STOP PRESS:
L-space is bending into itself in the aftershocks of the Alzheimer news today. Terry Pratchett’s press release about his prognosis was short, factual and with a just a micro-trace of his trademark humour to put an optimistic spin on it. He did not say “I aten’t dead yet”, but he may as well have.
This blow could have happened to a lesser writer (a number of, in fact).
It didn’t.
Perhaps ill health is a by-product of genius, then, or perhaps genius is a by-product of an organism that knows (on a molecular level) its time may be limited. After all, it’s been speculated that Felix Mendelssohn had a brain tumour, that Mozart suffered from Tourette Syndrome, that Einstein was autistic. If that’s the price you pay for brilliance, I’ll settle for featuring on the New York Times Top Ten with a book that will astonish the readers by its lack of genius...
L-space is bending into itself in the aftershocks of the Alzheimer news today. Terry Pratchett’s press release about his prognosis was short, factual and with a just a micro-trace of his trademark humour to put an optimistic spin on it. He did not say “I aten’t dead yet”, but he may as well have.
This blow could have happened to a lesser writer (a number of, in fact).
It didn’t.
Perhaps ill health is a by-product of genius, then, or perhaps genius is a by-product of an organism that knows (on a molecular level) its time may be limited. After all, it’s been speculated that Felix Mendelssohn had a brain tumour, that Mozart suffered from Tourette Syndrome, that Einstein was autistic. If that’s the price you pay for brilliance, I’ll settle for featuring on the New York Times Top Ten with a book that will astonish the readers by its lack of genius...
Anyway, for updates on Terry and the Discworld, please see http://paulkidby.com/news/index.html.
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