The Grand Dame - Page 3

Patrick Gore · #31 August 7th, 2004, 08:13 AM

Hi all:

Just a quick addition, since looking over what I've written I seem to be coming down pretty hard on the old lady. I think Christie's a better writer (with respect to style and characterization) than, say Ellery Queen or Clayton Rawson, not to mention Ngaio Marsh or S. S. Van Dine. Don't get me wrong. I just also admit that she has serious limitations. I have to differ with X Lechard in that I don't find that the characters in her novels invariably grab me: in some cases I can hardly tell them apart. But that doesn't mean Christie is necessarily weaker most of her peers in that department, possibly including the hard-boiled writers. Furthermore, I think a few of her books rise above the others, like Death on the Nile and Orient Express and Cards on the Table and Roger Ackroyd, where the cast of caricatures is more colorful and more richly imagined than usual. (The ABC Murders is ingenious, but I think in terms of characterization and style it's one of her more mediocre books. On the other hand, Five Little Pigs has unusually well-developed characters for a Christie novel.) And thank God she never got interested in having Things To Say about God and Religion, like the later Queens did.

So Christie, for me, is firmly in the first rank, though I think we do nobody a favor by pretending she was always (or even usually) good or that she developed as a writer in any significant way over the later years. (In fact, most would agree the later books are, with a few exceptions, the worst she ever wrote.) In this respect, she most resembles Carr, who also peaked in the 30s and early 40s, then deteriorated.

Cheers,
Brian

Patrick Gore · #32 August 7th, 2004, 08:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bklyn Magus

> Well, gender bias has not worked against Sayers' reputation.

But how many great women writers of the time are overlooked? Sayers is a safe choice: very little subversion/performativity about her writing -- and she ends her career writing about religion.

I'm one of those who prefers Sayers to Christie, but not at all for the religious mumbo-jumbo of The Nine Tailors: I prefer Strong Poison and especially Murder Must Advertise where you get to see a panorama of English society in the 30s. And what do you mean by Christie's "performativity" versus Sayers'? This point remains a little opaque.

Cheers,
Brian

Bklyn Magus · #33 August 7th, 2004, 10:12 AM

Brian writes:

> Isn't it the other way around? Isn't the concept of killers taking ritual vengeance on Ratchett, and then concocting an elaborate system of alibis far more romantic than the unknown lone-killer alternative? Readers, anyway, must think so, since the more realistic solution would hardly have made Orient Express a mystery classic.

Let me expand on what I mean by romantic; it was late when I wrote the post, and I wasn't very clear. My apologies. The romantic ideal is a life lived in accordance with nature and nature's laws. Were human beings to do so, there would be a calm tranquility in both the private and the public spheres of life. This notion is in Wordsworth, Lawrence and many other advocates of the natural life.

This is Christie's ideal. This ideal is shattered, however, by the intrusion of agent(s) of violence. Once these agents have been identified and expelled, then the natural calm is restored. Needless to say, these agents of violence are always from outside of this world -- most, if not always, Others.

But on some level Christie knew this was a crock. It was a narrative put in place to facilitate the concentration of power in the hands of certain people (usually males) and disenfranchise other people (women, Others, etc.).

In this narrative social institutions of justice are unnecessary since people themselves are self-regulating. The imposition/establishment of institutions of social regulation would give the lie to the belief that society had achieved the perfect equilibrium with the achievement of the natural, romantic state (the High Victorian world Christie was born into). The need for institutions of justice implies that this natural world has built-in contagions which must be controlled/eradicated.

Enter Poirot -- the Other. He enters this natural world and through the use of rational deduction (a tool unneeded in a pure, natural society since everyone would instinctively know what was right and behave accordingly) sees the disturbances in this "natural" system and brings them to light. The very vehicle/charater Christie uses to explore this romatic world embodies the notion that this romatic state is a narrative created by others to direct/produce power, rather than a naturally occurring one. The first story in The Labours of Hercules (The Nemean Lion) is a superb illustration of this point.

Spoilers follow: (btw, how do you do that spoiler thing with the hidden words?)

