"Agatha Christie Code"

[amicus]

I have never read a single one of her books nor watched a film version, but I am watching an amazing documentary about this writer, deemed the most prolific writer of the 20th century, selling 2.3 Billion books world wide and no one, it seems, knows who she was or hardly anything about her life.

On the Documentary Channel, "Agatha Christie Code" first aired 01/12/08, it should be available on Hulu or other such things I would think.

Whether writer or reader and I know all of you are....I think you will find this a most interesting program....



dad

~~~

Sent this off to four of my grown children tonight and had the after thought of sharing it here.

Anyone see the piece?

Amicus

 

[stephen55]

It took you long enough!!!

I have never read a single one of her books nor watched a film version, but I am watching an amazing documentary about this writer, deemed the most prolific writer of the 20th century, selling 2.3 Billion books world wide and no one, it seems, knows who she was or hardly anything about her life.

On the Documentary Channel, "Agatha Christie Code" first aired 01/12/08, it should be available on Hulu or other such things I would think.

Whether writer or reader and I know all of you are....I think you will find this a most interesting program....

dad
*******

You're kidding, right? I mean, you've got to be kidding. Hot Damn!! Ami understands sarcasm!!

 

[Liar]

I have never read a single one of her books nor watched a film version, but I am watching an amazing documentary about this writer, deemed the most prolific writer of the 20th century, selling 2.3 Billion books world wide and no one, it seems, knows who she was or hardly anything about her life.

I assume no one who haven't even read her books and only know her as a brand name would whow who she was, yes.

But it's not that much of a secret really. I'd recommend her autobiography. It's good stuff.

http://www.amazon.com/Agatha-Christie-Autobiography/dp/042515260X

 

[PoppingTom]

How can somebody not know Agatha Christie??

Not know Miss Marple ?

She's so known for her detective stories, where everybody is suspect, and the least suspect is mostly the murderer.

There was even a movie with Dustin Hoffmann about her life.....called "Agatha"

 

[stephen55]

Why, Detective Inspector Hercule Poirot is more famous, literarily speaking, than Sherlock Holmes. He appeared in 33 of Agatha Christie's novels and 54 of her short stories. Take that, Sir Arthur!!

 

[LaRocha]

Why, Detective Inspector Hercule Poirot is more famous, literarily speaking, than Sherlock Holmes. He appeared in 33 of Agatha Christie's novels and 54 of her short stories. Take that, Sir Arthur!!

A good way to gauge a character or author's impact on culture and literature is just by doing a simple Google search.

Hercule/Poirot returns 868,000

Sherlock/Holmes returns 39,500,000

A Google books search shows a similar disparity in popularity of each character:

http://books.google.com/books?q=hercule+poirot&btnG=Search+Books
http://books.google.com/books?q=sherlock+holmes&btnG=Search+Books

Agatha Christie's life is more interesting than her mysteries. Sherlock Holmes is more interesting than Conan Doyle.

 

[stephen55]

You are the numbers guy......

I was getting at the idea that Agathe Christie wrote 87 works about Hercule Poirot, while Sir Arthur wrote 9 works about Holmes. I admit that the name of Holmes is more familiar to the world. As someone who is very interested in numbers of works written, you get the point.

Sir Arthur modeled Holmes on one of his Medical professors at The University of Edinburgh, Dr. Joseph Bell. Bell was famous at the University Hospital for walking into a patient's room, followed by a retinue of medical students, standing at the foot of the bed silently for a minute, then explaining to the students the patient's problem, life history and usually, where the patient was from. He did this by observing and analyzing everything detail he could gather from this visual exam. Conan Doyle gave Holmes this gift of careful observation.

I tried it once. Then I went back to taking the patient's history, doing an exam and ordering any necessary lab and imaging tests. My guess, knowing a few tricks that Med School profs like to pull, is that Dr. Bell had already thoroughly examined the patient before taking the students around the ward.

 

[LaRocha]

My point was that numbers don't matter, 'literarily' speaking, of course. Just because someone produces story after story, sells reams of stories, doesn't mean the stories will be remembered or have any impact on literature. You don't have to have 100 stories posted to be a popular author(most favorited) on this website.

 

[TxRad]

2.3 billion books sold does speak of an author being popular or most favorited, whichever way you want to look at it.

 

[LaRocha]

2.3 billion books sold does speak of an author being popular or most favorited, whichever way you want to look at it.

See, now the point I just made was in terms of literature, "literarily" as Stephen put it, Sherlock Holmes is far more influential a character. There's Scouries, who likely has an infinite number of stories under an infinite number of names, highly favorited on most of them, and then there are his peers RGjohn and Tryanything. Neither has a quarter of the number of stories as the Scouries Overlord, yet each is more highly favorited and likely tremendously more influential on other writers than our hero under any of his aliases. Quantity vs. quality is always the point.

 

[TxRad]

