Another day, another Alexander McCall Smith link

Hey, it’s not my fault there are just so damned many that keep popping up on my radar. But this profile in the Grey Lady goes somewhat beyond standard boilerplate fare, as along with talking about the new book, his prolific output, and why he writes gentle instead of violent, there’s the general reaction to his decision to write 44 Scotland Street, something akin to abject horror:

As if he were not busy enough, the Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith decided some months ago to embark on the Dickensian pursuit of writing a serial novel for his local newspaper, in his case The Scotsman in Edinburgh. The news was not greeted with universal happiness.

“His agent and all of his publishers were distraught,” said Neville Moir, the managing editor of Polygon, a small Edinburgh firm that in 1988 cleverly published the first of Mr. McCall Smith’s “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” series, which had an initial run of 1,500 copies. (The series is now five books long and has sold 2.5 million copies in the United States alone.)

“I phoned him and said, ‘Do you realize that writing a column once a week is phenomenal pressure?’ ” Mr. Moir continued. “And he said, ‘Well, actually it’s once a day.’ “

What’s also amusing is that whenever his past as a children’s book writer is brought up, the same book (THE PERFECT HAMBURGER) is brought up time and time again. But I bet I’ll be the only interviewer who’s actually read the book…