Of Santa and sadness: Terry Pratchett’s illness

I heard the news a couple of weeks ago that my favorite living writer has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s Disease.

Terry Pratchett writes the Discworld series, a line of humorous fantasy books that I’d like to write my master’s thesis on, if I ever get around to it. The series is that good – as in that funny and that deep and that imaginative.

I stumbled onto the series about three years ago, and have been working my way through it since. I didn’t write anything here after I heard about Pratchett's Alzheimer’s, as it was announced several months ago and writing news travels slow.

His website’s here. They have a link to speech he gave to a disease research group, which is kinda heartbreaking to watch because he’s funny and everyone in the room is too sad to laugh.

Anyway, my own story little of how a good writer can affect your life:

A few years back at the Abilene Reporter-News, we had an intern on the copy desk from Oklahoma U. Smart guy – the college intellectual type you’d expect to see wearing a Che T-shirt in a most definitely not-ironic-to-him kind of way.

One night I heard him in an argument with another copy editor, who was teasing him because he had recently announced that he would never tell his children about Santa Claus. "Because I will NEVER lie to my children."

I didn’t join in, just thought about what a serious, humorless childhood is in store for some kid in the future. But the question remained with me – why teach kids about Santa? Tradition? It’s a fun thing to do? Tradition?

A couple of months ago, I Netflixed the Pratchett books that had been turned into films. (All the films are terrible, by the way.) The best was Hogfather, a live-action take on Pratchett’s bizarre take on the Santa myth.

As mentioned, it wasn’t a good movie, but it made a point that I’ll remember. Borrowing from the phraseology that’s still in my head, it went something like:

You can sift through every inch and all the matter that makes up the universe, and you’ll never find a single atom of justice or compassion. These things exist only because men believe in them. And before you can believe in the big things, you have to be taught to believe in the small things.

It’s a great sentiment. A guy who writes about what trolls drink to get drunk came up with it.