Who is clovis anderson

Q Your books are about the manners of a community as much as its mysteries. Are you a fan of the novel of manners? A I'm a great fan of Austen and also of Barbara Pym, who wrote wonderful social comedies that I find very amusing. I'm very interested in how important customs and social expectations are in creating and maintaining stable societies.

I think if we ignore the small courtesies, we fundamentally weaken the bonds that make society possible. Then I'm afraid we're faced with people who can be quite feral in their approach to life. Q Before you return to the call of the sea, can you tell us about the Really Terrible Orchestra?

A Indeed! The Really Terrible Orchestra is an amateur orchestra my wife and I established for people who are musically challenged but want to play together. I play the bassoon. I'm very weak.

My wife plays the E-flat horn. She's not very good either. Last year we filled a New York concert hall. I think it's quite pleasing to hear a group of amateurs playing their hearts out and not doing it at all well.

People get the joke and the laughter is wonderful. His North American tour was canceled due to travel restrictions resulting from the Icelandic volcano. Carole Barrowman is a writer in Wisconsin.

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Usually in the genre of the detective novel, there are elaborate plots with all sorts of twists and turns. But Mma Ramotswe will just solve the mysteries by going and asking somebody, which is what life is like, I think. Real life is quite straightforward—not just in Botswana but anywhere. I think novelists can exaggerate the extent to which life is full of twists and turns. Mma Ramotswe idolizes an old-school detective named Clovis Anderson—she carries around his book, The Principles of Private Detection , but she often ends up doing exactly the opposite of what he recommends.

Yes, Mma Ramotswe really does respect and revere Clovis Anderson, and she'll often quote the rules he stipulates. But then she ends up just doing her own thing. People always write to me and ask, "Where can we get a copy of Clovis Anderson's book? Also, in one of the novels I'm going to have Clovis Anderson turn up in Botswana.

I think he probably comes from somewhere in the American Midwest. He's actually a failure. He's never really been a very good private investigator. Mma Ramotswe will realize he doesn't really know what he's doing, but she'll be so kind to him. She'll give him a little role in one of her cases and let him think he's solved it.

I think I might do that in the next book, which will be volume Speaking of your plans for future books, I read your newest Ladies' Detective book, The Double Comfort Safari Club , in galley form, and I couldn't help noticing that the description on the back didn't correspond with what was inside. Yes, you see, the problem is that publishers ask me for this well before I've written the book. They say, "Give us a summary. This makes me suspect that you're not like J. Rowling, who supposedly had every detail of the Harry Potter series mapped out in advance and stored in a safe somewhere.

Some of the characters in the Ladies' Detective stories have changed quite a bit over time. Have you learned things about them you wouldn't have expected when you started? I suppose so. Mma Makutsi has become more central. Her circumstances have changed, though her character hasn't so much—she was always a little bit bossy.

With the apprentices at the garage, I think we've realized that one of them, Fanwell, is more kind and sensitive than he seemed at first. The other, Charlie, is still rather cocky and arrogant. But not nasty. We've got to figure out what to do with the apprentices. They're rather nice characters, but they've certainly been doing a very long apprenticeship. Mma Ramotswe's husband, Mr. Matekoni, had an episode of depression in one of the books. How does a plot twist like that come to you? Do you suddenly have a vision of him sitting there looking listless?

Yes, that was a complete surprise to me when I was writing that book. When he suddenly became ill, I was as astonished as anybody else. The way I write is that I sit there and I don't really have to think. I don't have to ask myself what's going to happen next.

It just comes. So that, I think, would suggest that it's being done by the subconscious mind. Therefore, things can happen that surprise me. You started writing after you'd already had a successful career as a medical law professor. Since you didn't have to rely on writing for a living, do you think you approached the process differently than a starving kid in New York would have?

There wasn't that pressure. And I think that there is a case for saying that you have a bit more to say as you go through life. I mean, obviously there are people who write wonderful books in their early 20s.

William Dalrymple is one, and I'm sure there are many other examples. But I think those people are the exception. Most of the time, I think one should just let these things mature. It's no bad thing to start a writing career after you've experienced a bit of life. Your writing is also different from a lot of modern fiction.

In the typical New Yorker story, for example, the plot seems to be that someone's life is empty, and then something happens, and then that person's life becomes just a bit more miserable. And then the story ends. I think I have to agree with you about so much fiction being about desperation and dysfunction. Which is curious, because obviously there is despair and dysfunction in this life, but it's not the full story.

In fact, most people's lives are reasonably functional. Your characters are very functional. They radiate warmth, and they're easily contented by things like red bush tea or new shoes. Does it take independence to write like that at a time when so much fiction is about desperation? I think there are fashions in literature. There was a period when it was difficult for me to get published because my writing was optimistic in its general tone, and that wasn't thought to be the way in which Scottish literature was done.

Scottish literature was supposed to be much more gritty and in your face. But then I was very lucky in that my books became quite popular, so that meant I was in a position to say, "Well, this is the tenor in which I wish to write. This is my voice. Had that not happened, I think I would have probably been ignored as a writer who was too positive—a utopian writer.