Agatha christie
I read Agatha Christie's novels and felt quite simple, that is, "enjoyment".
You can abandon the search for meaning and go straight into the story. She will not disappoint you, there will be mysterious deaths, and then, suspense must have an answer. It's like Poirot waiting for a case in his office, and eventually a case will come to him.
You don't have to think about it, is there really so many murders? Because this has nothing to do with reality, you have already unloaded the weapon of reality criticism, relaxed in body and mind, just waiting to hear the story. However, after the fact, I have to investigate in detail, but I find that the people in the story are clearly the faces of life, and the plot is also based on daily reasoning, which you and I can understand.
On the contrary, the reality that tries to go beyond the consensus, such as a few spy stories, has a weaker effect of shock. Therefore, these fascinating stories are actually limited to reality and ask for materials within the scope of life.
Therefore, if you examine the story of Agatha Christie, you will find that the elements of the story are very simple, nothing more than fighting for inheritance, cheating history, cheating money, and revenge. Then it is derived from extortion, silence, and concealment. The characters are always a family, a boarding room, a cruise ship, or a bus, or even just a party and a feast.
This can also be seen in the relatively small society of female writers and the personality of the family. It is these brief factors that organize these many stories. This reminds me of another skill of women, that is, the skill of weaving - bamboo needles, yarn balls, weaving methods, can produce endless patterns.
The old country lady, Miss Marple, never left her hand in the wool work, which was probably also the work of Agatha Christie. It's also like a child's provocative game, knotting a cotton thread head to head, holding your hands open, picking out a pattern, and then picking it by the other party to form a second trick, two people pick it over, pick it over.
If you are a smart child, you can pick out countless patterns, while if you are a stupid child, you will pick a mess in a few rounds. Agatha Christie is the smartest pickster. She constructed a large number of murders with a number of conditions, and the clues were intricate, like weaving work and picking up wonderful warp and weft organizations.
These lines and structures are all materials of daily life, and the concreteness of this material covers the abstract structural patterns, giving an understandable and sympathetic reality; at the same time, the abstraction of the inner structure divides them from reality and separates them into another life.
"The Mystery of the Tomb", Nova Press
Agatha Christie's novels are very much like adult fairy tales, and I think children are attracted to fairy tales because they have enough imagination to believe that the elves are real. The knowledge and knowledge accumulated by the adult in the experience take up the space of imagination and exclude the conditions of trust, so the elves withdraw from the adult world. However, like a sequelae of incomplete evolution, adults still retain curiosity about unusual events.
Now, Agatha Christie tells one bizarre story after another with people and things recognized in the adult world—nothing could be more exciting than a homicide. She is responsible for convincing our explanations in every detail of the bizarre story, as Poirot said in "The Mystery of the Tomb", "The perfect answer must explain everything clearly." Agatha Christie was able to explain everything clearly.
Moreover, she is not seeking to be sophisticated, but practical, as Fang cai said, if Agatha Christie wants to tell a story that is beyond common sense, such as espionage, "Hidden Killing Machine", "Criminal Gang", "Sansussi Visitor", etc., whether it is a crime or a detection, the reasons based on it are hanging, and it is obvious that it is not her strength.
I think miss Marple's case best reflects the nature of Agatha Christie's story, which is what she said in "Evil in a Calm Town": "Living in the country all year round, people can see all kinds of human nature." Agatha Christie weaves the threads of the story, which is ultimately "all kinds of human nature", and it is the human nature that can be seen "living in the country all year round". Because, Miss Marple firmly believes in one thing: "All human beings are connected."
It can be seen that the crimes in Agatha Christie's writings are all out of ordinary human nature, and there will never be the deformed psychology of modern crimes. For example, like the British contemporary speculative fiction female writer, Ruth Landell's "Invisible Devil" (Taipei Xinyu Publishing House), the old criminal, who specializes in attacking the blonde young girl in the dark narrow street, when he finds a model of the same image in the basement of the apartment, he turns the attack impulse to this rubber man, because the basement also has a dark, narrow space, which can make him accumulate excitement as he gradually approaches the object. Unfortunately, the rubber model was burned by a child in the game, and a series of murders began on the ground.
Here, murder becomes a bizarre fetish, saying that a murderer is actually more like a patient. Agatha Christie's murder has conventional reasons, the suspense is set and solved is not beyond the scope of universal human nature, and it must be thoroughly solved, that is, "clearly explained". In "The Mystery of the Female Corpse in the Library", Miss Marple said: "Victorian people know human nature better", which is the old-school concept of human nature, empirical, but very useful.
