The 130th anniversary of Agatha's birth: known as the "Queen of Reasoning", the masterpiece "No One Survives"

This year marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of speculative fiction writer Agatha Christie (1890-1976). The "Golden Age" (c. 1911-1945) was the most glorious era of speculative literature, just as the famous works of reasoning masters of the Ganges sand number appeared one after another, and the founder and highest achiever of this era was Agatha Christie, the "Queen of Reasoning". She not only perfected the architectural foundations of her predecessors, but also successfully established her own kingdom of reasoning.

In 2013, Nova Press, where I worked, signed an agreement with Harper Collins Publishing Group to publish all of Agatha Christie's speculative works in China for a long time to come. After the signing ceremony, I said to Agatha's copyright heir, her grandson Matthew Pritchard: "Even if I leave the publishing industry completely tomorrow, I will not have any regrets." ”

Girl like no other

Agatha once recalled that the biggest feature of her childhood self was "self-enjoyment". She would play pranks, but she would never engage in pranks that would really hurt others. "I would replace the sugar in front of everyone on the table with salt, and I would tear orange peels into the shape of an elephant and put them on everyone's plates." ...... However, I never try to trip up or get their clothes dirty, which I can't accept. It can be seen that Agatha is a sensitive and intelligent girl, who longs to be different in her bones, but pays great attention to scale and "technical content". This trait also profoundly influenced her creations.

Raised in a typical Victorian middle-class family, Agatha was well fed, organising family gatherings at least once a week and making the events of the annual social season particularly important. These have had a huge impact on her worldview and creative outlook. In Agatha's view, the stability of life is a matter of course, a god-given right of mankind, and any criminal act of disrupting the status quo is unforgivable and must be stopped.

Speculative fiction arose with the growth of the bourgeoisie, which naturally became the mainstream reader of this type of literature. Agatha is highly consistent with the reader's living environment she will face, and the habits, likes and dislikes, and concepts of right and wrong are even more similar — which shows that it is definitely not luck that she has become the spokesperson for the "golden age" of reasoning.

In Britain at that time, girls did not need formal education, and at a certain age, girls from middle-class families were sent to school to receive training in vocal music, gardening, religion, social interaction, etc., laying the foundation for entering society in the future. After entering the society, they will meet various men at various gatherings organized during the social season, and eventually marry one of them, and marry and teach their children for the rest of their lives.

Her mother arranged the same path for Agatha, and she herself was happy to accept it. It should be pointed out here that there is some material that says that Agatha was rebellious by nature and that she had no formal education because of family conditions and the intervention of her parents, which is pure nonsense.

"I admit that a lot of boys are really good and I'm willing to get to know them as well. However, when it comes to marriage, I will not hesitate to reject them. I am full of idealistic fantasies about love, so I will never discount it on this issue, not at all. Agatha regards love as very sacred, and love has become an eternal proposition in her works, and innocent lovers can get a happy ending; even if they become murderers, in addition to the crime itself, love itself is often affirmed by the creators.

Agatha came together with a lieutenant in the British Air Force, Archie Christie. Soon after, when World War I broke out, Agatha volunteered and joined the wartime hospital, where she was later assigned to the pharmacy to assist doctors in formulating various drugs and distributing the prepared medicines to patients.

This was originally just an assignment for an extraordinary period, but it inadvertently changed Agatha's life. Agatha suddenly realized the great power of the drug's action on the human body. "The doctor kept telling me to always pay attention to each medicine, because they can relieve the pain when they are combined, but after separation, each can kill someone." "I had to familiarize myself with the instructions for each drug, and I knew the symbols that many people couldn't understand, because I knew that if I shook my wrist slightly, the otherwise harmless drug would be fatal." "A few times, I saw with my own eyes the consequences of the pharmacist's mistakes, it was so terrible, I think the colleague who made the mistake will not be able to get rid of the shadow for the rest of his life." Later, Agatha became the best creator of the history of speculative fiction to use poison, thanks to this experience.

Six months after Archie served, they had a wedding. From now on, we can call her "Agatha Christie".

The Queen of Reasoning officially appeared

War prevented her husband from staying around, so Agatha Critis came up with a way to pass the time by writing a speculative fiction. By this time, she had read many of her kind, including novels by Poe and Conan Doyle. She was overwhelmed by the charm of speculative fiction and tried to write something herself.

The first step is to portray a detective. Agatha was deeply influenced by Holmes, but because of this, she was determined to create a detective with a completely different appearance and style. Thus, a short, chatty detective with a potato head, a figure-eight beard, and a chatter appeared, named "Hercule Poirot.". This year also marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Detective Hercule Poirot.

