2004-07-04 BBC Radio 4 Book Club interview with Terry Pratchett

BBC Radio 4's Book Club published an interview with Terry Pratchett about his novel Mort.

Stats

• Broadcast date: 2004-07-04
• Host: James Naughtie
• Producer: Dymphna Flynn
• Interviewee: Terry Pratchett
• Audio recording: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00fc3w5
• Rights: © BBC Radio 4

Transcript

NAUGHTIE: Hello and welcome to Discworld, which is where Book Club finds itself today. A disc that turns on the backs of four giant elephants, who in turn perch on the shell of a giant turtle. This universe, which sometimes feels as if itʼs been designed by Hieronymus Bosch, is the setting for 31 of Terry Pratchettʼs novels, and one of them, Mort, is our book this month. You might have heard Radio 4ʼs dramatisation of Mort on Tuesday nights in the course of the last few weeks. Discworld is a place which, if you know it, you understand and accept, and if you donʼt, you may find so bizarre that you enter its portals with great trepidation. But youʼll find it a funny place with funny people. They make you laugh, even when theyʼre dealing with death, whose apprentice Mort is. Heʼs a pretty ungainly boy, when a skeleton draped in a black cloth comes to take him off to the great dirty city of Ankh-Morpok to work for him on his horse, who has the rather unlikely name of Binky. Mort watches death at work. He doesnʼt kill people, he only brings them towards death. But after thousands of years, heʼs beginning to get fed up with the work and he ends up as a cook in a greasy spoon. And Mort takes over the grim reaping.

Terry Pratchett, welcome to Book Club. Let me ask you, first of all, for those who are not inculcated into the secrets of Discworld and its mysteries and its excitements and its fun, how the whole thing started?

PRATCHETT: Discworld began as an antidote to fantasy. In fact, it was interesting to find out at the first ever Discworld convention, which was about, I donʼt know, eight or 10 years ago now, 90% of the people who attended did not think of themselves as fantasy readers, although they read Discworld. In the early 1980s, there was a lot of fantasy, which in many respects was a copy of Tolkien. And I thought, “there were so many cliches here, so much fun could be had”.

Discworld was, I suppose, the Hitchhikerʼs Guide to the Galaxy for fantasy. I take my life in my hands by saying that, but thatʼs probably as good a way as I could put it. Discworld is written by a better writer now. Iʼve been doing it for 21 years, and Mort is actually the first Discworld book that Iʼm quite pleased about. But if I wrote it now, Iʼd write it better.

NAUGHTIE: So in what sense, I want to bring in our readers in a moment, in what sense is it a transition in the sequence? I mean, do you see it as one that is maybe not a turning point, but a development in the sequence?

PRATCHETT: The first couple of books were fun jokes, jokes at the expense of the fantasy universe. The plot was really there just to stop the front and back of the book banging together in the middle. And then I realised by Mort, for the book to work, itʼs got to work as a book independently of the humour. So I think I got better at that now, but Mort was when I started to get better, I think.

NAUGHTIE: I think you wanted to say something, didnʼt you?

GUEST: I am a fantasy reader. You mentioned thereʼs only about 10 or 20 percent of us or so that are your fans. There was an awful lot of bad fantasy around in the mid to early 80s. Was there one thing that just set you off and said, “Right, Iʼve had enough, Iʼm gonna write an antidote to all of this, well, rubbish?”

PRATCHETT: Yeah, there was. There was a book I was leafing through. A character said something like, “In faith, he will wax wroth.” I thought, “heʼll wax the table”. I mean, it doesnʼt… and it always had the same kind of map. So you do the Pointy Mountains and the Wiggly River, and thatʼs Northland and thatʼs the Southland. This world is like Middle-earth after the Industrial Revolution, you know, when you realise that the Orcs may as well be employed, you know, and you find that theyʼve all got… wives and little orcs and some trolls actually like poetry and everyoneʼs come to the big city and theyʼre trying to make an honest dollar. This one is incredibly flexible. It has a condom factory. It worked, it was part of a plot, you know, and why not? Latex is a natural product. You canʼt do that in Middle-earth. You canʼt think about doing it in Narnia. I mean, just donʼt go there. And yet it wasnʼt done particularly for laughs. It was because I needed a, you know, a large vat of rubber at one point and it fitted in because of the kind of eclectic nature of Discworld. Discword is a fantasy version of this world and I suspect thatʼs what makes it attractive.

