A Guardian critic called Terry Pratchett 'mediocre' and people are NOT happy

"Get real. Terry Pratchett is not a literary genius"

That’s the headline of a pretty brutal piece in today’s Guardian by art critic Jonathan Jones on Terry Pratchett’s skill as a writer. It’s managed to do the impossible - unite the internet.

The much-loved author died in March of this year after a well-documented battle with Alzheimer’s. His final novel, The Shepherd’s Crown, was published on August 27.

Here’s the kicker - Jones actually hasn’t read any of Pratchett’s books but still felt qualified to offer his option on the quality of the writing.

"I have never read a single one of his books and I never plan to. Life’s too short.

"No offence, but Pratchett is so low on my list of books to read before I die that I would have to live a million years before getting round to him. I did flick through a book by him in a shop, to see what the fuss is about, but the prose seemed very ordinary."

He goes on to discuss why people should read what he considers "actual literature" - in his opinion, that means Jane Austen and Charles Bukowski - before finishing up by saying that "it’s time we stopped this pretence that mediocrity is equal to genius".

In what is possibly the first instance of this, Twitter (including many of Jones’ colleagues from the Guardian) was unanimous in defending Pratchett and slamming Jones, not only for his failure to actually read any of Pratchett’s work before critiquing it but also for the insensitivity of the piece given the author’s recent passing.

Literary/genre snobbery gives me the red mist of rage but never more so than when the sanctimonious pricks admit they haven't read the books

— Anna Carey (@urchinette) August 31, 2015

Next time I write a vicious clickbait piece about an incredibly talented comic writer, I'm TOTALLY going to pretend I've read their books.

— Jenny Colgan is on Threads as @jennycolganbooks (@jennycolgan) August 31, 2015

We’ll just leave this quote from Terry Pratchett himself here:

"It’s not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren’t doing it."

H/T: BreakingNews.ie