See, now the point I just made was in terms of literature, "literarily" as Stephen put it, Sherlock Holmes is far more influential a character. There's Scouries, who likely has an infinite number of stories under an infinite number of names, highly favorited on most of them, and then there are his peers RGjohn and Tryanything. Neither has a quarter of the number of stories as the Scouries Overlord, yet each is more highly favorited and likely tremendously more influential on other writers than our hero under any of his aliases. Quantity vs. quality is always the point.

Have you read stories by all three of those authors you mentioned?

If not, then read and compare. It won't take long to figure out that there's a turkey in the hen house and no real reason the turkey is there at all. He used to have well over a hundred but deleted all the low scoring ones a while back. Also the ones where his English spelling and colloquiums stood out. The same for his female half.

Why do you think he is always wanting the details on how the sweeps work?

 

[LaRocha]

Have you read stories by all three of those authors you mentioned?

If not, then read and compare. It won't take long to figure out that there's a turkey in the hen house and no real reason the turkey is there at all. He used to have well over a hundred but deleted all the low scoring ones a while back. Also the ones where his English spelling and colloquiums stood out. The same for his female half.

Why do you think he is always wanting the details on how the sweeps work?

I'm also of the opinion that BostonFiction is Scouries. But I'm not comparing Scouries to Agatha Christie, I'm comparing Scouries to writers here that people read and attempt to mimic. RGjohn is certainly no Conan Doyle. In Literotica world Scouries is read and favorited by actual human beings and not only alts. Still, he's nothing compared to RGjohn, because Scouries is a shit sex story writer whereas RGjohn is highly effective and highly mimicked by the incest crew. TryAnything used to have more stories if I remember right, Scouries wishes he was as successful. There are a number of writers I've seen pull less than successful stories.

Agatha didn't create an archetype with Poirot. Conan Doyle did and we can see the archetype he created all over 20th century detective fiction, specifically in Agatha's Poirot.

 

[ishtat]

I assume no one who haven't even read her books and only know her as a brand name would whow who she was, yes.

But it's not that much of a secret really. I'd recommend her autobiography. It's good stuff.

http://www.amazon.com/Agatha-Christie-Autobiography/dp/042515260X

This is an excellent biography but if you want a really interesting writer in this genre George Simenon is your man!

 

[manyeyedhydra]

A good way to gauge a character or author's impact on culture and literature is just by doing a simple Google search.

Hercule/Poirot returns 868,000

Sherlock/Holmes returns 39,500,000

A Google books search shows a similar disparity in popularity of each character:

http://books.google.com/books?q=hercule+poirot&btnG=Search+Books
http://books.google.com/books?q=sherlock+holmes&btnG=Search+Books

Agatha Christie's life is more interesting than her mysteries. Sherlock Holmes is more interesting than Conan Doyle.

You're forgetting Sherlock Holmes is the most filmed character after Dracula, which will skew any searches along those lines.

Also, I'm fairly certain Arthur Conan Doyle wrote more than 9 works with Sherlock Holmes. I remember reading the complete collection of short stories and that was a fair old doorstop.

Both excellent creations from top-notch storytellers though.

If it's the same Agatha Christie Code as I remember seeing a while back, one of Agatha's strengths was to make it very clear what each paragraph was about, even going so far as repeating key words within a section so that even if the reader wasn't aware of it directly, they'd still get exactly what mood Agatha was trying to convey.

I try and use the same trick whenever I'm targetting a certain fetish with one of my stories.

 

[Handley_Page]

Please don't forget that Conan Doyle wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories for a magazine. Agatha Christie wrote whole books.
I therefore submit that the two cannot be directly compared.

 

[LaRocha]

You're forgetting Sherlock Holmes is the most filmed character after Dracula, which will skew any searches along those lines.

Also, I'm fairly certain Arthur Conan Doyle wrote more than 9 works with Sherlock Holmes. I remember reading the complete collection of short stories and that was a fair old doorstop.

Both excellent creations from top-notch storytellers though.

If it's the same Agatha Christie Code as I remember seeing a while back, one of Agatha's strengths was to make it very clear what each paragraph was about, even going so far as repeating key words within a section so that even if the reader wasn't aware of it directly, they'd still get exactly what mood Agatha was trying to convey.

I try and use the same trick whenever I'm targetting a certain fetish with one of my stories.

Agatha Christie's Poirot has aired for the last 20 years on British TV. There's been a number of Miss Marple motion pictures. Unrelated, Mike Hammer has had a run on TV a couple times, 100+ episodes of that novel-based detective. I don't really recall any long time American or British program starring Sherlock, 200 movies at least.

But it really comes down to Holmes being the archetype detective in the novel, with Conan Doyle basically creating a super popular genre Detective and also Mystery. Poirot is pretty much just a lazy, French version of Holmes. Poirot's hobby is reading Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes' hobby is chemistry.

 

[LaRocha]

Please don't forget that Conan Doyle wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories for a magazine. Agatha Christie wrote whole books.