In Witnessing Murder, for example, Miss Marple says, "One of my strengths is to know Mrs. Elspeth McLeekadi..." Mrs. Elspeth McLeekadi is not a person of great fantasy, so she says that she saw a murder, which may really have happened.
For example, in "The Mystery of the Female Corpse in the Library", Colonel Bantry's antique study, there lies a fancy dressed female corpse, forming an "unreal" picture, while Miss Marple looks at the female corpse for a long time and whispers, "She is very young", and she pays attention to the factor of that personal nature; in "The Mystery of the Apartment", she sophisticately points out: "In real life, the obvious is real"; in "Late Revenge", she once again says: "The crime is always the most obvious person"; and in "The Strange Case of cliff hill", Nick Miss Buckley was plotted again and again, and finally her cousin Miss Maggie Buckley was murdered, and detective Poirot used several "gray cells" to finally understand this simple truth: "I saw that there was actually only one thing that happened, and that was the murder of Maggie Buckley"! So, don't underestimate Miss Marple's epistemology, which seems to be getting older, but it doesn't weaken its persuasiveness.
The Mystery of the Female Corpse in the Library Room, Nova Press
If Miss Marple contains Agatha Christie's understanding of individual personnel, Poirot shows Agatha Christie's overall conception of things, and he marks Agatha Christie's level of intelligence.
Poirot, unlike Miss Marple, starts with concreteness and starts with abstraction. He believes that everything has an external form relative to its internal properties, and that external deformations can often mean the transformation of content. In the novella "The Mirror of the Dead", he is drawn to the fact that the posture of the suicidal person is "uncomfortable", that is, the deceased may be related to a death of another nature.
Poirot pays special attention to the ordering of things, and when the ordering is completed, the truth is revealed. In The Massacre on the Nile, he says, "We know a lot, but we don't logically coherent it," which means that it can't be sorted out. Here, Agatha Christie embodies a highly logical mind, like the lightning and fish patterns on primitive clay pots, which means that the ability to summarize concrete impressions into abstract forms, and the thinking has undergone essential progress.
Therefore, in Agatha Christie's novel, under the vivid plot of human nature, there is actually a pattern form on the network, and this pattern changes in an orderly manner, evolving the specific human material into various forms. Poirot likes to describe his reasoning as a "jigsaw puzzle," and in Sins in the Sun, he describes his labor to Mrs. Gardner, who is playing a jigsaw puzzle: "You have to stitch all the pieces together." The final finished product, like a mosaic, contains a variety of colors and patterns, and each oddly shaped fragment must be placed in its own place. ”
Sometimes, the illusion occurs that there is a piece that "should have been part of the blanket by color, but was used to form the tail of a black cat." It often goes that Poirot holds a fragment in his hand that seems to have nothing to do with the whole affair, but it is this fragment, "put in its place," and the truth is revealed.
For example, in "The Death of the Cleaning Lady", the first thing that catches Poirot's attention is that Mrs. McInty, an old woman who never writes letters, buys a bottle of ink; in "Card in The Card", in the bridge game, Dr. Roberts inexplicably calls "Grand Slam"; "Dumb Witness" is that the puppy Bob is out all night, but his toy ball is on the stairs...
This fragment, detached from the fact, finally returned to the facts, "finally each in place", restored the whole picture of the facts, and is still a figurative life. It's like a little story about a puzzle, a little boy putting together a puzzle of a map of the world, he put together it at an unexpected speed, but it turned out that he was spelling it in reverse, and the reverse was a picture of his father. What I want to prove with this story is that on the outside of the logical form, there is still the face of human nature with active expressions.
In the case presided over by Miss Mapple, there is actually a hidden form, but her form has a more state of life, such as "Ballad" - "The Legend of Rye", Miss Marple realized that there is a pattern hidden in this case, that is, the ballad: "Sing a song called sixpence, a pocket of rye, twenty-four black thrushes baked in a pie, the pie is all open, the birds sing, what a beautiful dish for the king to taste!" The king counted gold coins in the accounting room, the queen ate bread and spread honey in the living room, the maid dried clothes in the garden, and a small bird flew in and took away her nose. This is the pattern of crime that Miss Marple deciphered, more human than Poirot's.
The Great Deeds of Hercules is a collection of twelve stories that clearly reflect Agatha Christie's sense of form. Hercule Poirot chatted with Dr. Burton, an academician of the Universal Academy, about the topic of names, and Dr. Burton meant to be careful when naming small children, because it often backfired, and he knew a child named after the goddess Diana, who weighed two hundred and forty pounds at a young age.