GUEST: My question is about the character of Death. You wouldnʼt expect to be fond of any character representing Death but you canʼt help it. Did you plan that from the start or did you grow to love him too?

PRATCHETT: I treated him as a human character. I mean, Death is the classic Death out of, if you like, medieval folklore.

NAUGHTIE: I mean, he is a skeleton with a cloak and all the accoutrements that youʼd expect with a Mephistophelian figure.

PRATCHETT: But heʼs human-shaped. But heʼs human-shaped. And itʼs a theme that extends through Discworld that shape, to an extent, defines function. He has hands, admittedly, skeletal hands. He is the same shape as us. And he constantly is puzzled by humanity. We only have, what, 70 and maybe 100 years if weʼre lucky, and we spend all our brief life making it as complicated for us as we can. We are a source of endless fascination to him. This introspection is just beginning in Mort. And he is quite a sympathetic character, because he doesnʼt understand humanity. He keeps trying to, but he only sees it from the outside.

NAUGHTIE: This is quite serious stuff, isnʼt it? People do seem to like him. I mean, why do you like him?

GUEST: Iʼve read almost all the Discworld books, and I think Death is one of the most really charming, recurring characters. (NAUGHTIE: Charming?) Heʼs my favorite. I love him. One of the questions I came here really wanting to ask was whether, when you started to write Mort, you knew that you were going to write more than one Discworld book about Death. He appeared before this, Iʼm pretty sure, but he has taken a kind of starring role in some of the books that have come after, and I was wondering if you knew that was going to happen.

PRATCHETT: When I wrote Mort, which was the fourth book in the Discworld series, I didnʼt know that there was going to be a fifth book. So I certainly had no idea of there being a plan or a story arc. Now Iʼm, I donʼt know, I think Iʼm writing the 33rd Discworld book now, so Iʼve got a vague idea that there may be a 34th, you know, just a kind of feeling. He has come alive, and itʼs a very strange thing for Death to do. And Iʼve had just so much mail about him, and this may not exactly be the most tasteful thing to say, but Iʼve had letters like, great Aunt Maisie really loved the character of Death in your books, and she was 97 when she discovered Discworld. and sheʼs read them all and we were taking them up to the hospice every day until she died. And I think, you know, those kind of letters make you sit and stare at the wall. But not in a bad way. He means a lot to a lot of people and sometimes people who argue to check fairly quickly whether Iʼve got the right idea about Death.

GUEST: Well, I was just going to ask really, it strikes me that thereʼs something about the writer in Death, not you personally necessarily, but that way that he stands aside and watches and puzzles over behaviour seems to be something that you see in a quality of writers do this thing where they observe, they watch and I wonder if thatʼs where your connection with him is or do you have that connection with him? As a writer you watch humanity. And it has–He watches humanity.

NAUGHTIE: Well, thatʼs an interesting question.

PRATCHETT: You know, for what is thought of as an inconsequential comic novel, this is getting positively abyssal in its depth.

NAUGHTIE: Oh, well, these are the sort of people who specialize in book club.

PRATCHETT: The point is, death is always on the outside. And to an extent, I suppose, hey, this is South Bank stuff. To an extent, so is the author. This should be a couch. And now I come to think about it, a lot of my characters are outside watching the carnival that they canʼt actually take part in. Theyʼve got that bit of them that doesnʼt join in. And thatʼs where the writer lives, watching everything, listening to everything, looking at everything. And I suppose death is that character. Although as the books progress, he begins to show his colors a little bit. There is a scene in Maskerade where he plays a game of poker with Granny Weatherwax, a character that was barely existing in the series at this time. And it becomes clear that if youʼre really, really, really prepared to bet everything in a game against… death, he might just weigh the balance in your favor. He has some sympathy for us in our plight, you know, weʼre going to be dead in a few years time and you get the impression, as I do, that heʼs kind of on our side, you know, he doesnʼt, you know, itʼs nothing personal. He has a job to do.