To have twelve people come together to execute a killer is a romantic notion in that this action is a manifestation of the self-regulating function of the romantic/natural world. (Man-made) justice has failed (Cassetti has gotten away with the crime). When it comes time to assign guilt, the Other who enters the world/train from the outside, kills and leaves, is blamed since this explanation is demanded in order to maintain the viability of the romantic narrative. Institutions of justice are not needed -- they only end in failure. The people themselves will come together and do what is necessary to rebalance the system -- like white blood cells massing to fight infection.

Spoiler:

In the novel Linda Arden says that they wanted to avenge the fact that Cassetti's money had allowed him to elude justice and the death penalty. These people wanted to reassert the vision/justice of the romantic worldview. At the same time, Christie has Poirot (her nominative hero) expose the masquerade. In order for justice to be done, those of privilege -- countesses, princesses, colonels, great ladies of the stage -- along with those who serve them -- cooks, nursemaids, chauffeurs, private secretaries, valets -- join forces to construct a narrative whereby an other/outsider will be accused of the crime they commit, while they themselves will be regarded as blameless (as they perceive themselves to be. They are merely agents of the natural order, reasserting/re-establishing what has been thrown off-kilter).

The ironies are delicious: In order to re-establish the natural/romantic world order, they must engage in deception and murder -- the two very things that threw that order out of whack in the first place. Christie beautifully lays out the inherent tensions of modernity.

Another small irony: Cassetti - an Italian -- is the villian. Clearly, Christie is revealing her prejudices here. But wait a moment. Linda Arden says: "First we thought we'd draw lots as to who would do it, but in the end we decided on this way. It was the chauffeur, Antonio, who suggested it." (My emphasis).

Mon Dieu! Stylistically, plotwise -- a totally superfluous sentence. But in terms of the social narrative -- vital. The good Other works in service of the status quo/established hierarchy; the bad Other assaults it. Further, it is Hector MacQueen, our queer, stage struck, diva lover, who works out the details!

A note about performativity

Linda Arden says: "That slip about the sponge-bag was silly. It shows that you should always rehearse properly." Agatha Christie being postmodern and dealing with the performative nature of reality in 1934. Amazing.

The more I defend this novel, the more I think it should go on my 5 best list LOL.

As for readers making MotOE a classic: I think they are responding to the conflict that Christie lays out -- they recognize it in their own lives/worlds. The romantic/natural narrative versus the use of reason/rationality to discover the truth and establish the good.

The reader is happy that justice has been served and Cassetti been killed. But is the reader happy with the way it was done and the justifications offerred for doing so? Does the reader want to live in a world where a person/group of persons can decide that justice has not been done, and that, therefore, they are free to act (in fact, must act) in order to re-assert the natural moral order? Do we want to base the rules of society on some natural order that is discerned by some (not all) in the workings of "nature," or do we want to do so through the twin processes of rational discussion and consensus building?

A contemporary parallel.

Gay marriage is opposed by people who think it goes against the natural order. But many of those same people think it is wrong to discriminate against queers. So we are left with a situation where in order to maintain a natural/romantic view of the world, people must engage in acts of discrimination -- acts committed to preserve a world view which denies/condemns their validity.

As I said in my previous post: Christie had no answer for these questions/conflicts. Her genius was to lay them out not only clearly and succintly, but so subtly, that if you miss them your enjoyment of her novels is not diminished one iota. For me that is the mark of a great writer.

Brian
Brooklyn

Xavier Lechard · #34 August 7th, 2004, 10:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sweeneybd

So Christie exploits the prejudices of her time -- as if to say "See? the murderer was English all along, not that sinister Jew who probably would have done it in real life!" An ingenious defense, and almost convincing. In fact, it's the one Gillian Gill makes in her Christie biography. But it doesn't convince me, and here's why.

The problem is, murders in Christie's novels, particularly the Poirot novels (both of the above novels feature Poirot) are usually well-planned, with Poirot in the end complimenting the criminal for his or her ingenuity. So what's really going on in Christie is contrasting murder as an art (what British murderers do) to the low form of common murder associated with foreigners, non-whites, etc.

Some hair-splitting, I think. There are several occurrences where Poirot, far from complimenting the criminal, points his (or her) meanness and villainy, most particularly when he (or she) tried to put the crime on somebody else's back. Examples can be found in The ABC Murders or One, Two, Buckle My Shoe, the former being most interesting as the murderer is an outspoken xenophobe and insults Poirot when arrested.
By the way, I notice that you didn't answer me on the actual treatment of strangers in the books I mentioned, and the genuine compassion and sympathy Poirot shows to them.

