one of the foundation myths upon which ancient Greek mythology was built and it is an incredibly important work of literature to western literature today. In the Odyssey, we already see the idea of the noble, morally superior, and almost supernatural hero fighting against a vast number of weaker and morally inferior foes that would inevitably be slaughtered. By making the book about characters that normally would be side characters in other works of fantasy, Terry Pratchett is challenging a trope that essentially is thousands of years old. One might see why one might not take Terry Pratchett seriously when reading something like this, seeing as this is a trope that has become common place in fantasy novels but is not common in literary novels, but I would argue that it nevertheless is literary in a sense that it once again shows us something that Terry Pratchett shows us in all his works: that nothing really matters. By making the book about the characters that would usually be extras in other novels he is making a very interesting statement. That they are no less important than the main character. Despite the fact that they only have a minor role they still are central to the plot. The plot cannot function if the hero has no foes to fact. There is a hero in the book Guards, Guards, but he is only mentioned a few times and he ends up being killed by a dragon quite quickly. The guards are those who end up saving the day in this particular book, but also never are recognized for their endeavors. Additionally, it also is made clear that one of the guards of the city should in fact be king of the city. As Edward James points out in his article The City Watch: in any other work of fiction, he would have ascended to kingship at some point. Here he shows us that one does not always get rewarded for one’s efforts no matter how much one might deserve it. Once again showing that human endeavor ultimately is pointless and without meaning. In the end, the ultimate meaning is that there is no meaning.                                                                                                                                                                                   

Terry Pratchett is not a literary writer in the traditional sense, but why should one be a literary writer in the traditional sense in order to be a literary writer. Should there not be an abundance of room for creativity in literary writing. If there only was a set formula for writing a literary work, writing a literary work would be too easy. Anyone would be able to do it if they only followed that formula. I think that Terry Pratchett should be recognized as a literary writer. Only for his sheer creativity if nothing else. Johnathan Jones claims that: “great books, can change your life, your beliefs, your perceptions” and that Terry Pratchett therefore is not a great literary writer, but Terry Pratchett can change your understanding of reality itself.

copyright reserved © Baloyi 2024