Alexander McCall Smith has written over 100 books and sold 45 million copies worldwide. This revelation, by Jenny Crwys-Williams of Talk Radio 702, had the audience clapping and cheering enthusiastically on the first day of the Franschhoek Literary Festival. The high school hall was filled to the brim with schoolchildren and adults waiting eagerly to meet one of their favourite authors.
Jenny posed the question: Why do Alexander McCall Smith’s books appeal to millions of people all over the world?
McCall Smith responded that most of his readers like the optimistic world that he creates. They particularly enjoy the main character, Precious Ramotswe, of The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. His view is that “literature, like life, is a broad spectrum and different people occupy different positions. I choose to occupy a more pleasant one!”
I looked at him from the front row and concluded that no wonder he has such a happy face. He comes across as just about the nicest man I have ever met. He is at ease with himself, he’s witty, he laughs often, and has the audience eating out of his hand. The idea that literature should be about “dysfunction and pathology and not pleasant things” does not appeal to him. Although he engages with serious issues in his books, he does so in a “less gloomy” way. He creates an optimistic world for his readers.
Creating a “happy world” for his readers entails writing for two to three hours a day. McCall Smith publishes four to five books a year. He tells his audience that he does not need to think when he writes because he writes in a “minor dissociative state, something like what happens when driving without realising that one is actually driving a car”. This dissociative state happens to a lot of people. A lot of time goes by when he is writing and the words “come straight into the screen; it is curious.” He remarks that he does very little rewriting and that The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books have never been redrafted.
The series depicts Botswana as it was fifteen years ago; a place that has remained the same. McCall suggests that “places don’t really change dramatically in their essence. They maintain their culture and their feel. If I encounter anything I don’t like, I ignore it. Like now I ignore shopping malls. There are no mobile phones either. I write out what I don’t like!” McCall Smith laughs out loud and exclaims that “as long as I am spared, I will write.” What an incredibly warm human being, I think to myself.
Are his books, therefore, about “fun, friendship, art and ethics,” Jenny Crwys-Williams asks. The author replies in the affirmative and elaborates that all his books have bits of “niceness, although the word ‘nice’ needs to be rehabilitated”. He argues that “nice” suggests that people so inclined are boring! (At which point he bursts out into laughter and says nice people are indeed a little dull.) But he stresses that “courtesy and ethics” are important to him. He values “manners, as they are the building blocks and the greater system of morality”. He maintains that lack of manners has resulted in “people over 30 and 40 all over the world believing that the world is going to the dogs”. His premise is that there is no need “to [push] people when you are going through the door” of life.
Talking about life brings us to the issue of aging and Jenny asks the author how old the character of Precious Ramotswe is, as she seems not to be aging. She also wonders for how long he will continue writing the series.
He remarks that that there is some sort of chronological order to this story. Precious Ramotswe is about 42 years old, McCall Smith avers, adding that he has just signed a new contract to write 14 or 15 more books in the series and that a new book is due in which Precious Ramotswe has a baby. He exclaims that in this book there is a big discussion about baby shoes and protracted tea-drinking scenes. He laughs as he tells Jenny that he writes “tea scenes when he can’t think”, but that the tea episodes have had a positive impact on the American tea-drinking public. To date sales of rooibos tea have increased by up to 70% in US. The author has also successfully launched his own brand of rooibos teas!
Talk of tea has me looking at my watch and I realise how time has flown and that it is time for my second cup of tea! I walk out of the hall amid clapping and cheering, feeling light and thinking how infectious Alexander McCall Smith’s brand of happiness is.
This report was written by a member of the Contemporary Literary Practice (English) honours group at Stellenbosch University. The CLP module includes report-writing in the mould of literary journalism, along with other forms of writing and literary practitionership. The report was co-edited by group facilitator Leon de Kock.