My Weekly Book

Two and a Half Pillars of Wisdom - Alexander McCall Smith

Alexander McCall Smith is beginning to remind me of Charles Dickens. He writes series novels that are published in weekly installments. His output is prolific and he carries on an entirely different career (in Dickens’ case journalism, in his academia) at the same time as being a novelist. His work is strongly observational, character-based and often parodic while also achieving mass-market appeal. It is regionally based (although admittedly not in London, like his predecessor’s). I think the parallels are quite strong and wonder what this might mean for McCall Smith’s reputation in, say, 50 years’ time.

Regular readers will recall that I have expended much of my reading energy - more limited that would have been ideal this year - on this author’s works. Book number seven on my list was Blue Shoes and Happiness, the seventh volume in his No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. Like so many others, these are the books that introduced me to his writing and made me keen to seek out more. The latest book I found to have been written almost in a minor key - very melancholy and pessimistic in tone, with things in Mma Precious Ramotswe’s world not seeming in a positive way to me.

Moving on to the Scotland Street novels I thought I had divined the reason as these do seem to be the works that are firing the author’s imagination at present. I have just read volume three, Love Over Scotland thanks to the auspices of a kind Bookcrosser who lent it to me, and I understand volume four, entitled The World According to Bertie , has been published in good time for the Christmas rush. I also stopped off along the way to read the first volume of the Isabel Dalhousie series, The Sunday Philosophy Club, and was glad that I had.

And so to the book in question. As we have seen it is one of no less than four series that the author has on the go and I would wager that this is the one that you will know least about By way of introduction, here’s what McCall Smith’s agent has to say about the series:

2003 and 2004 saw the publication a new series featuring the unnaturally tall and exceedingly memorable Professor Doctor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, a blend of the cultivated pomposity of Frasier Crane and the haplessness of Inspector Clouseau. His adventures with his equally ridiculous colleagues, Professors Florianus Prinzel and Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer, all taking place in the rarefied world of the Institute of Romance Philology at Regensburg, were described in three instalments: PORTUGUESE IRREGULAR VERBS, THE FINER POINTS OF SAUSAGE DOGS and AT THE VILLA OF REDUCED CIRCUMSTANCES. All three books have now been collected into one volume, THE TWO AND A HALF PILLARS OF WISDOM, published by Abacus in the UK, and a fourth novel is in progress.

I like the comparison with Dr Frasier Crane, and think that’s a clever piece of marketing. But I was very surprised to learn that this book was contemporaneous with his Edinburgh-based work and younger than much of the Precious Ramotswe stuff. It has the tone almost of a dry run in which the author is playing with characters, humour and situations and seeing what works. It has most of his hallmarks, including an episodic structure, a lack of self-awareness in the eponymous hero and a delight in situational comedy.

But reading it feels like an exercise in completism. I’m glad I did but it won’t be the strand of his writing that’ll be top of my list to follow in future.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 22nd, 2007 at 7:47 pm and is filed under 2007 reading challenge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.