NAUGHTIE: Give us a reading from the book, Terry, and set the scene.

PRATCHETT: It takes place not long after Mort, who is entirely a human boy, has been taken on as deathʼs apprentice.

Mort listened to the clatter of stone under the horse’s hooves. Then there was the soft thud of packed earth as they reached the road, and then there was nothing at all.

He looked down and saw the landscape spread out below him, the night etched with moonlight silver. If he fell off, the only thing he’d hit was air.

He redoubled his grip on the saddle.

Then Death said, ARE YOU HUNGRY, BOY?

“Yes, sir.” The words came straight from his stomach without the intervention of his brain.

Death nodded, and reined in the horse. It stood on the air, the great circular panorama of the Disc glittering below it. Here and there a city was an orange glow; in the warm seas nearer the Rim there was a hint of phosphorescence. In some of the deep valleys the trapped daylight of the Disc, which is slow and slightly heavy*, was evaporating like silver steam.

But it was outshone by the glow that rose towards the stars from the Rim itself. Vast streamers of light shimmered and glittered across the night. Great golden walls surrounded the world.

“It’s beautiful,” said Mort softly. “What is it?”

THE SUN IS UNDER THE DISC, said Death.

“Is it like this every night?”

EVERY NIGHT, said Death. NATURE’S LIKE THAT.

“Doesn’t anyone know?”

ME. YOU. THE GODS. GOOD, IS IT?

“Gosh!”

Death leaned over the saddle and looked down at the kingdoms of the world.

I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU, he said, BUT I COULD MURDER A CURRY.

NAUGHTIE: Youʼre listening to Book Club on BBC Radio 4 with Terry Pratchett discussing his novel Mort.

GUEST: Yeah, what you were saying, is the idea that death seems to be very popular, I was just wondering if you read some of the heavier broadsheets from time to time, you find articles saying that as a culture weʼve lost touch with Death, do you think this is a way of people re-familiarising themselves, actually accepting weʼre not going to beat it so weʼd better get used to the idea and have him as a sort of distant uncle?

PRATCHETT: Iʼm arguing against myself, I suppose, but this is kind of the acceptable face of Death. Heʼs a nice character. As heʼs pointed out in the books, I mean, death is the grim reaper, but he canʼt help, as it were, liking people, and that makes him funny. But the thing is that the use of Death, it harks back to the medieval mummersʼ (?) plays, you know, God would turn up on stage, Father Time, Death, you could have anyone. Itʼs only in the last couple of hundred years that he hasnʼt turned up as a character at some point. The thing about meeting death after youʼre dead is… of mixed feelings really. Yes, youʼre dead, but thereʼs clearly some kind of you whoʼs there actually seeing Death, which suggests an afterlife of some sort.

NAUGHTIE: Do you believe that?

PRATCHETT: Ask me again in a hundred and fifty years.

NAUGHTIE: I want to ask, we happen to have the organiser of the Fan Club here and I just want to ask you to what you attribute the grip of Discworld in general, but characters like Death whom weʼve been discussing.

ORGANIZER: Well I think itʼs, I think the first scene in Mort when heʼs walking across the icy courtyard and he suddenly slips on a patch of ice and says, “OH BUGGER”, that, I mean I just adored him from then on, I mean how can you not like a skeleton that does that?

NAUGHTIE: Is that the sort of explanation that other people would give? I mean what, thereʼs a gentleman in the back here.

GUEST: Itʼs made death a more accessible idea, up until then youʼve sort of got the idea that oh, what is death all about, you havenʼt got a clue, and now all of a sudden itʼs actually put into a concept that you can understand fairly easily, itʼs made more human rather than some grand scheme that is beyond us.

NAUGHTIE: Yeah, and you donʼt need to get into metaphysics, I mean heʼs there. heʼs just sort of wandering around with his cloak. Hang on a sec, yeah.

GUEST: Iʼd like to ask Terry how much research he does for the books. For example, the word mort is actually the Hindu word for death and also the whole structure of the Discworld is actually based on Hindu mythology and I was wondering how much research he does.

