Talk Back

[Old Man Scrimshaw]

It’s nice when you can describe a new book in a series as “more of the same” and still be utterly delighted. In the case of Tears of the Giraffe, the second book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, anything less than “more of the same” would have been a huge disappointment. I like to include the back cover blurbs, just to give a review some context, but, in the case of this book, I think it gives too much away. Instead, I’ll indulge in a little more unspecific raving…

I read a quote from Anthony Daniels (of the Sunday Telegraph, not Star Wars) who perfectly described the over arching appeal of these books:

“This is art that conceals art. I haven't read anything with such unalloyed pleasure for a long time."

This quote, and the books themselves, remind me very much of Graham Greene’s supposedly lighter works, his self-described “entertainments”. I don’t know much about Greene so I am not sure why he chose to call, for example, Our Man in Havana an entertainment and The Power and The Glory a novel. It seems fair to assume a book labeled as an entertainment was deemed to have less artistic merit or at the very least belong to a less artistic category than a book labeled as a novel. To me though, Our Man in Havana is very much “art that conceals art” and very much a more pleasurable and accessible book than The Power and The Glory. Like all art, it is of course highly subjective. But I do think “art that conceals art” is an apt description of not only McCall Smith’s work but of any great work of entertainment and why I often prefer things that are considered “pop” or “light” or insert your own dismissive term here.

Serious work of any medium almost always wears that seriousness on its sleeve. It is complicated or intellectual or important because it tells you that in an obvious and laborious way. If I were to become a fascist dictator, the first book I would burn is Ulysses (sorry, Pat). Give me Great Expectations any day. A book that is now considered classic literature but in its day had mass appeal. It was serialized chapter by chapter and there would be throngs waiting for the next installment’s arrival. In general, writing and publishing has moved away from this trend. Popular bestsellers and serious novels are two distinct and separate categories with little or no overlap. Ironically, the information age has made the ivory tower retreat higher into their fortress. Thankfully, McCall Smith’s books cross those categories again… to the absolute delight of this admittedly snobbish anti-snob.

Read these books, dammit.

NEXT: Another foray into non-fiction with The Pig Who Sang at the Moon: The Emotional Life of Farm Animals by Jeffrey Masson. In the words of Tom Waits, “There’s always some killin’ you gotta do around the farm…”