Scots and Sundry

Ian Rankin, the “king of tartan noir” (can someone retire the phrase already? Please?!) is the featured interview at the Independent where he seems to surprise Lesley McDowell by being so damned affable, and to demonstrate that appearance-consciousness isn’t strictly limited to female writers, Rankin’s described as “leather-jacketed and windswept” and looking “younger than his 44 years.” Lazy profile writing–always fun.

Rankin also gets into why crime fiction matters:

We come back to the importance of social realism in his books. “I’m very interested in the effect crime has on the community around it,” he says, “not so much the mechanics of the whodunit. I do think of crime novels as novels about society – if I was going to visit a foreign country, and I wanted to get a picture of what was going on, I’d read their crime writers. The last few Booker prize lists have been dominated by historical novels and I think the English novel does seem to be looking backwards a lot, like it was afraid of the present or the future.”

We have touched on an old bugbear of Rankin’s: the failure of literary prize panels to recognise crime fiction as a serious contender. He takes up the theme once more. “Literary critics still have that knee-jerk reaction that the crime novel looks pre-planned, geometric, everything’s worked out, everything’s tied up at the end,” he argues. “But that’s an old-fashioned thing, I like open endings, I leave mine as open as possible. The crime novel is supposed to be structured but it has a mind of its own, and that’s why it often attracts literary writers too, like Martin Amis or Julian Barnes. Plenty of them are intrigued by the form.”

But now that he’s on a book-every-two-years contract, he has some more freedom for taking longer for research and developing his thought processes even more. Hell, that works for me.

Rankin’s neighbor, Alexander McCall Smith, has been getting tons of ink spilled about him of late. Earlier I linked to the first two parts of his autobiographical essay, and the concluding installment is available here. In it, he explains how the surprising success has totally upended his world:

I HAVE BEEN immensely fortunate. There are many writers in Scotland whose work is much better than mine, who have not had the good fortune which came my way. And I am conscious, too, of the fact that everything that has happened to the books has been the result of the help and commitment of others. I did not expect all this to happen, and I am greatly embarrassed by it. But, quite frankly, I get the most immense pleasure from the knowledge that my work is being read. I hope that this does not sound conceited, for it is what I feel, and what any author would feel. I get many letters every day, from all over the world, and some of these are very moving. It seems that Mma Ramotswe, in particular, has talked to people in a way which has taken all of us – myself included – by surprise. Any credit for that must go to the people who inspired me to write this particular story, through the lives they have led and the values which they profess. I am not ashamed to be the chronicler of such lives: I am proud to do it. It has been an accident, in a way, but it is an accident that I am very glad has happened.

It’s a sad fact that a lot of great writers are ignored in their day–and forever after–but sometimes, everything does fall into place as they should, so there’s no reason for McCall Smith to begrudge any success he gets. And with the upcoming release of his new book THE SUNDAY PHILOSOPHY CLUB (which was launched in “Scotland’s largest booksigning in history) the reviews are already starting to pile in feting the book’s charms.

So far, my favorite review appeared in today’s edition of Newsday, simply because of the opening paragraphs:

Last night I dreamed I went — no, not to Manderley again. Instead, I found myself at a speedwriting contest between Alexander McCall Smith and Joyce Carol Oates. (This NPR-inflected fantasia was, of course, presided over by puzzlemaster Will Shortz.)

Both competitors got off to a quick start. In reality, McCall Smith tends to polish off 1,000 words an hour and will have five more books out in the United States by year’s end. And Oates’ pace can only be called punishing. Back in dreamland, on the Scotsman’s side of the aisle, his real-life fans Donald Rumsfeld and Laura Bush were drawing some gimlet glances, not least from another true adept, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bassist Flea. Flea might well have felt more comfortable with the Goths across the way, many of whom seemed to be clutching copies of Oates’ slasher novel “Zombie.”

When Oates began deploying both hands on separate books, Serena Williams and I both cried foul so loudly that I awoke, only to find a copy of “The Sunday Philosophy Club” on my pillow.

There’s just something so inherently funny about this setup that I couldn’t help but laugh. Kerry Fried, the reviewer in question, did like the book quite a lot as well.