THERE was a secondary sense in which he was interesting. He took a despised literary form, led it from the corner and made it dance. It’s a cliché to say that genre fiction is what gets read today, and what has real vitality. But Pratchett took up the most neglected and unfashionable and widely scorned genre at the start of his career.

Fantasy was not like crime writing, or even science fiction, both of which were allowed by the respectable world to contain writers of real merit, even if they were automatically promoted from the genres if they were really good — who calls Graham Greene a thriller writer, or Orwell a SF great? Fantasy was a grubby little habit for losers like Rincewind, the unFaust of the very first Discworld book. Nor, before Pratchett, did it have any jokes.

By the time he had finished with Discworld, it was clear that a fantasy universe could be used to write with echoing profundity about love, death, religion, duty, opera, politics, and — above all — decency.

It’s not just that his jokes were funny, though many of them were wonderful in and of themselves. It is more that they came from a relish and a sense of humour that was almost entirely benevolent. There was something of the overflowing sympathy of PG Wodehouse in him, and much less of the artificiality, the whimsy, and the limited range.

Pratchett wrote some memorable villains, but his heroes were much more vivid. What makes them so unusual is their unheroic and everyday quality, even when they are being heroic or, if necessary, saving the world. Sam Vimes may be the most fully realised decent man in modern literature. He’s not a saint, but there are some things you know — and he knows — he will never do, and some temptations he will never yield to.

Still less is Granny Weatherwax a saint. But she is on the side where the angels would be if there were any.

This determinedly unheroic and deflationary goodness may be especially English. I think of Pratchett as the most admirably English writer since Orwell. They make an unlikely pairing, and Orwell is the more sentimental of the two, but in both there is a rooted affection for the goodness of a world that is frequently awful and fundamentally absurd. But, see, Pratchett said, the world can be a wonderful place even if it is only turtles all the way down. Death will come, but he will have things to say, as well.

Without Pratchett here, ours feels a very noticeably less wonderful world this afternoon. But Discworld remains, and it’s pretty damn good. Thank you, pterry.

By arrangement with the Guardian

Published in Dawn March 14th , 2015

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