Quote:

Also, to turn from murderers to victims for a minute, notice how "foreign" -- and especially non-white -- victims are most often the blackmailing type we are not supposed to pity (think of Louise Bourget in Death on the Nile, the blackmailer in One, Two. Buckle My Shoe); what pity Christie evokes from us for her victims tends to be for British characters.

None of the Negro Island invitees struck me as overly sympathetic. Neither did Amyas Crayle (Five Little Pigs) or Emily Arundell (Dumb Witness) to name just two. As to Amberiotis in One, Two he is a blackmailer yet Poirot points that his life is still worth anyone else's, and he doesn't let the murderer getting away with it.

Quote:

I'm not condemning Christie for not being more progressive for her time -- she's a creature of her social and historical context. But please let's not pretend she was a particularly deep thinker.

Christie may not have been a "particularly deep thinker" - her books might not been as readable otherwise - but her work features complexities that should not be overlooked.

Bklyn Magus · #35 August 7th, 2004, 01:53 PM

Dear List:

I want to post a few ideas that sit behind my ideas about Agatha Christie and her work.

1) Psychological depth -- At the beginning of the 20th century there was a movement among artists to create characters of ever-increasing psychological depth and complexity. I am not saying that prior to this time there was no interest in psychology, but with the rise of Freud and a powerful middle class, there was a concommittant shift in art. Writers were now writing for a dominant middle class who enjoyed seeing themselves in fiction/plays (in a good light of course). Consequently, there was a premium placed on presenting characters as psychologically deep and complex. This presentation complimented/complemented the personal vanity of the main consumers of these works -- the new assertive middle class. (A wonderful explication of this idea can be found in Staging Depth: Eugene O'Neill and the Politics of Psychological Discourse by Joel Pfister).

Christie, while creating characters of psychological complexity, was also carefully to maintain the older tradition of chronicling society and its forces in her work.

2) Performativity - The postmodern view of life is that human beings perform a series of roles in life that determine where they fit in. The more traditional, romantic view is there is a natural order to life and a person's job is to find out the slot she is to occupy, find it and then stay there.

Sayers, to my mind, believes in this natural/divine pre-ordained order. Wimsey may role play in Murder Must Advertise (which is my favorite as well), but ultimately, he assumes his place in the natural order. His condecension, while off-putting, is part of the package of privileges that comes with his assigned spot in the hierarchy. Sayers sees the old order breaking down and just stops writing.

Christie, by contrast, while seeing the old order breaking down, clearly recognizes the flaws inherent in that order/worldview. Take Crooked House: the reason it is subversive to me is that Christie first lays out the old order: moneyed family in which murder is committed. SPOLIER:

Spoiler

On this basis I assert Christie as being subversive and postmodern . . . in 1948 mystery novel!

Brian
Brooklyn

- edited to hide the spoiler text

Patrick Gore · #36 August 7th, 2004, 02:52 PM

To claim that Agatha Christie anticipated certain postmodern notions of subjectivity is quite fashionable and all, but the fact is I don't see how such a claim can be made consistent with the conventional sentiments she puts in the mouths of the characters with whom we are expected to identify. Anybody who has read a great deal of Christie know that the post-1950 novels tend to feature sympathetic characters who are increasingly cranky about the younger generation and the changing world. The first chapters of After the Funeral and The Mirror Crack'd are exemplary. Don't forget, too, how the victims of her later novels get younger and younger (Dead Man's Folly, Hickory Dickory Dock, Hallowe'en Party and Nemesis come to mind) -- you may, if you please, interpret this as Christie's way of commisserating with the young, but I'm convinced it's the opposite. My point is, Christie had a thoroughly conventional sensibility, and I find it impossible to believe she espoused such radical notions as you attribute to her.

Brian

PS: Even making

Spoiler

the murderer in Crooked House is, in my view, a sign of Christie's hostility to social change, which she naturally asociated with the young.

PPS: There's a "spoiler" button up there with all the other edit buttons: just click on the magnifying glass.

Bklyn Magus · #37 August 7th, 2004, 06:25 PM

Brian writes:

Quote:

To claim that Agatha Christie anticipated certain postmodern notions of subjectivity is quite fashionable and all

I think fashionability has little to do with it. It just happens to be true.