Poirot's name "Hercules" is the same name as the Greek myth of Hercules, a child of the main god Zeus, known for his twelve feats. Poirot, to correct Dr. Burton's preconceptions and justify himself, decided to select twelve fine cases, each of which must correspond to the great achievements of Hercules. Thus, there are a total of twelve stories such as "The Lion of Nemoya", "Lerna Hydra", "Arcadia O deer", "Erumantos Wild Boar", etc., each of which has a corresponding pattern.
For example, "The Golden Apple of Hesperides", in Greek mythology, is about a struggle between Hercules and Atlas, who carries the sky. Hercule took the sky on Atlas's back and asked Atlas to steal the golden apple, but after Atlas stole the golden apple, but did not want to take back the heavy sky, Hercule tried to make Atlas regain the heavens and pick up the golden apple himself. Agatha Christie exchanged the golden apple for the golden cup, which, in addition to its illustrious history, was itself very delicate, carved with an apple tree, hung with an emerald apple, and was abducted by international thieves at the moment when it was turned from a marquis to a financial magnate, and in the end, of course, it was found by Poirot.
Sins in the Sun, Nova Press
Agatha Christie's detective novels, on top of strict abstract forms and vivid concrete scenes, are shrouded in a mysterious atmosphere - in "The Mysterious Villa", the newlywed Gwenda Reed is looking for a home for their little family, and when she sees the Victorian cottage, she suddenly realizes that it is the house she wants, and everything is familiar and intimate to her, even if she can imagine, which is quickly and horribly confirmed. She imagined that there was a closet in the bedroom, and sure enough there was one; she imagined that the closet should be the wallpaper of small poppies and cornflowers, and it was indeed the paste wallpaper of small poppies and cornflowers...
Then, in Destiny's Gate, Mrs. Thomas Beresford sorted out her new home and found deliberately crossed letters on the books left by the old homeowners, which spelled together a complete sentence: "Mary Jordan did not die of natural causes." The murderer was one of us, and I think I knew who it was. This almost has some meaning of Wuthering Heights.
For example, "The Story of Stafford", playing the spirit table game, summoning an elf named "Ida", bringing a message, Colonel Trevillian was murdered, and indeed, Colonel Trevillian was murdered. Here reveals a thrilling air from the Gothic novel, which will never evolve into a painful and hurtful tragedy like Wuthering Heights, but just enough to arouse excitement and show the benevolent nature of women. Agatha Christie also has a preference that most women have, which is to yearn for mysterious things.
This is probably inherited from a female ancestor, who gave birth to the fantasy of curiosity and fear of the world in the life of staying at home. The ghosts and elves mostly moved in closed rooms, carrying family emblems and admonitions, trying to make moral teachings about various phenomena.
The twelve short stories in "The Dog of Death" are mostly supernatural stories. In the short story collection "Detective Marple", there are also two supernatural stories, one of which is called "The Tailor's Doll", which is not only magical, but also very moving. The doll, when no one remembers when it came, came to Miss Alicia Coombe's tailor's shop in London, and she lay on a velvet chair, matching the style of the furniture in the room, and with its lazy attitude, "it looks as if she is the master here", the women in the tailor's shop felt uncomfortable. Not knowing how to begin, it sat at its desk in the fitting room, as if writing a letter. The women were confused by it, their memory became very poor, they could not always find anything, they could not concentrate on their mental work, and the cleaning women were reluctant to clean up because they felt that the atmosphere was strange and ominous. Finally, it infuriated Miss Alicia Koum, who threw it out of the window and onto the road, where it was picked up by a little girl who held the doll and said, "I tell you, I love her, and this is what it wants, she wants to be loved." ”
The horror of this supernatural story is handled quite subtly, and by the way, the doll is also one of the important props in the supernatural novel, but here, it is the opposite, escaping from evil and entering a lyrical ending.
Another supernatural story in "Detective Miss Marple", "The Mysterious Mirror", has a more gloomy atmosphere, a more intense horror effect, and a complicated plot. It is narrated in the first person, in which "I" sleep in a friend's guest room, peeking in the mirror to see a door in the wall behind him, and a terrifying scene is being staged in the door—the friend's beautiful sister Sylvia, who is strangled by a man's throat, and the man has a scar on the left side of his face that makes him look very fierce. "I" told Sylvia about this vision, and Sylvia dissolved the marriage because her fiancé, like the man in the mirror, had a scar on the left side of her face. Later, Sylvia married "I", but "I" was actually a narrow-minded person, and once, jealousy broke out and strangled Sylvia's neck, just at this time, "I" saw in the mirror the illusion of many years ago, the man with the scar on the left side of the face was "I", because of the reflection of the mirror, the scar on the left side of the face was actually on the right side of the face, and "I" was scratched by a bullet on the right side of the face during the war.
