Show notes
Season two starts now! In this premiere episode of the second season of the Book Maven: A Literary Revue, Bethanne Patrick sits down with Alexander McCall Smith to discuss his philosophical female protagonists and writing multiple series at once.Here's a fun fact: Bethanne watched the 1981 TV production of Brideshead Revisited on three different continents. In today's episode, she discusses the many adaptations of Brideshead Revisited, The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder.Can Bethanne beat the clock? She gives us 6 Recs lovey for our To Be Read lists. Titles include My Beautiful Laundrette by Hanif Kureishi, Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell, Less by Andrew Sean Greer, Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls, The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, and Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters.Find Bethanne on X, Substack, Instagram, and Threads.The Book Maven: A Literary Revue is hosted by Bethanne Patrick, produced by Christina McBride, and engineered by Jordan Aaron, with help from Lauren Stack.All titles mentioned: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Series, 44 Scotland Street Series, Isabel Dalousie Series, The Perfect Passion Company Series by Alexander McCall Smith, The Obelisk Gate, Broken Earth Trilogy,and Great Cities Series by N. K. Jemisin, James by Percival Everett, American Fiction,Colored Television by Danzy Senna, Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, B*****d Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison, Arcadia by Lauren Groff, Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson, Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, My Beautiful Laundrette by Hanif Kureishi, Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell, Less by Andrew Sean Greer, Mrs. Caliban by Rachel Ingalls, The Love Songs of W. E. B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, and Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters.As always, all of the titles mentioned are up on our Bookshop account: https://bookshop.org/lists/the-book-maven-podcast-book-list-season-2 Use this link to support these authors! Episode Transcript:Bethanne: Welcome to season two of the Book Maven, a literary revue. This season, we'll talk to leading authors, dig into the classics to decide which should stay in the literary canon, and I'll recommend some of my favorite books to you. We'll have all that and more in this episode, but first, Alexander McCall Smith, author of the worldwide bestselling Number One Ladies Detective Club series, the 66 Scotland Street books, and the Isabel Dalhousie novels joined me to talk about his expertise, both as a writer, but also in ethics because you might not know this, but Alexander McCall Smith is a doctor of medical ethics and taught for many decades at the University of Edinburgh. Specifically, Smith talks about the important role ethics plays in the development of stories, as well as responsibilities writers have when publishing their stories.Join us now in conversation as we talk about ethics, when they pertain to Smith's career, and if he applies them differently when he's writing fiction.Bethanne: You are a more prolific writer than most I know, or many at least, and yet before you were a writer, you had another career as a legal expert on ethics, medical ethics to be precise. I often try to explain to young people that ethics is very important when we're in community. And so, in talking about the ethics of creative writing, do you feel that there are different ethics that you apply to your life as a creative, as someone who writes, and then as someone who publishes.Alexander McCall Smith: In relation to publishing, there are very specific ethical questions, moral questions, which arise in the process of publishing, or which are about publishing, because of what publishing does. Writing has particular issues that it raises. They're all very similar to the, this is very similar to one another, but there's a different emphasis in the particular field. There are different responsibilities, you could say, which rest on the shoulders of publishers and of writers. Some of the responsibilities are the same, but there will be very particular ones according to the, to which role you're talking about.Bethanne: So let's talk about the responsibilities of writers. This is something that I find surprises my undergraduates at times because they've never thought of writing as being something that does bear responsibility toward other people. They think of, this is part of our society, they think of books as products on a shelf and some of them love to read, some of them don't, some of them love to write, some of them don't, but they've never considered the fact that the person who tells the stories, who puts them down, actually has some things that they should read. Or shouldn't do.Alexander McCall Smith: Yes, I think that's right. I think that some people may think of writing as being a very private activity that you sit there and you write, and that's it, and that there's no real effect that is going to be felt elsewhere. But in fact, writing is a form of talking in public. So when you write, you're putting