Why Harry Potter when true wizard is working magic
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Written by terrypratchettbooks.org
Tuesday, 26 July 2005 |
By: Hatcher Hurd
I suppose it is a credit to J.K. Rowling that almost everyone I know is talking about "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," and I find her incredibly imaginative and more than somewhat interesting, myself.
I don’t attend parties or conventions where people dress like the characters. But I don’t hold it against people who do. At least they are not at Star Wars trade shows. It means they read therefore they have a real life.
Of course Rowling’s real target is young people, and they are the hardest of all to get to read anything. But since I write for mostly adults, and, it is hoped, for those who are allowed to write back with something sharper than a crayon, I thought I would make another one of my infrequent book reports for required summer reading.
I am here to sing the praises of one Terry Pratchett, a Britisher by birth and citizen of the world – Discworld, to be precise....
If you like fantasy and magic, science fiction and action, then certainly Rowling is the author for you. However, if you like your fantasy, magic, science fiction and action in huge, heaping doses then Pratchett is indeed your man.
He also has an unparalleled gift for humor and a deftly turned phrase. Few authors touch my funny bone to the extent I will laugh out loud. I find myself chortling every four or five pages.
But what makes Pratchett truly unique is that he is perhaps the most brilliant satirist writing today. His commentary on modern society (thinly disguised as his most inventive Discworld) will leave you doubled over laughing when you know you really should be crying. Think of Monty Python meeting Robin Williams with a word processor and you have an idea what it is to read one of his books.
As prolific as he is creative, Pratchett’s Discworld series alone numbers 33 novels. As for myself, I hate to start an author who writes serially unless I can start at the beginning. I think it hardly matters with Pratchett.
But I do suggest "Night Watch" as a good introduction to Pratchett and his characters.
Now I ask myself, if he’s so great why didn’t I learn of him sooner (I’ve only been a Pratchett practitioner for about a year). The first Pratchett book I read was so funny, I thought he couldn’t possibly be as good in his other works. Sequels seldom match the original.
Not in this case.
Of course, Pratchett is an old hand at writing. He had his first short story published at 13 (See, I hate him already). He left school at 15 and began working at community newspapers as a reporter. He told one biographer he started in the morning and saw his first corpse three hours later.
"On the job training meant something in those days," he said.
He continued to write, sold another story at 16 (Grrr.) and had his first novel published at 21. Now with some 40 million copies in print, this obscure writer of prose has finally crossed my path.
Of course, no serious literary reviewer could possibly take an author who is so commercially successful seriously as a writer. But that would be a gross mistake in Pratchett’s case. He masterfully lampoons topic after topic – love, religion, philosophy, war, equality of the sexes. Everything is grist for his mill, and what wonderful confection each book is.
you will notice I do not try to entice you to read him by giving a plot synopsis to one of his books. I have tried this when I wanted to entice my friends to read him. It always reduces me to sounding like teenager trying to explain Shakespeare. Read one of his books and then try to explain it to a friend. You’ll know exactly what I mean.
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