Christie & Poirot...

KrZyLimE

Greetings everyone, let me give you some background info first. I am a huge fan of the Poirot TV series w/David Suchet, but I have never read any of the books. I also do not really know anything about Agatha Christie either. Tonight I was on Wickipedia reading about The Hollow and came across the below info. I was surprised by a couple things in there which lead me to start googling. I didn't get my questions answered though, so I decided to come on here and am hoping a Christie expert can (pardon the pun) solve this mystery for me. I appreciate any feedback anyone can give me on this. Thank you in advance.

1) Why did Christie dislike her own character so much that she created out of her own mind? Another article quoted Christie as saying "Christie famously called Poirot a "detestable, bombastic, tiresome, ego-centric little creep." If she disliked him that much I would assume that she would not have continued to write as many stories using him as she did. And why belittle your own masterpiece persay?

2) How is Ariadne Oliver a "parody" of Poirot? I didn't understand what the writer of this article meant by saying "a fact parodied by her recurring novelist character Ariadne Oliver".

The novel is a fine example of a "country house mystery" and was the first of her novels in four years to feature Christie's Belgian detective Hercule Poirot—one of the longest gaps in the entire series. Christie, who often admitted that she did not like Poirot (a fact parodied by her recurring novelist character Ariadne Oliver), particularly disliked his appearance in this novel. His late arrival, jarring, given the established atmosphere, led Christie to claim in her Autobiography that she "ruined [her own novel] by the introduction of Poirot".^[4]

Tommy_A_Jones

Ariadne is a Parody of Agatha Christie because Ariadne like Agatha is a Writer of Detective Fiction, Ariadne like Agatha Christie Created a Foreign Detective and Ariadne like Agatha Got fed up with the Character she created like Agatha Did, Agatha kept having to write Poirot books because her Publisher wanted her to.

KrZyLimE

Thanks for the info. Did Christie ever comment on why she didn't like the character?

maryamalbulushi

Yes she just was annoyed by the fact that he loved his self and his self confidence and the most what irritated her was his ego .. And as Tommy A Jones said she wrote curtain long time ago but her publisher refused to publish it because poirot was loved and so popular by the readers that why she was -If I can say- forced to write more novels with poirot

Quincy

Years ago I saw a movie in which Agatha was sitting down to dinner with her husband and publisher.  They were trying to persuade her to continue the Poirot stories and she wanted to kill him off.  She left the dinner table in a huff and went into her study where, I believe, she fell asleep.  Poirot showed up to talk her out of killing him.  It was such a wonderful movie!  What is the name of it?  I want to find it again!

Griselda

We have recently discussed Agatha Christie's methodology when setting up a mystery. One of this forum has itemised the various types of mystery: some mysteries hinge on who has motive; others on who has opportunity. Christie sets up one way or the other a clever smoke screen to keep the reader in the dark and puzzling about who did it. She misleads us, and makes us look in the wrong direction. She gives some aspects more emphasis than others. One method she uses to keep the reader in the dark is to target a particular character to tell the story. It doesn't have to be the case that that person is telling the story in the first person, writing 'I' all the time, eg ' I decided to pay another visit to the crime scene', but if they are the main character then all the action, other characters, the clues and the setting will be described for the reader from their perspective. I've just read 'The Sittaford Mystery'. The main girl in this novel is a fashionable model, quite different SPOILER ALERT to the murderer, so she doesn't take an interest in him/her, and that means the murderer sinks back into the background for we the reader too. We are stopped from guessing the culprit too early on. It must have been annoying for AC whenever she was told by her publisher to stick Poirot into the action, because now she has to feature this clever person interfering, and everything he looks at or says is going to give a big clue to the reader, and the whole balance of what she intended will be ruined. She can't very well have him not guessing someone is suspicious because she has written him to be a genius. But with other ordinary characters telling the story or directing the investigations, she can delay putting the clues before the reader.

Tommy_A_Jones

I saw that aswelll Quincy Ian Holm played Poirot and Dame Peggy Ashcroft played Agatha but I had forgotten the sleep part, I think Ian Holm played just as good a Poirot as Suchet, I heard I think he was upset not to get the Part but I might be wrong about that.

taliavishay-arbel

I just googled your information, Tommy. The movie is called "Murder by the book", and it's available on youtube here:  

Tommy_A_Jones

I quite enjoyed it, I think Holm would have been good in the more serious ones, I like him as an Actor he was in something once called The blonde bombshells with Dame Judy Dench, Joan Sims, Billie Whitelaw and others