Thursday, September 27, 2007
The Kansan did not run a feature on the first speech of the Hall Center Humanities Lecture Series given on Monday by internationally acclaimed author Alexander McCall Smith. I attended the event and as the Hall Center Student Scholar, had the incredible opportunity of meeting Smith.
When I sat down for dinner with noted author and Hall Center lecturer Alexander McCall Smith, I had no idea what to expect. That may have been because Smith, a Scotsman, was sporting a kilt. However, it was also because I had some tricky questions about his beloved “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective” series.
True, I had enjoyed the series about Mma Ramotswe, a lady detective from Botswana, for all of the charm that each story possessed. However, I had felt slightly uneasy about enjoying them. The trouble was that they were just too charming. As a serious student of African literature, I am used to being torn apart by the literary products of Africa. However, his books seemed to skirt the most important issues of the continent, instead describing Botswana as what appeared to be the best place on earth. Could you really have literature about Africa that did not deal with the issues that wrack the continent? Were his solely-positive portrayals of African people almost condescending?
However, my attitude towards the series quickly changed when I learned that McCall Smith holds no pretensions about his writing. He said, “I am sometimes accused of being a Utopian writer. I suppose I am.”
From our discussion, Smith quickly showed that he had a huge knowledge of all of the issues that I had privately thought he had avoided in his novels. However, he was not attempting to address these issues in his books.
“There are too many people writing heart of darkness stories about Africa,” he said. Such a positive view as Smith’s is rare in writing, especially about Africa.
However, for him, it is natural. I realized that Smith is an undeniable optimist, viewing the world through an incredibly positive lens. He relishes life and people and what is good in the world. And he wants to share that with his readers. In fact, Smith cited a passage in a book he had recently read that said that the most natural reaction to beauty is a desire to share it. This is entirely his method. He views beauty in the people and situations around him and wants to share it, what good there is in the world, with his millions of readers
So, in his own way, he does tell the hard stories of Africa, but they are colored by the way that he views the world. Thus, when Smith went to Botswana, he was more interested in the brave way that people keep on living day to day when situations are difficult than the difficult situations themselves. He was immediately entranced by the positive way that the people there triumph by just living and loving life, even difficult situations. Thus his “fables,” as he calls them, are a tribute to Botswana, a tribute to part of the world usually only covered by negative press.
It is a rare feature of literature today, but obviously an important one, as Smith’s books are only becoming more popular. We can all learn from Smith’s take on the world. We can all learn to cherish the small things.
After an incredible lecture given by Alexander McCall Smith, I would encourage students to attend the Hall Center Lecture series where they will have a chance to encounter fascinating personalities. The next speaker, Sara Ahmed, a professor of race and cultural studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London, and the author of more than 30 articles and book chapters, and four books, including “The Cultural Politics of Emotion” and “Differences that Matter: Feminist Theory and Postmodernism,” will be speaking on Oct. 22 in Woodruff Auditorium.
Brenna T. Daldorph
Lawrence sophomore
On Campus: September 24, 2007
Here's what's happening on campus today, September 24, 2007
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