out ideas, you're putting out statements into the world. You, if you write them and you don't publish them, if you just put them in the drawer after you've written them, that's another matter. That's not going to have any impact on anybody. But the moment you publish anything, you are potentially having quite an effect. On the real world having an effect on other peopleBethanne: So the Isabel Dalhousie series as with others but Isabel in particular because she is a philosopher there's so many questions being brought up during the course of a regular life the quotidian for Isabel always triggers thoughts about how we should live and how we should treat other people now of course, as I've said before, you have a lot of professional experience with this.But I am wondering, when you're writing one of the books about Isabel, do you have particular ideas about this time along she's going to be dealing with love, this time along she's going to be dealing with office politics? Or does it come up for you while you're writing?Alexander McCall Smith: Sometimes it comes up for me while I'm writing.But in other cases, before I write the book, for example, one of the Isabel Dalhousie books, I think of issues that she probably is going to address in the books. Something will have caught my attention as raising rather interesting ethical issues, moral problems, and I will deal with it. For example, how we relate to the past is an issue that she often thinks about.I was having a conversation with somebody recently about the issue of the return of cultural treasures from museums, the issue of whether museums should hand over treasures which have a particular meaning to the country from which they come, that's, of course, a very vexed question in certain contexts.So that sort of thing, I'll get Isabel talking about that, because I find there's a lot of moral meat in those matters. And on other occasions. An issue will just arise in the course of the writing of the book. She'll be talking to a friend and she may reflect on the problems that particular friend has.And, uh, we may then find ourselves in a discussion of the, the implications of friendship because friendship is something which plays a very important part in our day to day life. And friendship, of course, raises all sorts of fairly profound, philosophical issues. And if you look at a philosophical discussion of friendship going back to the time of Aristotle, there's a great scene of interesting discussion on the morality of friendship.So these issues are all around us in our daily lives. And I think people are very responsive to a discussion of those because many people feel these moral problems in their daily life. In the way they treat others in what is expected of them. They're walking down the street, for example, and they find somebody begging, wanting help.What is, what should one do in those circumstances? Should you walk past? Do you help? That sort of issue? It's all about us all the time.Bethanne: It is around us all the time, and it's not just in fairly moneyed, privileged Edinburgh with Isabel, it's in Botswana with Mma Ramotswe way of course, and she, if there were ever a philosopher in this world, it is her, it is she, and she is able, and this is what I'm thinking about when you mention the everyday questions of friendship, of how we treat each other, which is why we have columns like the ethicist in the New York Times advice columns. People need all different kinds of levels of ways to think about this. You might, some people might want to read something that's fairly simple. Others want to chew on these topics a bit more, but still others, like your incredible creation, Mma Ramotswe, have very firm, firmly held, ideas about morals and ethics. Can you talk to me a bit about her and how she and Isabel differ or are alike?Alexander McCall Smith: That raises very interesting questions, Bethanne, because I think that Mma Ramotswe is a bit of a philosopher. She's not a woman who's had a tertiary education. She left school aged about 16 or whatever. But she's a woman of immense wisdom.She's a very wise woman. She's also a person who very much understands good. And, uh, at various points in talking about her, I describe some of the moral influences in her life, and one in particular is her late father. Who was somebody, obviously, to whom she was very close, and she talks about how he was a good kind man, that he understood the traditional morality of Botswana, and she often refers to that.She talks about the old Botswana ways. So she turns to, um, the past of her people, and to the accumulated wisdom of that particular nation, in matters of how you should behave. And she says at one or two points, If you look at the old Botswana morality, it provides all the answers to us. So that's one, one approach.And of course, she's, she's right. Because in those old codes of behavior are some very deep and important principles of morality that I think we'd all sign up for. So that's where she does it. She's a woman of great sympathy. And of course, many people hold the view that sympathy for others or empathy with others is a very important component in how we, how we relate morally to them and how we behave.She has those sources