HELLO SIR PRATCHETT, WE MEET AT LAST

The prolific novelist Terry Pratchett died this past week.  If you haven’t read any Pratchett novels, you should try at least one.  I reviewed one once in this space: Guards! Guards!   My favorite is probably Small Gods, or maybe Wyrd Sisters, but any of his Discworld novels is a fantastic read.  He looked like a twinkly old elf, but as his colleague Neil Gaiman famously wrote, underneath his jolly exterior, the man was extraordinarily angry.  In a lot of ways, Pratchett reminds me of me – not in his writing, I do not have his knack for conveying physical comedy.  But I do share his general frustration with all of the ways that human society undercuts its own happiness and productivity, and his clear view of all of the systemic problems that hogtie most/all civilizations, his disgust for the powerful human political machine that guarantees waste and unfairness and suffering.  We both see a better way, and also clearly see that our hopes for humanity will never come to be.  But Sir Pratchett and I also share a genuine affection for human society nonetheless – an almost annoying optimism that keeps popping up and dictating our choices, when disaffected self-interest would probably have served us both much better.

When, in the course of my life, I have occasionally fallen in a dark hole of lost hope and sorrow, more than once a Discworld novel has dug me out.  It was enough to just know that someone else in the world observes what I observe, is intellectually tortured by the same things that leave me spluttering in frustration, and yet can still laugh at it all.  He wrote characters of good heart and pluck and courage, who get knocked down and rise again and get knocked down and rise again and on and on . . . (he also writes Machiavellian characters, soulless characters, vicious, violent leaders, good-natured idiots – not everybody is a hero, but there are heroes, too).

I find, as we navigate this recession and all of the decade-long difficulties that is has created for us and our friends and family, that I am drawn to entertainment that showcases plucky heroes who make their way in imagined worlds that are complex and complicated and difficult.  Leslie Knope of Parks & Rec; Kimmy Schmidt of the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; Liz Lemon of 30 Rock; Jimmy McGill of Better Call Saul (and Breaking Bad); even dumb Michael Scott of The Office.  They stumble sometimes, they screw up, they get sad and downtrodden; they are outfoxed by awful people and terrible systemic problems; they face barrier after barrier.  But they never lose their way for long, and never lose their heart.   Pratchett novels are basically Parks & Rec run through a Monty Python filter, set in an imaginary world that seems awfully familiar and also pleasingly imaginative.

There are plenty of novels written, and they won’t ever go away, even as their author’s bones turn to dust, and eventually mine, too.  But it makes me a little sad to know that there will never be any more.