Blooey

[pchallinor]

Terry Pratchett interviewed

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Q: You speak openly about your Alzheimer's diagnosis. Will there be a book about it in the future?

A: I did a documentary for the BBC on assisted dying. The documentary looks at what's available in Europe, where it happens in some countries. But not, right now, in England. I would rather like to see it happen. That was televised a couple of nights ago, to, shall we say, more acclaim than dismissal. Where that's going to lead, I do not know.

Because I've been out talking about it, and real about it - oh my word, I've got a list here of people who want to have an interview with me about the documentary. But as it were, I'm talking about it just by being alive. I have an unusual variant, which isn't exactly like what you'd call "normal" Alzheimer's. Although all Alzheimer's becomes Alzheimer's at the end, if you see what I mean.

Q: But you seem to be handling it well.

A: I've had some problems with medication at the moment, but I think the medication is working, and we think that we've now found a way of dealing with some of the side effects.

I will tell you this little anecdote. I was on this medication recently that might have done something for me, but it turned my urine blue. And in Britain, there are some men's restrooms where it's just a long gutter, do you get me?

Q: I get you.

A: So there I am, minding my own business as it were, getting on with the matter at hand, and I am aware of a certain stare from other men who are going about their business, when I realize that a trickle of bright blue is drifting down the trough. At which point I raise my hat and say, "I'm really enjoying my visit to your planet."



Full interview

Via

[pchallinor]

"There's funny and joking, the two are different … As things progressed, both with adult and junior books, I found that in subtle kinds of ways, without being preachy at all, you could suggest rather interesting things." Neil Gaiman, with whom he wrote Good Omens (1991), agrees: "He's got better and better over the years – he now follows the story, not the jokes, while I think the early books followed the jokes … He makes it look easy. He never writes ugly sentences, or wastes a word, and at his best he says something in a way which means you can never again see it in the way you saw it before."

Like his books, Pratchett "seems to have become more himself as the years have gone on," Gaiman says. They have been friends for almost 30 years. "I like the white-bearded incarnation. If we had a proper old-fashioned queen she would undoubtedly have Terry as her advisor, and then only the right people would have their heads cut off … He's funny, generous, tetchy, very moved by a sense of fairness. He would have been a good master criminal I think."

Snuff is the third novel Pratchett has written using voice-recognition technology rather than a keyboard: he is no longer able to touch type, although he can prod words out letter by letter. When we go back to his home, nestled in a valley in the Wiltshire hills, Pratchett is keen to show off the software. "Save work," he thunders at the six ranked screens on which he works. "Get spell box," he demonstrates, and is immediately obeyed – although with a selection of words to choose from, rather than anything magical.

"It's a great nerdy thing to play with. The first thing they did was put all my books in electronic form through the computer, and overnight it made a pretty good fist at words like Granny Weatherwax and Rincewind. I have to teach it new words. I think the most abstruse one we've put in here is ferkidoodle."

Terry Pratchett