available to her. Now, Isabel Dalhousie, who is the heroine of a series that I write, set in Edinburgh, she is a professional philosopher. She approaches problems in a rather different way, in that she will have a theoretical approach to them. She will understand very well the basis on which somebody like Kant, for example, would approach a moral issue.She's familiar with the writings of all these known philosophers. So she does a rather more theoretically based morality. I think that she doesn't always get it right. Whereas Mma Ramotswe would get it right.Bethanne: I love that!Alexander McCall Smith: And Isabel, I think can end up, and she might end up, actually finally opting for the very common sense, intuitive morality that Mma Ramotswe embodies.So they're both, both those women are philosophers. They're doing different sorts of philosophy, but it fits the circumstances of both of them.Bethanne: It does. And I'm just realizing too, that these different books, including the other, one of the other series that I just adore is 44 Scotland Street and talk about quotidian day to day ethics and different ages interacting. This must be so much fun for you to be able to take these things and in one place, as you say, have a very wise and good woman, another place have a very, very academic and privileged woman, in another place to have parents and children, and it's no wonder you're able to write four or five books a year, because I'm not saying that this is pure play–it is a lot of work, but it must be work that at times feels like play for you.Alexander McCall Smith: Yes. It's tremendous fun. I love writing. I suspect that most people who write get great pleasure from it. I love the conversations that I have with my characters, and I love getting my characters to wrestle with moral problems. Even the dogs. I've got a dog. In the Scotland Street series called Cyril, and he belongs to Angus Lordie. And Cyril is the only dog in Scotland with a gold tooth. And Cyril has moral problems. His big moral problem is that his big temptation, I suppose, is that he wants to bite. The ankles of one of the other characters, and he sits there. So we see Cyril wrestling with this very canine temptation to nip the ankles of one of the other characters who's got particularly nippable ankles. And Cyril thinks, Cyril thinks I better not do it because if I do it, I'll be walloped by my owner with a rolled up newspaper and he rises to the challenge. He manages. In his rather strange canine way, he manages to deal with that temptation. I get great pleasure from that. And also, I think, when I write about the young characters in the Scotland Street series, there's a character called Bertie–Bethanne: Bertie is one of my favorites.Alexander McCall Smith:He's a lovely, lovely little boy who's seven years old. He's got a terribly pushy mother, very pushy mother. And Bertie has all sorts of moral issues that his little life has to deal with, there's a very bossy girl at school called Olive, who says that Bertie's going to have to marry her when they're 20. And how does he deal with that? So these issues are all about us.Bethanne: I do not want to take up too much more of your day in Edinburgh, but I do want to ask, since the great Hippopotamus Hotel, another Mma Ramotswe came out last October. And what is the next Alexander McCall Smith book we have to look forward to?Alexander McCall Smith: Uh, I think the next one will be volume two of my new series, the Perfect Passion Company was the first volume in that series, the second one Looking For You is about a marriage bureau in Edinburgh, an introductions bureau in Edinburgh. As I say, the first book was published last year, second one coming out shortly in, in New York. And I'm having great fun with that because once again, one can bring in all sorts of aspects of people's lives when they go to this marriage bureau introductions agency and say, I want you to help me to find a partner. Then we can see various aspects of their lives. We can see where they've been going wrong, where they might have something to offer and so on. It's good territory from that point of view.Bethanne: It is. And what do we, are you calling it the Perfect Passion Series orAlexander McCall Smith: Probably the Perfect Passion Company series. It's something which I'm enjoying greatly.Bethanne: Thank you, Sandy, for joining us this week. You can find all of Alexander McCall Smith's books wherever books are sold. Now let's move on to Friday Reads where we'll see what you've been reading this week.Welcome back to our regular segment on Friday Reads posts from around the socials. This season we decided to highlight fewer posts and dig a little deeper for you into the titles that are shared. Please let us know if you like this new format, as always, my engineer and producer, Jordan is here to help. Jordan, what's our first book?Jordan: At first, we've got a post from Nicole. It's a picture of what she's reading. It's the Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin, and she is reading it on an e reader.Bethanne: You know, a great fact about N. K. Jemisin is she is one of the most acclaimed sci fi fantasy writers in the U. S. And it…
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