Death On The Nile

Agatha Christie

Last Thursday, the 3rd of March, was World Book Day, and the evening of last Saturday was host to the very first World Book Night massive book giveaway.

It pains me to say my sole involvement in the whole big, amazing-shaped give-party was watching all the TV shows about it. Really, I need to be better informed. Somebody, do something about that.

One of those shows followed Sue Perkins, wonderful person and former Booker Prize judge, delving deep into the land of the bestseller list... was it Henry James who pointed out that if you can't have a list of a single item, so you can't have a list of best-anythings?

The likes of John Grisham, James Patterson, Lee Child, Jackie Collins and Sophie Kinsella were talked about, some even appearing as talking heads to get very defensive (and I don't blame them).

I sell these books all day long, but I never buy them, and -- having never read them -- should probably have felt guilty about smirking along with Sue at the covers, prose and premises. But guilt didn't really happen. I'm on Sue's side.

I stoped smirking when Agatha Christie got mentioned, though; and interestingly, so did Sue (we have so much in common... it's love). Why is it okay for literary types to read formulaic, dated crime puzzles -- or, why is it not okay for literary types to ignore them -- when they have Agatha Christie written on the front?

Could we cite the lack of cheap thrill, lusty gore and gory lust? The constant cleverness of the plot? (They're formulaic, but you'll never crack the formula before Poirot does. Ever). The I-did-it-first rule? (One third of the cliches and predictabilities of crime novels were started by Christie, so maybe aren't cliches there). How about the sheer, plain, elegance of Christie's writing?

The problem with all these answers is something I've already mentioned: I've never read any of the books I'm snobbish about, so how do I know they don't have these things going on?

Can it really be that I like Poirot novels simply because they're old? Or simply because of David Suchet? Or simply because people like Sue Perkins like them too?

Agatha Christie: An Autobiography

Being a novice writer reading about the life of a professional writer is always hard going and endlessly fascinating and slightly queer. I repeatedly switched from wanting to take notes to wanting to give up writing to wanting to tell Agatha Christie what she was doing wrong. What she did wrong, by the way, was to not write in the way she writes here when she's writing about Poirot.

Because, and maybe this shouldn't be surprising, this is a brilliantly written book. I've read a fair amount of Christie--all the Poirot short stories, and half a dozen of the novels--and she doesn't write like this in them. I loved them, of course, but not in the same way I loved this memoir.

So. I have made it a personal mission now to track down at least one of Christie's Mary Westmacott novels. These were her more 'literary' works, or at least I imagine they are. They are certainly free of detectives. They are also, more importantly, the works she was most proud of, and most personally connected with. She wrote one of them in three days, even bunking off war-work for one day, and thought it the best thing she ever did. She was basically crazy. And I basically have to read that book.

Writing came accidently to her, as a career. She reckoned she could do it, but only as a challenge to her sister. She got involved in it, but only in the way her grandmother had got involved in embroidery--an abosrbing craft to fill the evenings. Even when she'd published half a dozen novels, she didn't think of it as a job, didn't put 'writer' down on her passport forms, and didn't see the cheques from the publisher as a genuine source of income.

It's hardly fair, I thought to myself, that this author, of such natural prose yet crafted plots, this gifted storyteller who is both loved and acclaimed, took to it so easily. So casually. Without fuss. When I want to do it more than anything else, and (occasionally) work really hard for it... et cetera, et cetera. Clearly, real writers are naturals, and I'm kidding myself that I can get there just by trying.

But the flipside of that thought is, if she can be this good by accident--imagine how good I can be on purpose!

Of course, the first thing you do when reading about a successful author is to isolate the similarities between their life and your own. Me and Agatha were both youngest children, who grew up in places they loved, with a large, loving family. We were both left to our own devices, extremely happy on our own, inventing worlds to play in and people to populate them, which I hear isn't the normal way of going about things. I don't know about that.

But that's what Mrs. Christie puts down much of success in writing down to, so... you know. Quid pro quo, or quad erat demonstratum, whichever is more plausible (I have a biography of Latin sitting on my shelf, so I'll find out soon).

Childhood A led to Huge Success.

Ben also had Childhood A.

Therefore Ben will suffer from Huge Success in later life.

Excellent.

Three-Act Tragedy

by Agatha Christie

It's a good thing that Poirot doesn't really turn up until the third act. There's a lot of soft psychology going on before then that he is too good for.

Instead of Poirot and Hastings, we have a famous actor investigating the murders, told through the eyes of his society friend, and they speak a lot of amateur nonsense about the way people work.

The choice of an actor for the role is no coincidence. Three-Act Tragedy has fun with the structure of theatre, paralleling and parodying in equal weight. Everyone is a player, and some are more aware of it than others.