The horror story ends with "I" letting go of my hand in shock, recognizing the "demon" in my heart, and from then on I am in harmony with my wife and never doubt each other. Mysterious prophecies eventually become moral warnings, to salvage the situation in time, so that goodness can be carried forward. This is also about the upbringing of Victorian women, who have a natural taboo against evil and cannot bear to look at people, especially decent people, so that sharp conflicts are overcome under their compassion.
The Complete Detectives of Miss Marple, Nova Press
Agatha Christie's novels, after brutal murder and deliberate detectives, always lead to a reunion, in the words of Miss Marple in "The Sins of a Calm Town," "everything ends in the best way." The murderers are mostly despicable by nature, and crime is inevitable, and punishment is taken for granted, such as the sinister Dr. Lidler in "The Mystery of the Tomb"; Mr. Franklin Clark in "Murder on ABC"; and Norman Gayle, the dentist in "Strange Case in the Clouds". Or it's the lowly characters, with them without them, the world will not be affected, such as the criminal Nurse Hopkins in "A Lunch in H Manor"; Miss Gilchrist, the female companion of "After the Funeral"; Miss Anne Meredith in "The Card in the Card"--although she is not a criminal in this murder, she is a hidden repeat offender, Poirot once tried a little trick to test her, this test is very much meaning of Hans Christian Andersen's "Princess Pea", that is, let her help select a few products in the high-end stockings to give away, When she was ready, there were two pairs of stockings missing on the table—this was in line with her female companion's origins, and of course, because of her personal conduct, so she could be assured of her crime.
"Female companion", in the era of Agatha Christie's life, really belongs to a lower class, "After the Funeral", the female companion Miss Gilchrist, in order to realize the long-cherished wish of opening a small tea house, killed people, people even cruelly look for Miss Gilchrist happy, saying that she has been deranged in prison, is excitedly planning to open a teahouse, the name of this tea house is "Lilac Bush". And the stories of the strangling criminals, who come from good families, have good identities, and have understandable criminal origins, especially women, are often mournful, and Agatha Christie always let them commit suicide by taking drugs, both to avoid the humiliation of trial and to have a self-redemption posture. For example, in "The House of Illusions", the gentle wife Gerda loves her husband to worship; in "Dumb Witness", in "Dumb Witness", in "The Mother, Lady Tanios" who wants to make her baby child live a good life; for example, Miss Nick Buckley in "The Strange Case of Cliff Hill" who tries to take her cousin's property to save the family business; or like "Belated Revenge", the unfortunate actress Marina Greg is arranged by Mr. Rudd, who loves her, to sleep painlessly and sleeplessly; "The Murder of Roger Akroyd", Dr. James finished writing his criminal statement and was ready to take sleeping pills, and he finally wrote: "Sleeping pills? This is a poetic and just punishment"; and then there is The Lost in the Old House, in which Mrs. Friat shelters her son's murder plan, in order to regain the lost Nasser Manor, the son has always been a bad material, there is nothing to say, but the mother is still the daughter of this glorious ancient family, and in the face of Poirot, who has come to accuse poirot, she said calmly: "Thank you for coming here to tell me about this situation." You're leaving now, right? There are some things that a man has to bear alone..." Although no punishment was indicated, at least Mrs. Friat maintained her dignity.
As for those who are innocent and frightened and suffering, Agatha Christie must give compensation, which is basically a good marriage and a good birth, such as in "The Strange Case in the Clouds", the innocent Miss Gray, through Poirot's matchmaking, began to associate with the promising archaeologist Jean Dupont; Miss Sheila in "Strange Bell Doubt" finally proved that she was born in a legal marriage, her parents were respectable members of the national political department, and she also had a good relationship with Mr. Colin, a high-level agent.
There are some prejudices here, but there is also a realistic attitude towards life, like "Jane Eyre", Jane Eyre finally got a small inheritance, and then went to stay with Rochester, even if it is a two-hearted love, it still needs to have as equal conditions as possible to ensure perfection.
Obviously, the people of that era did not like to deviate excessively from the norm, and everything had to be appropriate, in short, not too outrageous. This can be seen in "A Lunch in Manor H", where Mary, the adopted daughter of Gerald, the old servant of Manor H, is deeply cared for by the hostess, Mrs. Wellman, who turns out to be the illegitimate daughter of Mrs. Wellman, and Poirot speculates: "There is no doubt that she will take proper care of Mary Gerrard, but she will not leave all the family property to Mary." She hoped that her illegitimate daughter would better live outside the upper class circles. This conservatism is not responsible for social criticism, but its honest expression gives these stories a gentle attitude.
This article is excerpted from
"Wang Anyi Self-Selected Collection"
Author: Wang Anyi
Publisher: Tiandi Publishing House
Publication year: 2017-6-1