Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official Biography

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In addition to a whole bunch of amusing and less than amusing key events in Pratchett's life, the biography also includes a jaw-dropping amount of stuff I never knew before.

A Life with Footnotes shines with the familiarity of deep friendship and obvious respect and affection—Terry and Rob were so close for so many years that they even shared a Twitter account, and Rob was in the unique position to be there for the writing of many books, the embuggerance of Terry’s Alzheimer’s, and the bitter, bitter end. His closeness to the subject means that the book is sometimes joyfully, sometimes painfully, intimate.Pratchett tries to have his books pulled from contention from awards because he hated being shortlisted if he wasn’t going to win. During 1985, Neil had shown Terry a file containing 5,282 words exploring a scenario in which Richmal Crompton’s William Brown had somehow become the Antichrist.

No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away – until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. It will include “fragments” from the memoir Pratchett was working on before he died, the publisher added. We all know where this biography ends, unfortunately, but knowing still didn't make it any easier to read, and I must say I was really upset for some time after finishing this book. No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away—until the clock he wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. Si m’ho pregunteu, crec que per endinsar-se en la peculiaritat de la creativitat d’en Terry Pratchett, i per conèixer la genialitat de la seva imaginació, les novel·les són millor porta d’entrada i que, en realitat, aporten una informació més indirecta però més autèntica.Following his untimely death from Alzheimer's disease, the mantle of completing Terry's memoir was passed to Rob Wilkins, his former assistant, friend and now head of the author's literary estate. El llibre, que arriba a les nostres mans com a «biografia oficial», fa un plantejament cronològic estructurant al voltant d’anècdotes concretes que permeten albirar la personalitat d’en Pratchett al mateix temps que estableix les seves principals fites biogràfiques: infància, estudis, feina, matrimoni, naixement de la seva filla… Cada capítol té un títol en tres temps que referencien, una mica en clau d’enigma, triades d’esdeveniments importants de cada període i estan farcits de testimonis (el nucli familiar, antics companys de feina, escriptors —a mi em feia molta il·lusió veure-hi aparèixer en Neil Gaiman! At such moments, he would lash out at the forces that were relentlessly cracking the whip – forgetting, of course, that chief among those forces was himself.

I feel blessed to have come into The Colour of Magic the same year it was released in paperback, at age 10. Furthermore, he would be adamant about prioritising that industry in the face of all other claims on his time. He draws largely from Terry’s unfinished manuscript, but also from the stories of friends, family, and former colleagues… and if you thought that it wouldn’t be all that interesting until Terry becomes the beloved, bestselling author we all think of him as, then you would be very wrong.

Tolkien’s books in particular, I love that, “If The Wind in the Willows was one harp-pluck moment in the movie of Terry’s life, then The Lord of the Rings was another, with perhaps the harp plucked even more firmly. To start with, his job was “tidying up” pages covered in clashing layouts and fonts (Pratchett was very font-fickle). He was busy writing, but also busy building a following, at book signings, SF and fantasy conventions, games fairs – growing his brand, we would now say.