PRATCHETT: Mort, mortician, mortis, I mean thatʼs easily done. I donʼt actually do research. I mean occasionally I think I need to know something about chocolate or how clocks are made or something and Iʼll go and look it up. Iʼm a great believer in serendipitous research. You read anything that seems to be interesting, you just find things that you just didnʼt expect in some book that you didnʼt expect to find them in. I may as well say this publicly for the first time. The whole thing with the flat world and the turtle and the elephants, I think that was kind of like a wrong decision on my part because nearly everything that happens on Discworld happens on the surface of Discworld. On a world which looks just like this one. And, you know, itʼs a funny thing when we walk around on this world we donʼt say to each other on a daily basis, do you know we happen to be on this ball of rock and molten iron which is circular and very very painful if youʼre in the middle and itʼs spinning around. We donʼt say that and on Discworld people do not refer to the fact that thereʼs a turtle down there. Itʼs just what itʼs all about. And people always start with, well thereʼs this world thatʼs flat and goes through space on the back of a giant turtle which isnʼt actually what Discworld is about at all. But it was something Iʼd dreamt up at the beginning because itʼs straight out, I mean youʼre right, it comes to its finest flowering in Hindu mythology but aspects of it are in other mythologies as well. Because I wanted a, with all due respects to the Hindu religion, something which looked ridiculous. Something that was clearly alien. Something that wasnʼt a planet. But now, I think there are people that just donʼt get past that statement.

NAUGHTIE: One here and then in the front.

GUEST: All through lots of the books thereʼs always plays on words, thereʼs a lot in Soul Music. Do the puns come to you just out of nowhere or do you actively go looking for them say like Jilly Cooper does?

PRATCHETT: I think puns and plays on words are two slightly different things. Sometimes a play on words can be… can add quite a bit of power to the book. The one I really like is, you all know but I canʼt remember, Commander Vimes of the City Watch who came up from the streets, commander of the watch, he has this this wonderful gold breastplate that he has to wear on ceremonial occasions and heʼs kind of embarrassed about the fact that heʼs now a Duke and all his hatred of being in that kind of position is funneled into his hatred of this armor which of course is gilt, or as itʼs put in the book, guilt by association. And then there are the puns that donʼt get done, as in the Wee Free Men. There is a toad in that book, which can talk, which is very, very pale. In fact, itʼs practically yellow. And the reason itʼs practically yellow is because itʼs been ill. And these facts are explained in this kind of fairy tale setting. But at no point is my heroine told to follow the yellow sick toad. So that was a pun which was very deliberately not put there.

NAUGHTIE: Some people may feel itʼs just as well. But some things are better left to stick to the wall. Gentleman in the middle, I think.

GUEST: With the spread of the internet, thereʼs fan clubs and fan fiction and people stealing Discworld and writing their own stories using your characters. Do you ever find youʼre drawn to read those and use those? Or do you have to try and avoid them?

PRATCHETT: I very deliberately donʼt look at any fan fiction and anything that gets sent to me is carefully filtered upstream of me before it gets to my desk. And sometimes I get letters which have been carefully folded and stapled. “Hereʼs this really cool idea about”… Because we did have someone once who said, “you must have read my idea”. Well, fortunately, this gentleman had no idea how far in advance a manuscript actually goes to the publishers. And at the time heʼd done that little bit of fan fiction, the bound proof copies were already out. That kind of worried me. So, no, I donʼt look at any Discworld fan fiction. Iʼm perfectly happy that it exists. I donʼt have any copyright hang-ups about it. And Iʼm, in a sense, Iʼm glad that people do it, but I hope they then move on to do their own stuff.

GUEST: Back in a way to the puns, you also like to get references, we all know, in your Discworld books. And reading them is often a game of spot the reference, like Fabricati diem, pvnc, yeah, sort of Clint Eastwood jab. But how much do you actually go out of your way to try and get references in?

PRATCHETT: The references are, I mean, theyʼre references to popular culture and ancient history, lots of times to ancient history.