Quote:

. . . but the fact is I don't see how such a claim can be made consistent with the conventional sentiments she puts in the mouths of the characters with whom we are expected to identify.

Of course she does. And then often her sympathetic characters commit terrible crimes and turn out to be not quite so nice. Many times she pulls the rug out from under characters the reader has identified with. The conventional statements are meant to ease our identification with these characters.

Quote:

Anybody who has read a great deal of Christie know that the post-1950 novels tend to feature sympathetic characters who are increasingly cranky about the younger generation and the changing world.

As I have said she was deeply uncomfortable with the change. She also was aware of the destructive nature of the old order. She wasn't consistent, but then again most great artists aren't. They are often driven by contradictory forces/impulses. People at that time were cranky about the younger generation. For it not to have shown up in the novels would have been odd, not the fact that it does.

Quote:

you may, if you please, interpret this as Christie's way of commisserating with the young, but I'm convinced it's the opposite.

I will have to read the later mysteries again, but it might be that she is chronicling the last gasps of the old order in its efforts to maintain its hold on society. As the empire crumbled from the outside, it was being undermined from the inside as well -- by youth with their ideas of change and by those who assaulted youth in an effort to prevent youth's ascendency.

Quote:

My point is, Christie had a thoroughly conventional sensibility, and I find it impossible to believe she espoused such radical notions as you attribute to her.

But the evidence is there in the texts. It is not as if I were making up quotes. Take the double ending I cited from Crooked House:

Spoiler

A conventional sensibility would never have constructed such an ending. A Christie with a conventional mindset is a safer, more manageable writer, in the line of a Sayers or a P.D. James. I find Christie's work to be much more daring.

Quote:

Even making

Spoiler

the murderer in Crooked House is, in my view, a sign of Christie's hostility to social change, which she naturally asociated with the young.

I just do not see it that way. I see it as her acknowledgement of the rot that she believed had infected British society and the determination of many to ignore it/write it off. Youth are the manifestation of the rot, not the cause of it.

Brian
Brooklyn

Patrick Gore · #38 August 7th, 2004, 07:23 PM

Quote:

But the evidence is there in the texts. It is not as if I were making up quotes. Take the double ending I cited from Crooked House:

Spoiler

A conventional sensibility would never have constructed such an ending.

In my view, that's just a matter of inconsistency, of the confused ideas natural to a mind as shallow as Christie's. I may be mistaken (and I am willing to be corrected) but I seem to remember that Poirot repeatedly asserts that madness is hereditary, and Poirot is, vanity aside, one of Christie's more reliable mouthpieces (cf. The Clocks, where Poirot's opinions about various mystery novelists match Christie's own avowed preferences). So I don't think it's too hard to accept that Christie seriously bought into the "bad seed" theory.

To claim that Christie is deliberately placing two mutually exclusive views of the world in artistically productive tension is, I fear, giving too much credit to the depth of her intellect. You are saying Christie demonstrates her intellectual complexity by creating characters with simplistic, contradictory views of the world. But writers with simplistic, contradictory views of the world also create those kinds of characters. I can't believe that if Christie were as crafty as you suggest she could have resisted creating characters who had complex views of the world, as Nabokov did in Humbert Humbert, or Joyce did in Stephen Daedalus, etc. That she never created such a character casts serious doubt on your argument. Christie's most intelligent characters are those who plan ingenious crimes and those who unravel them, and that was the extent of her own kind of genius. What you consider daring postmodern skepticism, I see as the confused ideas of an incurious, inconsistent intellect.

Cheers,
Brian

Patrick Gore · #39 August 8th, 2004, 08:14 AM

I wrote: "...a sign of Christie's hostility to social change, which she naturally asociated with the young."

Brian from Brooklyn replied: "I just do not see it that way. I see it as her acknowledgement of the rot that she believed had infected British society and the determination of many to ignore it/write it off. Youth are the manifestation of the rot, not the cause of it."

And now I reply: I never said she saw youth as the cause of social change, I said she associated the two, so your reply doesn't address my point. Why do the late Christie's feature more Marple and less Poirot? Why are they filled with cranky statement about the young and social change? Why do the victims get progressively younger? In my view, it's Christie's imaginative revenge on a world that's changing for the worse.

