Dame Agatha didn't like Poirot?

Carlotta

I keep reading around the internet that AC didn't like her great detective, but can find no explanation for her not liking him. I have not read many of the stories, but am a fan of the television series starring Mr. Suchet. Can someone please enlighten me?

GKCfan

There's mixed evidence on this.  In various interviews, Christie explained that she was frequently frustrated with Poirot or irritated with him.  In contrast, in a radio statement before the start of the Harold Huber Poirot radio series, she says that she had "great fondness for him."  It's not exactly clear how she felt, but we do know she felt compelled to write Poirot books due to his popularity, and she preferred to direct her attention to other projects.

taliavishay-arbel

I got the feeling that she got tired of him. When she first wrote about him he was already in his 50's or 60's, and she tried to keep up with "real time", which would make him... how old when he died? 130? A bit difficult to imagine. By the way, This was a problem for other writers as well - Ngaio Marsh had us meet her detective when he was probably in his 30's, and internal clues and cross-references in the books make him about 70+ when the series ends - rather old for an active detective. Charlotte Macleod wrote specifically about this problem in her forward to "the odd job", stating that she was giving up on trying to parallel "real time". 
AC makes her kindred character, The mystery writer Miss Oliver, express her weariness with her own fictional detective, and regret that she made him a finn. Part of the problem may be that when a writer writes a first book and creates a central character, she doesn't consider how that character is going to wear through book after book...  and female mystery writers tend to be (or try to be) more responsible about continuity, aging and development of a personal life than male writers.

ChristieFanForLife

taliavishay-arbel said:

Part of the problem may be that when a writer writes a first book and creates a central character, she doesn't consider how that character is going to wear through book after book...  and female mystery writers tend to be (or try to be) more responsible about continuity, aging and development of a personal life than male writers.

Could this be because females (not all but most) are mostly detail-oriented and more orderly? Not to say that male writers aren't but it seems like female writers care a bit more. 

taliavishay-arbel

I think it is because women on the whole are more interested in people, while men are more interested in things. 

Tommy_A_Jones

I am not surprised if Agatha Christie got fed up of Half her Novels feature him, and Quite often she wrote 2 Poirot's Consecutively, I as a Reader Get bored reading Poirot Book after Poirot book and after each Novel I read a Non Christie Novel and 2 or 3 Short stories but the majority of the time I am so absorbed in the Plot and on the few occasions where I am not I am glad Poirot is in the book.

Arol

Myself, I often had the idea that whenever Ms. Christie had her alter-ego Ms. Oliver express her weariness of her Finnish detective, it was minted on Poirot.
Curtain may have been some form of closure for her.

Tommy_A_Jones

I like that idea

shana

Maybe if her publishers had not pressured AC into writing a HP novel as often as they did, the case would have been different?

taliavishay-arbel

Perhaps, @shana, but Poirot had a lot going against him in terms of not wearying his writer - he is presented in the first book with a lot of pecularities - a slightly comic look, and extreme concern for his appearance, exuberant display of affection, intellectual vanity - and he is quite old! It wouldn't have been very valid to have him develop his character from book to book. If you compare him to Albert Campion in Margery Allingham's series, you can see the difference - Campion comes in as a minor character, rather a comic young man, but throughout the series he develops - partly through two unsuccessful loves (one for a married woman) and through his growing relationship with Amanda. with whom he falls in love and marries, and partly through several encounters with danger, severe wounding and suspicion of his friends. You can see a similar (though not so profound) development in Dorothy Sayer's Peter Whimsey, and in Charlotte Macleod's Sarah Kelling Kelling Bittersohn - and all of these series have fewer books than the AC Poirot books! (less than 20 novels in each case, + 2-20 stories, as opposed to 30 HP books and 50 stories). So there is a case for your suggestion that editor pressure contributed, but I think she basicly wrote herself into a corner in terms of developing her hero.