NAUGHTIE: Well, you get it both ways. I mean, fabricati diem, pvnc, make my day—

PRATCHETT: —Well, yeah, in something that isnʼt quite Latin, letʼs be clear. Fabricatus is a lovely Latin word, if only it existed.

NAUGHTIE: Well, exactly.

GUEST: I was wondering how many of the Latin things are real? Are you a real Latin lover?

PRATCHETT: No, but I know people who are, or at least can come up with authoritatively bad things, and I normally have some rough idea what it is Iʼm after. I was actually trying a Greek one the other day, but it just wouldnʼt work. We couldnʼt find the right typeface.

NAUGHTIE: Youʼve talked a bit about your serendipity approach to research, and now youʼre talking a little bit about, you know, knowledge and background. Just give us a pen portrait of your own education.

PRATCHETT: Well, in Whoʼs Who it says my education was at Beaconsfield Public Library, and in truth that that is true. I went to school, I passed 11 plus, which was an examination we used to have in those days. (NAUGHTIE: Indeed.) But school kind of flowed over the top and around me. I often think that if someone had just taken half an hour to kind of explain things to me, Iʼd have settled in a bit more. I wasnʼt a particularly bad scholar, I wasnʼt a particularly good one.

NAUGHTIE: When did you learn the delight of writing, of creative writing?

PRATCHETT: My first short story, which actually ended up as being the first story that I had commercially published, was done as a school essay. The teacher gave me 20 out of 20 for it and put it in the school magazine, and the kids loved it. And I thought, this is it, you know, Iʼm actually a popular kid, which was not a particularly familiar sensation. You know, I wasnʼt like the last kid to get selected in PT for the teams, but Iʼd been the last four. And it was, I think, Art Buchwald who said that “in every gang of kids thereʼs the writer”, the one who relies on telling jokes and stories in order to be accepted.

NAUGHTIE: Did you feel that when you left school, that you were a writer?

PRATCHETT: Well, back then I left school, it was to go straight into a job as journalism. and so whether you consider that to be writing, thatʼs certainly what I was doing. And that was incredibly good training for me, because, first of all, you learn thereʼs no such thing as writerʼs block. If you get it, the editor comes and shouts at you.

NAUGHTIE: Yes, youʼve got something to say.

GUEST: Yes, one of my favourite parts of the book is when Death goes to look for a job, and goes to the job broker. This helps youngsters get into the book. Thereʼs a classic line which always helps my daughter overcome problems she has at school. It would seem you have no useful skills or talent whatsoever. Have you thought about going into teaching? (PRATCHETT: Yes.) Is that from the heart?

PRATCHETT: Itʼs certainly from the brain. It was a possibly an unwarranted side swipe in the case of some teachers. And once I found out that the quickest way to learn something is to have to teach it to someone else, I thought I began to understand it. But Iʼm a humourist. You go– thereʼs part of me that will go for the gag. You know, I could have been a contender. I could have been a Booker winner, probably, if it wasnʼt for that. I have this terrible idea that occasionally it should be funny. But I have to say, I canʼt possibly disown more. It was a great book to write. I can see the flaws in it now. I think a book like Nightwatch, which is a comparatively recent book, is a much better book. It may be darker. The characters have more depth. Thereʼs a lot of humour in it, but a lot of the humour is, as it were, on the edge of the grave. Maybe occasionally Iʼm now just overcoming the urge to be funny all the time.

GUEST: You answered a question about unsolicited fan fiction. There are an awful lot of people who officially contribute to Discworld, other than you. I mean, the cover illustrations by Josh Kirby. Thereʼs the video games, the role-play game, the maps, the–. You collaborate on the play adaptations, I believe. (PRATCHETT: I collaborate on the maps as well.) And I was just wondering… how you feel about letting other people play with your toys and Discworld moving into different media?

PRATCHETT: You have to remember that this is all fairly kind of small-scale stuff and so I know the people involved, I get to talk to them, almost invariably I have the veto as well. It never actually leaves my sandpit. Even when they did the two animations we had long discussions about Granny Weatherwaxʼs boots and what colour clothing Nanny Ogg should wear and things like that. And what was nice is that I was dealing with people who were experts at what they did and I could recognise that and so we could meet halfway. Thatʼs why Iʼm so nervous about movies. Movies, you know, the writer has no real control whatsoever. They do give you a lot of money but they take everything away and most importantly, from my point of view, they want merchandising. You lose control of your characters. I think that would really be a bit of a blow to me.