And Christie's unconventional life never seemed to shake her faith in convention. Though Christie led an unconventional existence for a woman of her time (traveling the world with Max Mallowan, disappearing during her first marriage, working as a professional author), yet the feminists in her novels are always treated with a bit of disdain, an outstanding example being the governess in Five Little Pigs, about whom we are told (I am paraphrasing, since I don't have the book handy) "she was a great feminist, and hated men."

(Incidentally, the female character in Five Little Pigs with whom we are meant at last to feel most sympathy, Caroline Crale, demonstrates her superior courage by being a housewife who then dies in prison for a crime she didn't commit. Great courage, certainly; but it seems to me to model or engender a kind of endurance in female readers, rather than any kind of action. Caroline's courage is altogether passive.)

Brian

Bklyn Magus · #40 August 8th, 2004, 08:18 AM

Quote:

To claim that Christie is deliberately placing two mutually exclusive views of the world in artistically productive tension is, I fear, giving too much credit to the depth of Christie's intellect.

Then it all depends on how you read the texts -- either as the product of a complex mind or a shallow mind. Outside of the texts what evidence do you have that Christie possessed a shallow mind?

Quote:

I can't believe that if Christie were as crafty as you suggest she could have resisted creating characters who had complex views of the world, as Nabokov did in Humbert Humbert, or Joyce did in Stephen Daedalus, etc.

Because you cannot believe that Christie could have resisted creating complex characters, doesn't mean she didn't make that very choice. All it means is that you cannot conceive of it. Unless you are willing to argue that only the things you can conceive of are true, your statement does not prove anything one way or another.

There is also a cultural bias involved in the dichtomy of high art/low art. Christie did not write psychological fiction so, therefore, she must have a shallow mind. Well, John Dos Passos, Sincalir Lewis, James T. Farrell (among many others) all wrote social fiction versus psychological fiction, but I do not believe they possessed shallow minds.

Quote:

That she never created such a character makes me doubt your claim.

Again, that she resisted the trend of catering to the desires of the middle class and did nopt create psychologically deep charaters that complimented their own perceived intelligence is a definite possibility since she portrays middle-class and upper middle-class society as being rife with rot and cruelty. She is much more interested in depicting class/power relations than in creating "deep" charaters.

Quote:

Christie's most intelligent characters are those who plan ingenious crimes and those who unravel them, and that was the extent of her own kind of genius. What you consider daring postmodern skepticism, I see as the confused ideas of an incurious, inconsistent intellect.

I cannot agree with the argument that Christie's genius was limited to plotting. If she was a genius at plotting then it is perfectly reasonable to believe that her manipulations carried over into the area of reader identification. She misdiredted the reader on two levels: plot and identification.

I think she liked Crooked House so much because it was not only well-plotted, but played with reader identification as well. In fact, part of her plot misdirection is having the reader identify with Charles since he is the narrator. We are meant to like and identify with Charles, but he turns out to be just as blind, conventional and venal as the Leonides family which he wants to marry into.

Brian
Brooklyn

Patrick Gore · #41 August 8th, 2004, 08:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bklyn Magus

Of course she does. And then often her sympathetic characters commit terrible crimes and turn out to be not quite so nice.

When I wrote "sympathetic" I was of course referring to characters who wind up sympathetic, once all the facts are known. And if we look back over the novels at those sympathetic characters, they tend to share certain views that can be described by a number of words, none of them "progressive." I hardly need to point out that novelists frequently put their own private thoughts into the mouths of characters whose actions over the course of a novel render them reliable.

B

Patrick Gore · #42 August 8th, 2004, 08:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bklyn Magus

Then it all depends on how you read the texts -- either as the product of a complex mind or a shallow mind. Outside of the texts what evidence do you have that Christie possessed a shallow mind?

What evidence inside or outside have you to support your theory, besides your persistence? You have yet to offer me a way to tell the difference between a writer who designs complex works and a writer who is occasionally sloppy and inconsistent. I think the fact that Christie wrote 5 books a year makes my view -- that internal contradictions in books like Crooked House are a matter of sloppiness -- much more convincing than yours -- that each work is a model of architectonically complex social criticism.

Quote:

Because you cannot believe that Christie could have resisted creating complex characters, doesn't mean she didn't make that very choice. All it means is that you cannot conceive of it. Unless you are willing to argue that only the things you can conceive of are true, your statement does not prove anything one way or another.