Underneath the fun, this lets Christie delve a little further into the less folky areas of psychology that Poirot is so fond of, deftly kept away from becoming a victim of the sort of fun we're having at the expense of those in the shallow end. The ever-present shadow of 'the drama' keeps the whole thing both confined and self-aware, while the fumbling attempts at insight from Satterthwaite and his actor-detective friend, Sir Charles draw all the flak. The best way to avoid being the subject of mockery is to make sure you're already doing the mocking.

There's a reason Poirot isn't playing his normal central role, and it's all about casting. Christie gets to reverse her usual narrator/detective relationship, with Satterthwaite the more knowing assistant, Sir Charles the incompetent (but still egotistic) detective. Without spoiling the whole thing, it's safe to say this book couldn't happen without the roles as they are, and the particular players cast in them. It's impossible to imagine it working with Poirot and Hastings in their stead.

Poirot does get an early mention. He's not in the very first scene, but it's safe to say he is the Chekhov's Gun of the piece. He bumps into Satterthwaite in the south of France, and from that point on we know someone is going to get outsmarted, outplayed, and out-psychologied, in the denouement.

Three-Act Tragedy might be unusual in it's 20% Less Saturated Hercule, but it might be unique in it's flat statement of who Hercule really is. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Christie wrote the whole thing as a way to make absolutely, abudantly clear, one thing. Poirot is not a romantic. That's Hastings' job.

There are three types of psychologies, he tells Satterthwaite. The showing psychology, which must always be telling the story and playing the part. The watching psychology, like Satters himself, that exists to observe, spot and enjoy the narratives as they occur. But that doesn't include Poirot, oh no. He is the prosaic mind. All he sees are facts. When he goes to the theatre, he sees painted scenery and lots of people doing a bit of old-fashioned pretending. When he sees a beautiful girl sing, he notices Hasting's pupils dilate. Nothing else.

Agathe Christie-- The Mysterious Affair at Styles

I love Poirot. And by that I mean, I love the entirity of the ITV Poirot films, and the complete short story collection that I read last summer. But I've never read any of the novels. This is the first step along the long, long road to getting through the whole bally lot.

Like Shades Of Grey, this book is clever. And though it's a very different sort of clever, it comes from the same source: having lots of stuff.
In Styles, the crime is complicated by having separate events (from separate motives) coinciding, and effecting each other.
And like Shades Of Grey, a lot of stuff is included throughout which isn't 'important', but is justified by being what the characters think are important.
I'm happy to say I guessed various parts of the solution before it was revealed. But as I had whole-heartedly accused every single character of the murder at some point in the course of the book, that's less impressive.
The solution when it comes is complex and simple at the same time. If anything, it suffers from being too clever: too much is upturned, reversed and revealed, in Poirot's explanation.

All this complex web of events and clues and people and facts has made me realise something: I admire this sort of cleverness, but I admire it from afar. It's not me,and it's not how I write. That doesn't even slightly mean I can't learn from it, but it does mean I have to adapt it's lessons to my own writing, and evaluate them with reference to my own goals.

There is something amidst all the cleverness that I think is an invaluable and universal observation. The 'point' of this book is that we are presented with all the evidence that Poirot is, but we don't guess the solution like he does. The reason is, we aren't presented Poirot's reasoning, or even much of his actions. We get Hastings.
The whole story is told through his eyes, with his own romantic imaginations and extrapolations. No, we don't go along with what he thinks necessarily, but still the whole emphasis is changed. Only rarely do we get the slightest glimpse of which clues, among the many possible ones, Poirot feels are important; and we never see why.
Here's the observation, and once again it seems a bit too obvious to count:

Who is telling us the story (in first person narratives) defines how the reader sees the story. There's the obvious interpretation, which is important, but also an interestingly backwards truth: what the narrator can tell us is how we see the narrative (rather than how he sees it), but what the narrator cannot tell is how we see himself (but only how he sees himself).

Interesting, I think. But more interesting is how Christie uses this with Hastings. The basic fact is that Hastings isn't too bright--not in the world of Poirot, anyway. He's good-natured, a good friend, and has a good imagination, but Poirot is right: he has no method.
Christie shows us this, and it's important, as well as useful to her: it's what gives the story it's flair and humour. But somhow, she shows us it alongside showing us what is really going on. So we have Hasting's misunderstandings, and the reader's actual understandings, told in the very same narrative. Sorry for the italics, but I'm very impressed.

What also impresses me, on a complete aside, is how marvellous David Suchet is. Because he was playing Poirot in my head for the entirity of this book, and nothing on the page was incongruous with his version of the character.
To play such a vibrant interpretation of a character without ever losing sight of the spirit--and the detail--of the written version is great. And it's not just because Poirot is so well-written. Other great actors have played him, and played him very differently.