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Of little grey cells and puzzling plots
Published: 9/18/2009 12:01 PM
Last Modified: 9/18/2009 12:01 PM


Agatha Christie -- and you wonder what evil thoughts might be going on behind that smiling face....

Tuesday, 15 September, would have been Agatha Christie's 119th birthday, and portions of Great Britain -- mainly the area around Torquay in Devon where Christie was born in 1890, and the Guardian newspaper -- are celebrating "Christie Week" through Sunday.

Agatha Christie is generally listed as the world's best-selling novelist, with close to four billion copies of her 80 books sold in some 56 languages.

The events of this week coincide with the publication of a book by John Curran, "Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making," which examines the way Christie went about constructing her stories.

These days, it's fashionable to look down on Christie's work -- most who talk about her work will concede that she could put together a plot, but that her prose style was pedestrian, her characters cut from the most standard of cardboard, her attitudes toward certain ethnic groups showing the snobbishness typical of her class of people.

Some of those charges are justified, but what doesn't get pointed out enough about Christie's work is its morality. People will do evil things, and when they do -- whether out of base passions such as lust or greed or hatred or fear, or (and in Christie's mind, this was equally reprehensible) misplaced idealism -- they must be ferreted out and punished, the corrupting influence excised before it can contaminate the whole.

Those who wish to denigrate Agatha Christie will point out that the world she presents in her books is unreal. Of course, all novels are fantasies -- unreal -- in one way or another.

Maybe people are just uncomfortable with the thought of having to pay for the sins they commit.


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ARTS

James D. Watts Jr. has lived in Oklahoma for most his life, even though he still has people saying to him, "Don't sound like you're from around these parts." A University of Oklahoma Phi Beta Kappa graduate, Watts has received the Governor Arts Award, Harwelden Award and the National Conference of Christians and Jews Beth Macklin Award for his writing. Before coming to the Tulsa World, Watts worked for the Tulsa Tribune.

Contact him at (918) 581-8478.

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