Agatha Christie will never make it

Cafe Society
1

Thanks to glee’s recommendation, I just finished reading Agatha Christie’s “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.” Immediately afterwards, I launched into Pierre Bayard’s “Who Killed Roger Ackroyd.” a disquisition of Hercule Poirot’s solution to the murder in question.

Christie (through Hercule, of course) identifies a certain character in her book as the murderer of rich Roger Ackroyd. Bayard begs to differ. I will not divulge the culprit - either Christie’s or Bayard’s, in fact.

And, I am not here to argue the logical merits of either side, only to point out how much clearer M. Bayard (a French psychotherapist) expresses his thoughts, compared to the word-challenged, would-be author, Dame Christie.

For example, on page 83 of his book, Bayard says, “This implicit assumption, evident in Freudian detective investigations, leads inevitably to thinking of interpretation as a subsidiary of hermeneutics, that major form of the production of meaning that continues to weigh heavily upon psychoanalysis and its system of representations.

On page 95 of her book, Agatha, on a grade 4 level, writes: “The theory was received in polite silence.”

On that same page 83, M. Bayard opines, “Choosing the detective mystery as a model is a decisive choice in literature and art that privileges an aesthetic domain in which meaning is largely unambiguous.” See how smoothly Bayard pens his elegant, almost sonorous thoughts, that flow from your retina into your psyche to paint a picture as lucid and full of light as Vermeer’s “View of Delft”?

Going back to page 95 in Ms Christie’s opus, she writes, “Poirot shook his head.” What on earth is she saying? Where is the Bayardian imagery in all this?

While Monsieur Bayard waxes eloquent with…

“The detective model discourages a second reading because along with the clue, it imposes a dual conception of the sign, which is situated to produce a single meaning: that latent truth concealed by overt signs which the investigation will finally bring to light.”

…Agatha can only offer a labored, “The lawyer shrugged his shoulders.”
My conclusion (which, I’m sure is the same as yours): Agatha Christie will never amount to anything in the literary world. Poor woman has no style, no class. But this Bayard guy is the new star in the sky. Write it down.

2

:smiley:

Well done.

3

I’m not familiar with the work of Christie or Bayard, but…

While I’m no fan of the often convoluted style that I’ve found in a lot of literary criticism, I’m not sure what you’re trying to prove here. That Bayard’s style is unclear? Well, it’s entirely unfair to try to show that by putting it side-by-side with text from Christie’s novel. One is a detective story, the other is a work of literary criticism. The quotes you plucked from Bayard are attempting to convey complex abstract ideas. The quotes from Christie are simple narration. Bayard is necessarily going to be more complex because his ideas are more complicated, and you’ve compounded the unfairness of the comparison by only using simple sentences from Christie in the form of "x did y (and I’m certain that not all of Christie’s sentences are in this form, or she would have been better served writing for Dick and Jane). It also doesn’t help that the Bayard sentences you chose clearly need context in order to be understood fully, while Christie’s sentences do not.

The way to show that Bayard’s writing is unclear or too busy is to compare it with something from the same genre (literary criticism) that is better, or to rewrite a few of his sentences so that they are better and highlight the flaws that were repaired by your changes.

Or maybe you are just having a bit of fun and aren’t really interesting is analyzing writing styles.

4

I think you may have something there.

It might be more fun, though, to compare Bayard’s disquisition with Raymond Chandler’s essay “The Simple Art of Murder”.

5

Just having fun. But I’m stuck on page 83. Bayard’s style’s not so much convoluted as it is constipated. It’s got me stuck on page 83 for the past 2 days. :smiley:

6

If you’re actually a fan of Agatha Christie’s style, stick with easy targets like Bayard and steer well clear of Chandler’s essay “The Simple Art of Murder,” which does more viciously elegant violence to the fairy-tale school of crime fiction AC represented than she ever dreamed of as she typed out her hackneyed plots.

Bayard, by the way, is perfectly understandable, if you read more than random fragments. The fact that random fragments are enough for a reader of Christie is not, for everyone, a recommendation.

7

Fair enough. I just didn’t want anyone to mistake your OP as proof, in and of itself, that Agatha Christie is somehow a “better writer” that Pierre Banyard.

As an English major and a philosophy minor, I can certainly sympathize with the task of wading through difficult prose. :wink:

8

If you’ll write it, I’ll read it—happily. :slight_smile:

9

Dame Agatha, not Dame Christie.

10

The quotes aren’t so random. What is so sad is, the Christie work is, granted, a piece of fluff, but Bayard spends pages and pages of pomposity to denounce it.

You’d think he’d have something more meaningful to write about, like an in depth analysis entitled, “Who Really Killed Cock Robin?”

Just ordered the Chandler’s essay from amazon.

11

The problem with this explaination is that Bayard’s ideas are not, in fact, all that complicated.

For instance, “This implicit assumption, evident in Freudian detective investigations, leads inevitably to thinking of interpretation as a subsidiary of hermeneutics, that major form of the production of meaning that continues to weigh heavily upon psychoanalysis and its system of representations,” means, “She uses a lot of apparent Fruedian symbolism.”