If we've arrived at this point, then I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree. I ask how a writer with a complex view of the world could resist creating -- at least once! -- a character as complex as herself, and all you can say is, I lack imagination. Pfui. When Christie put herself in a novel, we got Ariadne Oliver. I rest my case.

Brian

Bklyn Magus · #43 August 9th, 2004, 03:45 AM

Quote:

I hardly need to point out that novelists frequently put their own private thoughts into the mouths of characters whose actions over the course of a novel render them reliable.

True enough. But I think Christie's worldview is a varied one as opposed to say the conservative, narrow one of Sayers or P.D. James (though James does seem to be easing up on her reactionary tendencies). In her autobiography Christie herself says she could never write propaganda since she likes to see issues from all sides. Her opinions are found in the mouths of several characters, both sympathetic and usympathitic.

In The Hollow, for instance, David Angkatell is an unpleasant character to whom Christie gives her opinions about the empire and its decline. Part of Christie's subversion is to give some of her most trenchant observatioons to her most unpleasant characters. Anthony Burgess does the same thing in A Clockwork Orange.

In the late novels she writes of/condemns a pop culture that mainipulates and exploits young people. She sees youth as being victimized by culture. This point is further expounded by Charles Osbone in his The Life and Crimes of Agatha Christie -- a good critical biography. She may not like what the young are doing, but she also realizes that their behavior is in large part determined by culture powers/forces being wielded by people of her generation.

This postmodern approach to the problem of youth sits side by side in the same novel with warm evocations of an English past that is being destroyed. Christie's holds both views, as does an artist such as Luchino Visconti. A person can be both nostalgic and clear eyed.

The consistency of Sayers and James comes from the dogmatic conservatism believed in by both writers. The world for them is much more black and white which leads to a doctrinaire tendency in their works. Sayers and James KNOW what is the right belief system. There is a certainty (smugness?) in their work that Christie does not fall prey to.

Quote:

What evidence inside or outside have you to support your theory, besides your persistence? You have yet to offer me a way to tell the difference between a writer who designs complex works and a writer who is occasionally sloppy and inconsistent. I think the fact that Christie wrote 5 books a year makes my view -- that internal contradictions in books like Crooked House are a matter of sloppiness -- much more convincing than yours -- that each work is a model of architectonically complex social criticism.

There is the evidence of the novels themselves. Are you arguing that she paid careful attention only to aspects of plot and ignored issues of characterization and such? I know this is the case with many of Carr's works, but I do not find it true in Christie.

Joyce Carol Oates and Iris Murdoch are just two other prolific novelists who have produced bodies of work of complex social criticism. Being prolific doesn't signify shallowness. It merely signifies . . . being able to write alot.

As for telling the difference, the best tool I know of is close reading. I think also you might look at the premises underlying your approach to literature. You seem to believe in two specific cultural/literary conceits:

1) psychological depth + internal consistency = deep artistic mind = great work of literature

As Emerson said: consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.

2) a novel has at its center a sympatheic character/hero who is the reader's surrogate and acts as the author's voice. By identifying with the hero, the reader goes on a journey to arrive at the ideological destination the author intends.

But as I said earlier, that is only one standard of literary worth. Christie's writing gods were Janre Austen and Charles Dickens -- social novelists, not psychological ones. Are Dickens inconsitencies the product of a shallow mind? Do you hold his prolific output against him as well?

There are also plenty of writers who reject the notion of identification with hero and present instead a panorama - Lewis, Farrell, Dos Passos and others I mentioned earlier.

Sayers and James are very consistent. They have a conservative, high Tory approach to life. The psychology of their novels is conservative, high Tory. In fact, all of their characters conform to the conservative, high Tory view of the world. It is as if the novels are an illustration of a Tory world view instead of an engagement with the actual world at large and reportage of what they found. Sayers and James want to lead the reader to a certain conclusions/opinions, in fact the same ones they themselves hold. Christie to me is both more human and more realistic in allowing contradiction and inconsistency

Quote:

If we've arrived at this point, then I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree. I ask how a writer with a complex view of the world could resist creating -- at least once! -- a character as complex as herself, and all you can say is, I lack imagination. Pfui.

