Transcript
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
This morning, we’re remembering novelist Terry Pratchett, who wrote more than 70 books. He died yesterday at the age of 66, eight years after being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. Pratchett is best known for his series of fantasy novels set in a magical place called the Discworld. It’s populated by witches, wizards and inept police officers.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Plus, one of his most frequent characters was Death. Pratchett portrayed him as a Grim Reaper, who, on the page, speaks in all capital letters. In Discworld, Death isn’t such a bad guy. He has a fondness for cats and a fascination for human quirks. He rarely takes souls out of malice; rather Death is simply providing an essential service. In the real world, death wasn’t far from Pratchett’s mind. After he discovered he had Alzheimer’s, he spoke with candor and humor about the disease and how it affected his ability to write and to read. Our colleague Steve Inskeep interviewed Terry Pratchett four years ago.
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TERRY PRATCHETT: The difficulty with reading is nothing to do with the eyes really. It’s because the mechanism which allows you to, as it were, read through the page, turn and still find your place doesn’t work for me. It’s a bit of a bugger, but it’s not that much.
GREENE: Eventually Pratchett lost his ability to type, so he switched to computer dictation software, which allowed him to keep writing, though he’d found the software had some deficiencies.
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PRATCHETT: I have to teach it new words because it’s an American product.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Oh.
PRATCHETT: In its original state, it doesn’t have some, like [expletive], for example.
INSKEEP: It doesn’t have that? Well, we do have that word in the United States.
PRATCHETT: I’m fully aware. But I…
INSKEEP: But maybe we pronounce it differently here, and that’s causing the problem.
GREENE: Now, Pratchett also became an advocate for legal, physician-assisted suicide. He said he would prefer to choose when to die before his mental facilities were too far gone. But he also said he couldn’t bear the thought of no longer writing.
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PRATCHETT: At the moment, I get about; I write books. So as far as I’m concerned – as far as I’m concerned – I’m a writer who’s writing books and therefore I don’t want to die. You’d miss the end of the book, wouldn’t you?
MONTAGNE: Terry Pratchett’s publishers say when death finally arrived naturally, Terry Pratchett was surrounded by his family. And the post on his Twitter account offered a message marked by both lucidity and wit. The last post read simply, The End. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
