On reading The Shephard's Crown, Farewell to the Disc

--WARNING-- 

--HERE THERE BE SPOILERS--

On reading The Shephard's Crown, Terry Pratchett's postumously-published and very last ever Discworld novel, I'd like to take a few moments to reflect on the forty-one books which have come before, as well as give a brief review of this final chapter in the saga. Pratchett is an author who was quite important to me, and one whose work in humorous fantasy gave, perhaps, two strikes against him in any effort to be taken seriously. This is a pity, as his work could be as deep, moving, and interesting as any straight literary fiction. He gave us memorable characters who grew over the decades and will remain in our memories long after the final page is turned.

The very last one. 

I read the novels pretty much in publication order, beginning in the early 1990s with 1983s The Color of Magic in which the Discworld was intrduced along with some soon-to-be recurring characters: Cohen the elderly barbarian warrior, Rincewind the cowardly (and not too competent) wizard, the wizards of the Unseen University (including the orangutan serving as their librarian) and, of course, Death. It was a little bit of a one-note lighthearted romp, but quite a fun one which set the stage for many, many more adventures to come. While Rincewind was a fun character, he wasn't really one of Prachett's best in that his personality was fairly one-dimensional: he was a cowardly wizard. That sentence (and his sad habit of writing "wizzard" on his hat so people knew what he was) tells you nearly all you need know about him. Other characters faired better, telling us more about themselves, growing, and even surprising us a bit in ways which, while unexpected, still fit what we'd seen before. In the "city watch" set of books we meet lazy Fred Colon and his partner "Nobby" Nobs along with one of the heroes of the series, Commander Sam Vimes of the nightwatch. The early Vimes books were absolutely delightful in giving us a flawed yet good-hearted character struggling to do the right thing despite a system which rarely rewards righteousness. We watched Vimes struggle with alcoholism, watched him have to face his prejudices and biases, saw him struggle with protocol when elevated to higher levels of society both in the job and as a result of his marriage into the aristocracy. We saw the conflict develop between the by-the-book honest to a fault Vimes and his boss, the patrician of the city Lord Vetinari. Vetinari describes himself as a tyrant, but a just one. What was best about the early city watch books was that one never really knew what Vetinari would do, never felt that one could trust him. It was a battle between the man on the street and the boss upstairs who needed to engage in certain amounts of manipulation and scheming to keep his position and, hopefully, have the city run smoothly. It was a great set of stories which brought us diversity (as the Watch added dwarves, trolls, and even a werewolf), intrigue, and, at times, victory at a real cost. When the watch faced a killer armed with the Discworld's first gun the final battle cost them one of their own and nearly took the life of another. There were real consequences and a feeling that anything could happen.

That feeling, alas, did not last through the entire series. Vimes in particular lingered on the stage long after his story was, to my way of seeing, over. No longer did you have the struggles of a flawed hero who at times felt over his head,  but you instead had a supercop - honest to a fault, deadly competent, and knowing that he had the full backing of those in power. The ambiguity surrounding Vetinari fell away, leaving us a tyrant in name only who we could trust to never do anything bad to someone about whom we cared. In Raising Steam there was a scene with Vimes, a disguised Vetinari, and others guarding a train against religious zealots. In contrast with the battle over the gun, there was no death of a friend new or old, no price to be paid, and little feeling of menace. Nor did anyone ever seem tempted or in danger of doing the wrong thing. Pratchett was always at his best writing about flawed and somewhat ordinary people. As his characters became less so and he perhaps fell a bit too much in love with them the writing suffered a bit.

This brings us to the witches. The witches - Magrat, Agnes who calls herself Perditax, Nanny Ogg and, most importantly, Granny Weatherwax were wonderful characters. We dealt with a young woman who was a better fit for the world of wizards than witches (in 1987's Equal Rites) and many stories of the senior witches being practical, no-nonsense, decent and somewhat nosy old ladies who kept their part of the world running smoothly. Granny Weatherwax was a hero, but also a very parochial self-righteous busybody. When she went travelling with Ogg and the stars-in-her-eyes young Magrat - a woman who saw witchcraft more in occult jewelry and mysticism than in the small practical miracles by which the older witches lived - she seemed a bit out of place and not altogether comfortable. When Weatherwax and Ogg joined Agnes-who-calls-herself-Perditax (another case of a character trying to reinvent herself) her downhome no-nonsense country wisdom IS to her advantage, but she still seems like a bit of a fish out of water. As the books go on, however, Weatherwax becomes nearly perfect. She does more magic than she did in earlier stories. She makes fewer mistakes. She seems less parochial and, like Vimes, more perfect. Her story - in any meaningful sense - has been over for quite a few books now.

Now that it is finished, a last
pleasure remains: sharing with the
next generation

This brings us to The Shepard's Crown and the shocking events of chapter three. In quite a moving sequence (one of the best written in the book, in this reader's opinion) Granny Weatherwax dies. Her final moments are fitting for her practical, no-nonsense manner; she cleans her cottage, prepares a wicker basket to serve as her casket (it's easy and inexpensive to make; Weatherwax was always frugal), bathes, pins up her hair, gets dressed, and lies down to sleep for the last time. 

