Page 2 of the interview with Terry Pratchett

You’re studied at post-graduate level!

Oh yes! Once I was perceived as writing for children as well, a big sigh of relief, "now we can invite him to all the best dos". All fiction is fantasy, and of fiction, how can I put it? The perception is, there is Literature, and there are these things budding off around the side, called "westerns" and "police procedural crime", whereas in fact, there is Fantasy, and off this main stem has budded off... and one of these things is known as the "Literate Novel", which was invented, what, about 150 years ago? And it’s got a subset known as "Potential Booker Winners". I am sorry to say that I represent the mainstream. It’s not the Literate Novel, and I use that term with a certain amount of disparagement. People will always need heroes, no matter how politically correct we become, the charismatic male, with his big sword is always going to... I’ve just in fact finished a Discworld book where Cohen the Barbarian, who is very very old, and politically totally incorrect, everyone likes him. They all follow him, they do as he says, because he just blows like fresh air everywhere he goes.

Is it just to keep you interested...?

It’s quite easy to say, "ok, here are all the clichés of classic fantasy, let’s turn them over", but if you do that and all you’ve done is turn them over, then you haven’t really done anything. If you just turn them over, all you’ve dome is just destroy things. But when turning them over raises all kinds of questions; what kind of witch is it that actually dislike magic? So as you do your characters they automatically become important. If all you do is kick over the table and say "look at me, aren’t I clever?" you’re just being some spoilt kid. But certainly there are some characters that I’m very pleased with, and the three witches quite definitely are becoming quite central to the series. I’ve yet to meet an intelligent woman who wouldn’t long to be Granny Weatherwax, would settle for Nanny Ogg and secretly suspects that she’s really Magrat. It’s a big problem, because Magrat is now married, which, without drawing too much attention to the symbolism of the three of them, one may assume that her prime requirement for membership is no longer possessed, so I’m not quite sure what the other two are going to do about it. What’s fun about Granny Weatherwax is, she’s a bully, she’s autocratic, she’s, on paper she’s a bad witch, she just happens to be on the right side, in fact, I think, in Lords and Ladies, she says something to Nanny Ogg along the lines of "Just because I’m right doesn’t have to mean I’m nice". You get your characters right, and everything else happens.

The four boys in the Johnny books, too, in terms of character; you tread a really fine line with them in terms of an ironical adult look at their pretensions and their foibles and their sillinesses, and at the same time keeping them real and still attractive to children.

The point is, I can’t speak for Australia, but kids in England now suffer from this terrible ersatz Americanism, so they walk around trying to look like a kid from South Central (L.A.). What the hell, they live in Taunton, Somerset, you know, and you can’t hang out at the shopping mall, because there’s only that silly shop, and the weather isn’t like Southern California. It’s a bit like we were in the 60’s. The 60’s only happened to about 250 people in London, everyone else pretended they were there as well. And they don’t know what the slang now is, and there’s this horrible feeling that everyone else knows and you don’t, and that you’re not doing it right. There’s a terrible uncertainty, you definitely want to fit in, but you don’t actually know where the "in" is you’re supposed to fit.

And the goal posts shift all the time.

I think that’s common to every age, all we have to do is remember what it’s like.

Your brand of humour is frequently satirical; extended puns and...

I pun far less often than people think.

OK! The Book of Nome, the elevated biblical language, a lot of your humour is based on political theory, philosophy, all these kinds of things, and you do that in your kids books too, you don’t assume that kids don’t know about these things. We often assume that kids’ sense of humour is often pretty unsubtle and pretty earthy, but you’ve assumed a degree of sophistication in kids.

I’m not entirely certain you’re right. I think you are, how can I put it? You may feel that something I’ve got is based on a political theory, or is parodying... Now, kids might not even see that, they’ll just go for the underlying truth.

This isn’t a criticism, in fact...

No, no, no... I’m saying that, curiously enough, a lady trying to translate Truckers into Russian said there were two problems she had to try and overcome; a small one and a big one. The small one was that Russian children would simply not be familiar with the concept of biblical language, so they wouldn’t recognise (the parody). The second was, it’s set in a store full of merchandise, and they would have no concept of that idea at all. It may be that kids understand things that they don’t vocalise very well.

Yes, I think that’s right.

I get the same thing from my Japanese translator. They say "this theory you’ve got from T.H. Robinovitch in his book...." and I think, I’ve never heard of this fellow, if I did, I thought he was a harmonica player! All I’ve done, to be honest, I’ve done what the story wanted, as Granny Weatherwax would say. The fact that it may fit in with someone’s theory of archetypes is a lucky shot, that’s something to give the Ph.D’s something to write about!

Well, yes, but say, the philosopher’s scene in Small Gods; you don’t have to know about philosophy to get the humour of that...

But remember, Small Gods wasn’t written for kids.