And, “The detective model discourages a second reading because along with the clue, it imposes a dual conception of the sign, which is situated to produce a single meaning: that latent truth concealed by overt signs which the investigation will finally bring to light,” is parsed into comprehensible language as, “Suspense is eliminated once you know the solution of the crime.”

And this, “Choosing the detective mystery as a model is a decisive choice in literature and art that privileges an aesthetic domain in which meaning is largely unambiguous," just means, “Detective mysteries fit into a well-defined genre.”

Contextual literary analysis has its place–it’s quite a fun game, for instance, to find analogs between The Oddessy and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn–but weighing it down with this kind of blunderous, obfuscatory prose serves only to conceal the fact that the critic has very little to say that is not already obvious or insipid, and often repetitious. It’s one thing to criticize, as Chandler did in his previously mentioned essay (Anthony Burgess is another good one to read up on this vein, as are Twain’s scathing remarks on the writings of James Fenimore Cooper), and it’s also great fun to view author cum literary critics have it out with each other in a belletristic catfight (as with the three-way fistfest between Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, and John Updike), but to dump one obtuse syllogism after another at a reader with no coherent thesis or essential and comprehensible argument is just public masterbation for essayists, and a great way for supposed teachers of literature to avoid actually having a meaningful discussion with their class.

Stranger

12

Stranger, that’s exactly the kind of thing I’d look for in a good takedown of someone’s writing style. Rewording a convoluted sentence in simpler language is a great tool.

My comment that Bayard was communicating complicated ideas was only meant to emphasize that what he was trying to say was more complicated than the simple narration pulled from Christie’s work, thus his sentences would necessarily be more complex than Christie’s. From E=mc[sup]2[/sup]'s quotes, I’d agree that Bayard is pretty much a blowhard, but saying that his sentences are more complex than narration from a detective novel is a non-argument.

Your rewordings reach the heart of what Bayard was trying to say very well, but they do leave out some things that might be better left in, depending on the context of the sentences.

The rewording leaves out the mention of “this implicit assumption,” which might be important in relating this idea to one previously mentioned The word “implicit” is superfluous, though, and I’d delete it. It also leaves out the mention of “hermeneutics” and modern psychoanalysis. “That major form of the production of meaning that” is superfluous though (assuming Bayard explained hermeneutics elsewhere; if he did not then he should’ve), and I’d replace it simply with “which.” “Inevitably” is also superfluous. Those deletions alone would make the sentence much more readable and it would retain its basic meaning, form, and content:

Depending on the context, even “evident in Freudian detective investigations” may be superfluous.

I love “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses,” by the way, and it’s a great influence on how I try to write. :wink:

13

At the end of his book, Pierre Bayard finally tells us that Poirot is literally off his trolley. Delusional. Poor Hercule’s notion of reality is contrary to the real reality — which of course is the reality of, uh, Pierre Bayard. :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

So, Poirot not only names the wrong killer, he then bullies that person into writing a confession and then committing suicide.

Curiously enough, our psychoanalyst doesn’t take umbrage at Poirot’s supreme arrogance of playing judge, jury, and executioner. Bayard seems outraged, only that Hercule was oblivious to the wealth of evidence that points clearly and irrevocably to someone else.

IMHO, I think that up to the the very late drafts of this book. Agatha did indeed have Bayard’s killer as her culprit, but then switched to the other person strictly for the shock value.

I hope you read both books to decide for yourselves.

14

I can get behind this opinion, actually. Roger Ackroyd is one of the occasional Christie novels that don’t fit, exactly. There has been an awful lot of heat in mystery fan circles about it…a lot of people consider Christie to have cheated the conventions of the whodunnit with this book. I never have really been able to actually enjoy Roger Ackroyd because the angle of the whole novel is off.

15

Bayard resents the break in conventions, too. He refers to certain violations of Van Dine’s “Twenty Rules…” which you can find at:

http://gaslight.mtroyal.ca/vandine.htm

Also, after mulling it over I too was distressed with the denouement. It just doesn’t work. And except for that piece of hardware which Bayard cannot explain away (so he pooh-poohs it), his other evidentiary points are spot on.

16

I bet he’s even more fun in French.

17

I just found a very convenient link for Agatha Christie fans…

http://www.agathachristie.com/booksplays/twenties.shtml

It takes you to a chronological list of Agatha Christie’s books.

See a title you want to explore? Click on it to get a synopsis, and then click to buy it if you’re so inclined.

Also, at the home page, you may click to go to different decades.

18

This brings to mind a nice phrase used by Dennis Miller (when he was funny): “About as easy to understand as Bob Dylan reciting Finnegan’s Wake in a wind tunnel.”

19

Maybe my description of the website was inadequate, but once you get there…

You’ll see Christie titles in chronological order and decades (as in 1930’s, 1940’s, etc.) to click on.

…you should be able to handle it.

20

It’s been a while since I read it, but my experience was a bit different. I remember stopping myself in the middle of Chapter 2, having just guessed the killer, only to talk myself out of the solution because it was too bold. Roger Ackroyd is easily my favorite of hers.