It's a change which, for the books, would have been a great improvement in that the vacuum left behind by Weatherwax leaves some nice empty space into which other characters can step. We already see this in the remainder of The Shepard's Crown as Tiffany tries to step into the considerable shoes left by the newly departed. We see her struggling to find her own way and, ultimately, make decisions which would have rippled through the world had it continued.

Was the book perfect? No. It's clear that Sir Terry left it as a work in progress, and equally clear that the decision was made to publish as-is rather than have another writer pad it a bit and flesh out the parts that seem rushed and somewhat incomplete. 

The Tiffany Aching books have not only been the best of the later Discworld novels, but they might have held the key to revitalizing the larger series. I mourn not only for Sir Terry, not only for the end of a beloved series, but for all the many more stories which will now remain untold.

Why the Sun Did Not Rise Today

This was going to be an audiovisual post, but sometimes there's an event about which I simply must write. Yesterday was such an event in the world of literature.

I'll start by saying that the death of a celebrity is not something which usually affects me on a personal level; I was sad, but didn't cry over Robin Williams. Same for Leonard Nimoy. I don't feel close enough to them for it to have a visceral impact. That said, I cried when I saw this on Twitter:

AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.
— Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015

Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.
— Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015

The End.
— Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015

For those who've not read Terry Pratchett (and if you've not you should have), Death is a recurring character in his Discworld series of fantasy books. His dialog is always in all capitals, so this final series of tweets on the occasion of Sir Terry's passing reads as a meeting between the author and his creation as the Reaper takes  his hand and leads him to whatever lies beyond. Yes, I cried over it.

I felt that we already mourned him once when he learned he had a rare form of early-onset alzheimers, but with the books continuing to appear it seemed that he'd be with us always, and cheat death. We know that that isn't the case for anyone. We can, of course, take comfort in the work he left behind. In one sense he'll never truly have left us as long as his work is still to be read. What did we lose - especially those of us who would never meet Sir Terry? I'm reminded of a scene from Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels. The personification of dreams (known as Dream) had just died. Cain and Abel (from the Bible. It's THAT kind of book. Also highly, highly recommended) were discussing the funeral with another character:

“Nobody died. how can you kill an idea? How can you kill the personification of an action?""Then what died? who are you mourning?""A point of view."

Isn't that all that ever dies? Someone's unique way of seeing the world? We still have the legacy of Sir Terry's words and ideas. What we don't have is anyone who sees the world exactly as he did.

Who Was Sir Terry?

Pratchett at a convention. You have to love his
self-deprecating sense of humor

He's best known as a humorous fantasy writer, his best known work by far being the Discworld series. I discussed the series overall in my review of what was, tragically, the very last volume in a post here. How sad it makes me feel to have given so poor a review to a master's very final work! The first time I read one of his books was over twenty years ago now, making his a presence through half of my life to date. He was extremely prolific and extremely engaging.

The primary tribute I've seen online has been to share favorite quotes. I'll do the same herein, starting with a bit on economic justice. Neil Gaiman, another terrific British writer, described his friend Pratchett as a very angry man, whose anger fueled a decades-long writing career. Here;s his character, police chief Sam Vimes, on income inequality

"Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month, plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. 
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feed dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and still have wet feet. 
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness. "But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feed dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness. "

He was also a writer who is very easy to dismiss, as he primarily wrote not just fantasy but comic fantasy. In my eyes, fantasy is important in that it gives us another language to tell truths too big for literal language. In closing, I'll share the quote the activist and writer Steampunk Emma Goldman shared. The scene here is a scrap of dialog between the aforementioned Death and his daughter Susan. They've just saved The Hogfather (a sort of Santa-Claus analog in the Discworld universe) from assassination. Susan had been told that, had the Hogfather died, the sun would not rise the next day.

"Now...tell me..."
WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN'T SAVED HIM?
"Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?"
NO."Oh, come on. You can't expect me to believe that. It's an astronomical fact."THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN.She turned on him."It's been a long night, Grandfather! I'm tired and I need a bath! I don't need silliness!"THE SUN WOULD NOT HAVE RISEN."Really? Then what would have happened, pray?A MERE BALL OF FLAMING GAS WOULD HAVE ILLUMINATED THE WORLD.They walked in silence for a moment."Ah," said Susan dully. "Trickery with words. I would have thought you'd have been more literal-minded than that."I AM NOTHING IF NOT LITERAL-MINDED. TRICKERY WITH WORDS IS WHERE HUMANS LIVE."All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need...fantasies to make life bearable."REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE. "Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little-"YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES."So we can believe the big ones?"YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING...YOU NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?"

Today many of us feel that the Hogfather has died and that, in place of a glorious sunrise, the clockwork of the world turned in such a way that we'd face a large, burning ball of gas.