I therefore submit that the two cannot be directly compared.

* A Study in Scarlet (published 1887, in Beeton's Christmas Annual)
* The Sign of the Four (published 1890, Lippincott's Monthly Magazine)
* The Hound of the Baskervilles (serialised 1901–1902 in The Strand)
* The Valley of Fear (serialised 1914–1915 in The Strand)


Ulysseys was first published in serial in an American magazine, I guess it can't be considered a novel...

 

[PoppingTom]

Poirot is pretty much just a lazy, French version of Holmes. Poirot's hobby is reading Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes' hobby is chemistry.

He's Belgian. And he's much more funny than superserious Holmes.

 

[oggbashan]

There is a lot known about Agatha Christie except exactly why she ran away to stay in a hotel.

As for novels being published first in magazines? Charles Dickens did it. H G Wells did it. It doesn't make their novels, or Conan Doyle's, any less appreciated.

It does (Og speaking as a secondhand bookdealer) make the first book edition LESS valuable than they might have been as a genuine first publication. The first book edition of The Hound Of The Baskervilles is expensive mainly because of the spectacular picture of The Hound on the cover. However the magazine "first" also isn't always that valuable because they were published in such large quantities. I have the first publication of H G Wells' The War of the Worlds in magazine form. It cost me about twelve pounds (say twenty dollars).

A complete set in original paper covers of a serialised Charles Dickens novel IS valuable but only as something to own. The set would be too valuable and fragile to read. First editions of Charles Dickens novels published as books are affordable.

Og

Edited for PS. Warning! There are modern copies of the Dickens part-works. The University of Kent reproduced the six parts of Edwin Drood in the 1970s. They are worth about twenty-five pounds now.

 

[LaRocha]

He's Belgian. And he's much more funny than superserious Holmes.

I'm American. Europe is only made up of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the magical mystery that is Holland. Hans Brinker is the president of Holland.

 

[PoppingTom]

I'm American. Europe is only made up of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the magical mystery that is Holland. Hans Brinker is the president of Holland.

Yeah, right, Britain and Skandinavia belongs to Asia. And everything east of Germany is Russia anyway.

Hey...that means we got no Greek problem.......

 

[ishtat]

Ulysseys was first published in serial in an American magazine, I guess it can't be considered a novel...

Many of those who have tried to read it might possibly agree!

 

[ishtat]

There is a lot known about Agatha Christie except exactly why she ran away to stay in a hotel.

As for novels being published first in magazines? Charles Dickens did it. H G Wells did it. It doesn't make their novels, or Conan Doyle's, any less appreciated.

It does (Og speaking as a secondhand bookdealer) make the first book edition LESS valuable than they might have been as a genuine first publication. The first book edition of The Hound Of The Baskervilles is expensive mainly because of the spectacular picture of The Hound on the cover. However the magazine "first" also isn't always that valuable because they were published in such large quantities. I have the first publication of H G Wells' The War of the Worlds in magazine form. It cost me about twelve pounds (say twenty dollars).

A complete set in original paper covers of a serialised Charles Dickens novel IS valuable but only as something to own. The set would be too valuable and fragile to read. First editions of Charles Dickens novels published as books are affordable.

Og

Edited for PS. Warning! There are modern copies of the Dickens part-works. The University of Kent reproduced the six parts of Edwin Drood in the 1970s. They are worth about twenty-five pounds now.

Og, I have a copy of the first edition of Agatha Christies American "And then there were None" and also the same book under its British title "Ten Little Niggers"(1939)

I understand that the British first edition is worth considerably more than the less notoriously titled American version?

 

[stephen55]

Og, I have a copy of the first edition of Agatha Christies American "And then there were None" and also the same book under its British title "Ten Little Niggers"(1939)

I understand that the British first edition is worth considerably more than the less notoriously titled American version?

I remember a movie based on that novel. I believe it was called "Ten Little Indians". Not a bad flick as I recall.

 

[amicus]

Interesting commentary all round. Ishtat had it right the 'Code' Documentary included many attemps to find technical, 'writerly' reasons why Christie's work has remained popular over the years.

"And then there were none", as a Play, has been running in London for 53 years consistently, as I recall from the program.

I sense some disdainn at my confession to having read none of Christie, add to that, no Sherlock Holmes, no Auther Conan Doyle, no horror books or flicks and I have never watched a single episode of Monty Python or the Simpsons.

Then again, I don't watch professional wrestling and I don't and never have frequented Bowling Alleys.

Personally I find the mystery genre, especially the formula type, to be utterly boring. I am however, curious to understand the current popularity of Vampire and Zombie stories and films as I see no value whatsoever in either.

I place the mystery and horror genre's in the same category as Soap Opera's, stories intended to entertain bored women during the daytime.

Amicus