No, I know, but I think that it’s great that you don’t underestimate kids and say, well, they’re not going to get this, so I won’t put it in, that in fact you allow whatever needs to be there to be there, and if they get the reference, great, and if they don’t they’ll get something else from it, and take it with them anyway.

Well, something like the philosopher’s scene in Small Gods, I based it on the old principal, "That’s all the big philosopher’s you can remember". Well, OK, what can I remember? Some guy had a bath, and said "Eureka!", and they used to argue a lot, and if you’re slightly more advanced, you know, for example, in Pyramids I have the philosophers again, and one of them’s called Endos the Listener, and his job is just to sit there and say "yes, you are entirely correct", and "indeed, that is absolutely right". Because they’re all busy talking, and he actually charges money for listening, because no one wants to listen, and he charges money to do it. And also, if people are slightly more advanced, up to student level, they’d be familiar with the symposium, which is supposed to take place over a dinner party, and so in Pyramids, I did what it would really be like if you tried to have philosophers at a dinner party. What I often do, and again, this is post facto reasoning, the humour is based on everything you vaguely remember — we’re very thinly educated these days — everything you can vaguely remember about Greek philosophers, and I use that as a starting point. Even now, although less so than when I was a kid, kids pick up a lot of information on an osmotic basis; they certainly don’t do it from school. I have unfortunate views about education.

I wanted to ask you some specific questions that will be of interest to the children who are readers of School Magazine, and they’re pretty like the questions kids would ask you when you go into schools. It seems to me from reading your books that you must get a lot of pleasure out of writing. Are you a disciplined writer? Do you have a regular routine?

I would like to be. It doesn’t actually work like that, and this sounds awfully pseudo, but writing is my ground state of being. It’s what, on the whole, I think I should be doing, so everything else that I’m doing is time filched from writing. Increasingly, I think this is a slightly unhealthy way of living, and maybe I ought to get a life as well! I like writing, and I resent it if I can’t do it. I’m not disciplined, but if left to myself, I’d do a lot of writing every day.

What are your inspirations, who are your inspirations, do you read other children’s writers? Other writer’s generally who inspire you? Does reading other writers’ work interfere with your own writing?

Everyone, not just kids, think ideas lie around like little nuggets, and you just wander around... and what they want you to do is tell them the way to the Holy Grail. It’s the same with inspiration. If you tell us where you get your inspiration from, we’ll go and stand there. I make up my ideas in my head, and that’s where the inspiration comes from as well. Yes, sometimes I can see, in the real world, unusual juxtapositions, or there are little triggers which happen to set something off in my mind, but usually I get my ideas by thinking logically about things that you’re not supposed to think logically about.

Do you start with story or character?

It might be a story, it might be a character. Weird Sisters began with a joke, which was the joke at the beginning, and I knew very little about the rest of it. The witches; well, Granny Weatherwax already existed, and the other witches just sprang fully formed. I’m a great believer in the silent writer inside. Back in the 60s I experimented with dope, because people did in the 60s, and I remember saying, "well, this is supposed to make me very creative", so I had a little smoke, and I thought "Well, OK, I’ll sit by my typewriter. If Huxley is allowed to do it with mescalin, I thought, at least I should be allowed to do it with... So, I thought, I’ll type what is going on. I remember looking at the key and thinking, "That "a" key. What a superb "a" key that is. That’s a great "a" key. Wow, look at it! And there’s all these other keys! And there’s numbers as well! Anything I want to write, it’s all here, all contained in this keyboard is anything I want to write." And I sort of drooled like an over-grown setter. You wouldn’t know what I’m talking about, of course. And because nobody can stop me from saying in public what I think, I say to kids, "This is why you shouldn’t take drugs, not because they’re bad for you, because some of them aren’t that bad for you, but they’ll turn you into a hippy!" But what sometimes is necessary is to find a way of allowing — I always say the sub-conscious writer — but allowing the ideas that are floating around looking for a place to settle, find a way of switching off sufficiently to allow them to do so. That’s why, and I’m not the only person to say it, you often get ideas when you’re driving a car, because various parts of your mind are actually taken up with the job in hand, which actually means that something comes through from the back. Listening to music can do the same sort of thing.

In fact, it boils down to what I always tell kids, if you want to be a writer, try and do something else. A., because you should try and look for an alternative means of making a living, and B., because no one ever went straight from school into "being a writer", I mean, that’s ridiculous. You should get a life, fill yourself up, and you start to overflow. But also sometimes you have to fool yourself to allow the ideas to come through. That’s why I mow the lawn. I’ve got a big lawn, it’s one of the shortest lawns in Yorkshire. I’ve got a ride-on mower, and I sit on there with my hat singing American revivalist hymns at the top of my voice, because no one can hear me. I often get the ideas, because everything’s switched off, and it’s noisy. That’s why kids do their homework in front of the television. Kids do their homework in front of the television because it actually provides white noise, to allow things to happen. I often write with music on.