The theme of the story is love and inheritance, and the way is poisoning. In the story, the retired police officer Poirot inadvertently gets involved in a dispute and solves the mystery with delicate psychological reasoning. This was the debut novel of Agatha Christie, queen of reasoning, and the novel was eventually titled The Strange Case of Stiles Manor.

Agatha's manuscripts were retracted by publishers several times in a row, and she inadvertently discovered that Bodlee Head Publishing Company had published two mystery novels. It seems that the company is trying to make a difference in this area. So she sent the manuscript.

Two years later, The Bodleian Head Publishing Company sent a letter inviting Agatha to the publishing house to discuss the publication of The Strange Case of Stiles Manor. In fact, the publishing company is not optimistic about Agatha's creative talent, but feels that the work is "not bad" and hopes to "lock" this newcomer at a low price.

Agatha not only signed the publishing rights to "The Strange Case of Stiles Manor" to Bodley Head, but also gave the rights to the serialization, collection, film and television and stage adaptation of the next five works. The contract stipulated that Agatha would only be paid £25 after the Strange Case of Stiles Manor exceeded 2,000 copies; at the same time, the remuneration for the next five works was only slightly higher than that figure.

The Strange Case of Stiles Manor was a great success and soon reached the 2,000 copies expected by the publisher. In the following five years, Agatha Christie published five works, "Hidden Killing Machine", "Golf Course Murder", "Brown Man", "Prime Minister Kidnapping" and "The Mystery of the Chimney Villa", all of which achieved good sales.

The publishing company offered to re-sign a contract to sign Agatha's next five works. However, she did not hesitate to refuse. Introduced by a friend, Agatha Christie met a publisher named William Collins. As soon as they saw each other, they quickly signed a cooperation agreement, which began a long journey of cooperation. This journey began in 1926 and continues to this day, making it a legend in the publishing world. Collins Publishing Group provided Agatha with a strong guarantee to focus on her creation itself for the next 50 years.

The mystery of Agatha's disappearance

In 1926, Agatha published her first book, The Roger Doubt, at the Collins Publishing Group.

This work is epoch-making and marks Agatha Christie's entry into the mature stage of creation. Compared with previous works, the plot and layout of "Roger's Doubt" are more subtle, and even directly become the most important part of the mystery, readers have never read this mode of speculative fiction, and when the last page of mystery is revealed, everyone is shocked.

Before the publication of "Roger's Doubts", the success of the novel made Agatha extremely happy. She and Archie traveled the world and bought a new house of their own, which she named "Stiles". Afterwards, Agatha admitted that the name had brought bad luck to her.

Agatha experienced the ups and downs of her life in 1926. First, Agatha's mother died of illness. The blow that followed was even greater—Archie betrayed her.

Then something unexpected happened— Agatha had been missing for eleven days, and no one knew where she had gone, or even whether she was alive or not.

Eleven days after Agatha disappeared, police found her in a spa hotel. She was in a trance, haggard look, completely unable to say why she was here, or what she had done these days. Agatha didn't like to talk about the days of disappearance, and didn't explain them in her autobiography. After the marriage broke down, she continued to use the pseudonym "Agatha Christie".

A few years later, Agatha became acquainted with her second husband, archaeologist Max Mallowen. Mallown took Agatha to every corner of the world, and everywhere he went, the first thing he thought of was to create a comfortable writing environment for his wife before he began his own archaeological work.

It can be guessed that the happiness of life brought satisfaction to Agatha and helped her continue to build a great achievement in the field of creation.

A brilliant life

In 1930, The Mystery of the Apartment was published. In this work, another famous detective, Miss Marple, portrayed by Agatha Christie, appears. Miss Marple, an old maid who lived in the countryside, just sat there every day to play yarn and chat with people coming and going about her parents. However, she has an innate keen intuition that no one can say when it comes to understanding human nature. Marple, like Poirot, is her most recognizable character and the greatest detective in the history of speculative literature.

In 1933, The Prosecution Witness was published. The short story was later adapted into a film by Billy Wilder and became a classic in film history.

In 1934, Murder on the Orient Express was published, and Agatha once again conquered readers with her incredible creativity. The work has been adapted several times into a film and has brought in an Oscar for Ingrid Bergman.

In 1936, Murder on ABC was published.

In 1937, Massacres on the Nile was published. The film of the same name adapted from this work is the first batch of translations and productions that entered China after the reform and opening up, and is the classic memory shared by the grandparents and grandchildren of many Chinese families.

In 1939, the insurmountable "No One Survives" was published, and Agatha's popularity reached its peak.

In 1941, Sin in the Sun was published.

In 1950, the original novel "Mousetrap" was published, which was later adapted into a stage play, becoming the most performed play in the history of theater.

