Shaped by Stories: Spotlight on Terry Pratchett

 “Cats are like witches. They don’t fight to kill, but to win. There is a difference. There’s no point in killing an opponent. That way, they won’t know they’ve lost, and to be a real winner you have to have an opponent who is beaten and knows it. There’s no triumph over a corpse, but a beaten opponent, who will remain beaten every day of the remainder of their sad and wretched life, is something to treasure.”- Terry Pratchett

Featured above is Plush Greebo (just in case anyone's thinking of buying me a new office decoration) both because he is amazing and because six live cats may be the limit - but there's always room for a stuffed creature or two! [Complete rambling aside: in my research, I sometimes stumble across big cat taxidermy. It's (mostly) illegal now, but these are generally antique pieces. And I'm convinced in a majestically deranged way that one of them should be with me because I would love it and grieve that it was ever killed. I recognize that sounds crazy, but it is true...(End rambling aside now)] I'm featuring Greebo today as a balance against my last, sobering post as I've recently completed Reaper Man and Witches Abroad -- which followed last year's read of Equal Rites and Wyrd Sisters.

 I took a roundabout road to the works of Terry Pratchett. I remember my stepdad trying to interest me in Pratchett and Piers Anthony because I was such an avid reader of fantasy. Having checked out a story or two, I gave them back, unimpressed. Older now, I think I understand why. For child-me, fantasy was a serious business, full of heroes and swords with pedigrees and THE FATE OF THE ENTIRE WORLD!! Child-me didn't get how humor could possibly flourish inside of such a genre. Besides, I think humor is far more necessary to adult me; sometimes, if I didn't burst out laughing, I might have to cry... and without damsel-in-distress looks to back me up, crying in public is right out! 

“Was that what it was really like to be alive? The feeling of darkness dragging you forward? How could they live with it? And yet they did, and even seemed to find enjoyment in it, when surely the only sensible course would be to despair. Amazing. To feel you were a tiny living thing, sandwiched between two cliffs of darkness. How could they stand to be alive?” - Terry Pratchett

Death was my original favorite character in the Discworld universe; his faltering attempts at being human remind me of my own faltering attempts to be like everyone else, perhaps... Whatever the reason, he fills me with an odd tenderness and I know I'll feel regret when I've reached the end of his particular series. The ending of this work seemed to accelerate and it caught me off-guard several times not with its wackiness or its wit wordplay (expected of Pratchett) but with a twist in plot which, having occurred, always seemed like something I should have seen coming!

“Find the story, Granny Weatherwax always said. She believed that the world was full of story shapes. If you let them, they controlled you. But if you studied them, if you found out about them... you could use them, you could change them.” - Terry Pratchett

Few and far between are the books that allow you - propped up in bed with evening pressing in on the panes - to say "he he he!" and wish your eyes could move faster across the page to find the next laugh-out-loud line. This is one of those books and, as its central message is the power of stories, it can't help but warm the heart of someone who teaches literature for a living! Granny Weatherwax and Greebo top my list of fictional-characters-I'd love to meet, but it's hard to top Nanny Ogg's letters from abroad. I wish I was as unfazed as she is when it comes to travel!

 I'm moving from these Pratchett titles to Truth, so stay tuned for more!