GUEST: Some of your later novels, Iʼm thinking of Wyrd Sisters and Lords and Ladies have parallels with Shakespeare, Macbeth, Midsummer Nightʼs Dream. Mort sort of started almost as Great Expectations, but it fizzled out a bit. Was that deliberate, just a scene set, or did you make the decision not to carry on with that train of thought, as it were?

PRATCHETT: To be frank, I just didnʼt see the link. I just thought I was writing about Mort, and in a sense I think whatʼs happening is youʼre putting two things together under the light, and you can see the edges match. But Mort ends exactly as Mort should do, given the way Mort started. So I think I had that story arc pretty well worked out in my head.

NAUGHTIE: It is a happy ending, isnʼt it? I mean, heʼs making a happy marriage, it seems. (PRATCHETT: Ah, yes.) And heʼs saying to Death, well, on your days off, Iʼll take over from you, donʼt worry.

PRATCHETT: Yeah, but of course, thereʼs always that slight poignancy. It is Death we are dealing with here. He knows heʼs going to see him again.

GUEST: In the BBC Big Read Top 100 you were you had more books in the Top 100 than any other author. (PRATCHETT: Oh, Dickens, Iʼm tied with Dickens.) The one thatʼs alive. Youʼre alive, he isnʼt. Do you feel because you had youʼve had so many books that youʼve actually sort of diluted your talent so that you werenʼt in the Top 10?

PRATCHETT: Well, if Iʼd on the other hand, I wrote a lot of books, so I got a big following and then, my fans being much harder to organize than Hobbit folk, all voted for the one they liked, god damn it, and I think, including the 200, it was it was like I had about 10 or 15 or whatever because people voted for the book they liked. Iʼm glad a lot of people liked Mort. I didnʼt expect to get one book in the BBC Top 100 I was just amazed that I was there at all and incredibly pleased and I, for a while, I used to wear a t-shirt with the slogan “Less dead than Dickens”.

NAUGHTIE: Book 32 about to be published, book 33 in the making. How long will Discworld go on?

PRATCHETT: I donʼt intend ever to write the last Discworld book. I do intend, and of course there will be people here that will utter a hollow laugh, I do intend to slow down because for many years Iʼve been writing two books a year and now dealing with the mail and the signing tours and a terrible thing happened the book suddenly became very popular in America so they want me to tour there a lot and I get far more mail now and just you know one book a year other people manage on one book a year I really think I ought to I ought to slow down.

NAUGHTIE: Terry Pratchett slowing down, thank you very much for being our guest on Book Club this month. Next month on the first Sunday of August, thatʼs August the 8th, weʼll be talking to one of the greats of 20th century English fiction Muriel Spark, our chosen book will be, of course I hear you say it, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, a gem of a novel, do read along with us. Donʼt forget, if you want to be part of our monthly audiences, let us know at bbc.co.uk/bookclub or at Broadcasting House London W1A 1AA. We always like to hear from you and hear your recommendations for books to read apart from anything else. Our thanks to this monthʼs group of readers here in Bush House in London and to Terry Pratchett. Until next month and the next book, goodbye.

And as Jim suggested, weʼre always on the lookout for new members of the audience for Book Club. Writers featured later this year include Will Self, Pat Barker and Zadie Smith. If youʼre interested in coming along, take a look at the Book Club website or call Radio 4 on 08700 100 400. Book Club was presented by James Naughtie and is produced by Dymphna Flynn.

History

• 1948-04-28: Terry Pratchett born.
• 1987-11-12: Mort published in the UK.
• 2004-07-04: BBC Radio 4's Book Club publishes the interview.
• 2015-03-12: Terry Pratchett died.

See also

• Mort
• Terry Prachett
• BBC Radio 4

External links

• bk4, reboil.com
• BBC online recording archive