Word: mccalls
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...People don't usually see this side of Africa," McCall Smith says by way of explaining the books' success. "They just see war, famine and oppression." In his Botswana, people go about their business with good humor and goodwill, earnestly meeting the quotidian challenges common to every country. The books also "make a moral point about the importance of courtesy, of trying to keep traditional ways," says the author. Thus Ramotswe's fiance is always referred to as Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni and his place of work by its full name, the Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors. AIDS, on the other hand...
Alexander Mccall Smith is fond of a fat--make that traditionally built--woman named Precious. Their dalliance began as many a relationship has, during a holiday in France. On a trip in 1996, McCall Smith scribbled a few lines of a short story, which grew into a novel and then into a series chronicling the life of Precious Ramotswe, owner of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Gaborone, Botswana. Five books into the series, he has no intention of breaking it off. "To say goodbye now would be like leaving in the middle of a conversation," the Zimbabwean-born...
...McCall Smith, 55, is almost never rude. That may be why he has become an object of devotion--especially among traditionally built ladies--worldwide. He is a particular favorite among literary societies and has met with dozens of them on his U.S. promotional tour for The Full Cupboard of Life (Pantheon; 198 pages), the most recent Ramotswe book, out this week. "I do 150 ladies at a time, at lunch," he says of gatherings he visited in Palm Springs, Calif.; Palm Beach, Fla.; and Las Vegas, to name a few. "Did you even know there was a Las Vegas literary...
Delight is the slightly rumpled, bow-tied McCall Smith's operative mode. His books--The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Tears of the Giraffe, Morality for Beautiful Girls and The Kalahari Typing School for Men--which detail the quiet and quirky adventures of Botswanan sleuth Mma (pronounced Ma, the most correct way of addressing women in Botswana) Ramotswe, have become international word-of-mouth hits, sold millions and been translated into 26 languages, partly because of their sheer cheerfulness...
...comic writing, The New Yorker had the edge with (to choose four names spanning seven decades) S.J. Perelman, Woody Allen, Bruce McCall and Steve Martin. But I had a fondness for Playboy?s comedy stars - Jean Shepherd, Harvey Kurtzman, Jules Feiffer, Lenny Bruce, Arnold Roth, Shel Silverstein - in part because I?d followed and loved their earlier work from, respectively, WOR radio, Mad, the Village Voice, Fantasy LPs, Humbug and Look. They were the guys I?d have chosen if I were Playboy?s humor editor. (In which case, I?d have dropped the designation of ?humor? heading each piece...