Your statement that a writer with a complex imagination could not resist creating a character as complex as herself is a nice assertion, but you offer no evidence to back it up. If you truly believe it then either a) you do lack the imagination to envision other possibilities (which doesn't seem to be the case) or b) you are wedded to the cultural notions of artistry that I outlined above.

All notions of art are subjective and culturally conditioned. No one is more right than any other. Because Christie does not conform to your standard does not make her a bad writer, just a different one.

Quote:

When Christie put herself in a novel, we got Ariadne Oliver. I rest my case.

As I said earlier, Henrietta in The Hollow is much closer to a self-portrait than Ariadne Oliver. Mrs. Oliver is Christie being satirical, not self-representing. I often think that Chrsitie's satirical side is not given enough credit.

Brian
Brooklyn

Patrick Gore · #44 August 9th, 2004, 05:37 AM

Thanks for your interesting reply. I find P. D. James practically unreadable so I couldn't tell you about her dogmatism, conservative or otherwise, only that in Death of an Expert Witness her characterization is belabored without ever rising above the complexity of characterization in Christie. Sayers is a religious and cultural conservative (except as regards women's rights), but as Lukacs once said, even conservatives like Balzac proved to be radical in their social novels. And when she depicts London society at large, with her characters drawn from all walks of life, as she does in Murder Must Advertise and Strong Poison, her imagination surpasses her ideological limitations. Anyway, that's in defense of Sayers.

I have to take issue with one point in the reply, where you attempt to mischaracterize my position to your advantage.

Quote:

As for telling the difference, the best tool I know of is close reading. I think also you might look at the premises underlying your approach to literature. You seem to believe in two specific cultural/literary conceits:

1) psychological depth + internal consistency = deep artistic mind = great work of literature

Nope, never said that. Not even close. Though you have repeatedly tried to lump me in with those bourgeois readers who are looking to find themselves flaterringly depicted in novels, which is a little insulting. I said there is a difference between postmodern works (I specifically mentioned The Crying of Lot 49) that are designed to be internally inconsistent and eschew psychological depth and others that, through carelessness and not design, achieve the same result (like your workaday paperback romance).

We may disagree about whether Christie's best works belong in the first or second category. But I agree with you to this extent: that Christie (if she were doing what you say she is doing) would be a more interesting writer.

Quote:

2) a novel has at its center a sympatheic character/hero who is the reader's surrogate and acts as the author's voice. By identifying with the hero, the reader goes on a journey to arrive at the ideological destination the author intends.

Now you are simply putting words in my mouth. Never said this, and never would, because I don't believe it. Perhaps it is you who is not reading closely enough!

Best,
Brian

PS: I am intrigued that you refer to Christie as a social novelist, like Austen (!) and Dickens. (How is Austen a social novelist?) The claim that Christie is a social novelist is hard to credit, given that almost all of her characters are drawn from the leisure class. (That would suggest something closer to a novelist of manners, like Austen or Waugh, than a social novelist like Fielding, Dickens, or Balzac.) I suppose exception could be made for some of the village mysteries, like A Murder is Announced and Mrs. McGinty's Dead especially, but even in these cozies, there are very few working-class (or even working) people who matter to the plot. Contrasted to the panorama of characters in Murder Must Advertise, Christie's scope is quite narrow. So I'm curious how you would support this claim.

PPS: Emerson wrote that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds -- an important qualification.

Patrick Gore · #45 August 9th, 2004, 08:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bklyn Magus

A note about performativity

Linda Arden says: "That slip about the sponge-bag was silly. It shows that you should always rehearse properly." Agatha Christie being postmodern and dealing with the performative nature of reality in 1934. Amazing.

I might buy this if Linda Arden were talking about performing the part of Linda Arden. She isn't. She is talking about performing the part of Mrs. Hubbard -- that is, the part she is quite literally performing on board the Orient Express. (Linda Arden is herself a retired actress.) So I don't see Christie anticipating po-mo theorists in suggesting that all identity is performative -- that is to say, I don't think she is disavowing essentialism outright -- as, for instance, Nathaniel Hawthorne does in his (quite amazing) novel, The Blithedale Romance (1852).

In every other respect, I find your interpretation of Orient Express quite compelling and provocative, especially the Casetti/Antonio thing, which might be worth talking about further in regard to charges of jingoism and racism in Christie.

Brian