In addition, such as "The Strange Case of Cliff Villa", "Murder in the Clouds", "The Mystery of the Tomb", "Bottom Card", "Dentist Murder Case", "Five Little Pigs", "Curtain", "Magic Hand", "Murder Notice", "Long Night", "Strange House", etc., are rare classics in the history of speculative literature.

Agatha Christie wrote more than 80 mystery novels, 19 screenplays, and six novels under the pseudonym "Mary West McCourt" during her lifetime. Her works have been translated into more than 100 languages and sold more than 2 billion copies, second only to the Bible and Shakespeare.

In 1965, Agatha completed her autobiography. This work was written for a total of 15 years, completely recording her brilliant life.

In 1971, Agatha Christie was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II; on her 80th birthday, Queen Mary publicly asked BBC Radio for a gift: "Please broadcast a mystery novel by Agatha Christie!" ”

This glory lasted until 12 January 1976, when Agatha Christie died of illness at her home in Oxfordshire at the age of 85.

Pioneer of the classic model

Agatha Christie's novels have reached a new level in plot layout, subterfuge, and character design, and are far ahead of similar works that have appeared before. Because of this, people regard her appearance as the starting point of the golden age of speculative fiction.

Christie's novels change the tone of horror and gore in previous works of the same kind, incorporating the attributes of ease and comfort into them. In her works, whether it is Poirot or Miss Marple, or the suspect ABCD, or even the real murderer, they all appear to be polite. They may have committed a crime out of necessity, but nothing else could change the lives of this group. When the murderer has nowhere to hide, everything is restored to order, and the rest of the people will still live in a beautiful place. This treatment catered to the social environment of the time, highlighted the gameplay of speculative fiction, and was welcomed by readers (especially female readers). This model established by Agatha is called "comfort reasoning" and has become a major feature of the Golden Age of reasoning.

Christie's literary style is delicate, and the words are full of feminine sensitivity and humane care, which greatly enhances the literary nature of speculative fiction. In her work, each character is alive and real, and they may have shortcomings of one kind or another, but none of them are disliked by the reader. These characters construct a group portrait of humanity in the same work, which will be unforgettable for the reader for a long time. Agatha changed the purely male intellectual game in the previous speculative novels, and under the premise of ensuring the quality of trickery, added the delicacy and care unique to women, and made an important contribution to the further development of this type of literature.

Christie pioneered the "narrative trickery" model in "Roger's Mystery"; the "Lonely Island-Blizzard Mountain" model in "No One Survives"; the "Serial Crime" mode in "Murder on ABC"; the "indescribable" mode in "Murder on the Orient Express" (describing the bottom of the leak)... These patterns, without exception, became classic patterns in speculative fiction, and were imitated for more than half a century, but never surpassed. It is easy to create a wonderful novel, but the difficulty is to create a refreshing criminal model under the premise of ensuring that the story is wonderful. A writer's lifelong creation of one model is enough to make a name for himself; yet Agatha has created so many in a show of her hand.

It can be said that Agatha Christie's contribution to speculative fiction is from the surface and the inside, from the outside to the inside, from the story to the pattern, from the character to the human nature, from the genre literature to the popular literature. Without her, we can't imagine what speculative fiction would be like today.

Agatha Christie's grandson Matthew told this writer a few anecdotes about his grandmother:

My grandmother filled out countless forms throughout her life, but in the "Career" column, she always wrote "housewife" instead of "writer".

Many people like to articulate their points, but my grandmother, the most storyteller in the world, is the best listener I've ever met.

My grandmother never thought that writing could bring wealth and fame to herself, but she always stressed that since she began to create, she must seriously consider the length of the work and the likes and dislikes of the market, and cannot drag the manuscript. Such people who are too casual when creating and emphasize that they are professional writers when receiving contributions will not have good works.

My grandmother always delivered the manuscript on time, and the publisher would also announce the publication time. However, if any detail (cover, layout, quality, etc.) does not meet her grandmother's requirements, she will unceremoniously ask the publishing company to postpone the listing time without the slightest compromise.

Her grandmother's autobiography was written for 15 years, during which time everyone advised her to write more creative ideas so that readers would be interested. However, my grandmother devoted 90% of her space to describing the shortness of the parents. She herself said: "Instead of bragging about writing great works, I would rather talk about how I changed my grandson's diaper." ”

……

Agatha Christie wrote about the glory of that era with her characteristic indifference and rigor. Perhaps, she did not like to be called "queen of reasoning", but only such a title can express the reader's infinite reverence for her.

(Original title: Commemorating the 130th Anniversary of the Birth of Agatha Christie, Queen of Reasoning, Agatha Christie's Kingdom of Reasoning)

Source: Beijing Evening News Author: Chu Meng

Process Editor: u018

Copyright Notice: The text copyright belongs to The Beijing News Group and may not be reproduced or adapted without permission.