Tag: i’ll bet

I had many fascinating and enjoyable phone calls about the books while he was writing them–the phone would ring: ‘Listen to this’, and he would read a passage he was particularly pleased with, and I could see why; or ‘I’m not sure what should happen now’ and he would tell me the plot up to that moment, and we’d talk about its possible direction.  Then he’d say ‘Right, I know what happens now.‘  The call was finished, and I’d hear no more, but when I read the final text there’d never be even an echo of our conversation: something had struck him from a completely different direction and was better than anything we’d discussed during that call.  Genius.

I miss those calls, his company, his humour, and his erudition, but we have his books, the deep moral sense that pervades and imbues them, their supreme craftsmanship, his skill in writing works to which we return again and again, his characters, his puns, his footnotes.  I miss the challenges he set me, and the pleasure involved in their achievement, sometimes to his considerable surprise.  There won’t be another like him, but his values will influence and inspire his readers for as long as his books are read.  Children become adults, teenagers become professors and heads of industry.  And as Terry influenced them, they influence the world.