Back to the Johnny books — and I have to say that I read Johnny and the Dead just yesterday, and I think it’s one of the finest kids’ books I’ve read in a long time. I just think it’s wonderful...

It’s up for a Carnegie, but it won’t get it.

Because it’s funny?

Yes, it’s partly that, but also because I’m, how can I put it. This is the second one I’ve had for that award...

What else was up? Truckers?

Truckers. And Truckers was up for the Smarties award. Johnny and the Dead’s won a couple of awards. No, Johnny and the Dead’s won one award, the Writer’s Guild award. That was very nice, because it’s actually fellow writers. Because I have a small suspicion that in the UK I am thought of to be personally politically incorrect, even if I sit there being absolutely quiet, and saying the right things, people say, "Yes, but he’s thinking politically incorrect thoughts. He’s not really a proper children’s writer, you can see, inside. He might be sitting there, but any minute if we’re not careful he’s going to do something."

The whole argument I think is really unfortunate, because of course it’s good to be nice to people regardless of whether they’re one thing or another, but when it starts restricting people’s creativity...

Well, I don’t mean it like that. I use the term "dirndl mafia", with whom I have sort of love-hate thing. I think it’s really great that around the world there are people, probably like yourself, there’s this loose association of librarians, and teachers and the adults involved in the book business who are keeping the guttering flame alive, usually in the face of total media disinterest. When you think books for kids in the UK get in the mainstream newspapers get minimal reviews, and there’s usually a little teddy bear at the top of the page to show that it’s not really that important. Given the vast forces ranged against them, I’m just incredibly gratified that there’s anyone out there doing that kind of job. The fact that they sometimes annoy me is almost a minor consideration.

It’s a very vexed issue at the moment, isn’t it. Anyway, back to Johnny. The Johnny books are more in the realist mode, and again, this is broad generalisation...

I think they are exactly in the realist mode if you are about 12 years old.

They also deal — now, I think that all your books have serious ideas lurking around — but I think you’ve brought them more to the front in the Johnny books. Do you agree? What prompted the change of approach anyway to a more realist mode, was it just that’s what the story needed?

That was what the story needed. I’m quite viciously straightforward about that. I couldn’t have written — Johnny and the Dead had to be set in a world which appeared to be the real world to have the effect it could. on Discworld, in Ankh-Morpork, the dead have a perfectly everyday role to play in the normal civilisation. Your milk may well be delivered by a zombie. As I say, in Ankh-Morpork, the fact that I have the classical races of horror and fantasy actually playing roles as citizens has its own pleasant connotations. The fact that your local butcher might be a vampire has no more or less comment than him being a Muslim. So there had to be a framework of conventional reality for both those books to work. In Only You..., for example, I actually was up late working when the Gulf War started, and I was also aware of how much an effect it had on kids, that despite apparently being inured by years of video games and Schwarzenegger movies, this is a real war, and they seem to understand it was a real war, more than adults did. They were actually afraid it was going to happen here, maybe because they were a bit locationally challenged, as far as the Gulf was concerned. And the thing that triggered Only You... was that I was having all the normal wishy-washy things that it’s not a nice idea to say "wow, look we can drop this bomb straight down this chimney" because 38 people you might like if you’d met in person have been laminated against the walls inside, but we don’t want to show you that, we’re going to show you the video. And then there was an interview, I think it was by CNN, with two pilots who’d just come back from over-flying the desert, and they were Americans. If the Brits had been interviewed it would have been "well, yes it was very regrettable, but yes, it was a successful flight." Because we’ve learned the stiff upper lip. But these Americans pilots come out like "Woh, it’s like a turkey shoot out there, we really kicked some butt, it’s like shootin’ cockroaches." Everyone was raising their hands in horror, and I watched this and a lot of people were saying how disgusting it was, to show this, and I thought, "They’re soldiers." And despite the fact that there was more or less air supremacy, I mean there were ak-ak guns, and they’d been doing what civilisation had been very specifically training them to do for years, and at any moment when they were out there there could have been a bang and their manhood could have gone past their face on a little column of white-hot metal, and they were at least sub-consciously aware of that. And when they came back, they were drunk, they were drunk with relief and testosterone, as soldiers always are after a battle. The only difference is that, after the Trojan wars or whatever, we never saw it television. And I thought it’s silly, I mean, what do you think soldiers are like? They’re humans, they come back and they’re safe, and that’s why in the book there’s a scene where all the kids in the class are discussing it, they’re all taking a view, and Johnny says, "Look, it’s more complicated than that. When they go up there they’re soldiers who might be dying. It’s just a whole lot more complicated than you think." That’s what war is, it isn’t so nicely clean-cut. And all these things sort of came together, and I thought I can do this in a children’s book, because children seem to be involved in all that. Children all seem to live between video games and video war very readily.

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