are so rare at holiday camps. You can see them, nervously, on the periphery of the recreational activities. Most often, they turn and leave; sometimes they launch into them, and participate. I left Valerie by the restaurant tables.
In every Sherlock Holmes story you immediately recognise the characteristics of the character; but, as well as that, the author never fails to introduce some new peculiarity (the cocaine, the violin, the existence of older brother, Mycroft, the taste for Italian opera . . . certain services rendered long ago to the crowned heads of Europe . . . the first case Sherlock Holmes ever solved when he was still an adolescent). Each new detail that is revealed casting new areas of shadow, and in the end developed a character who was truly fascinating: Conan Doyle succeeded in creating a perfect mixture of the pleasure of discovery and the pleasure of recognition. I always felt that Agatha Christie, on the other hand, put too much emphasis on the pleasure of recognition. In her initial descriptions of Poirot she had a tendency to limit herself to a couple of stock phrases, restricted her character's most obvious traits (his mania for symmetry, his patent-leather boots, the care he:' lavishes on his mustachios); in the more mediocre other books, you even get the impression that the phrases had been copied directly from one novel to another.
That said, The Hollow was interesting for other reasons. Not simply for the ambitious character of Henrietta, the' sculptor, in whom Agatha Christie tried to portray not1 only the agony of creation (the scene where she destroys a statue just after labouring to finish it because she sensation that it is lacking something), but that suffering which is particular to being an artist; that inability to be truly happy or unhappy, to truly feel hatred, despair, ecstasy or love; the sort of aesthetic filter which separates, without the possibility of remission, the artist from the world. The author had put much of herself into her character, and her sincerity was obvious. Unfortunately, the artist, separated in a way from the world, sensing things only in a vague, ambiguous, and consequently less intense manner, became as a result a less interesting character.
Fundamentally conservative, and hostile to any idea of the social redistribution of wealth, Agatha Christie adopted very clear-cut ideological positions throughout her career as a writer. In practise, this radical theoretical engagement nonetheless made it possible for her to be frequently cruel in her descriptions of the English aristocracy, whose privileges she so staunchly defended. Lady Angkatell is a burlesque character, only barely credible and often almost terrifying. The author is clearly fascinated with her creation, who has clearly forgotten even those rules which apply to ordinary human beings; she must have enjoyed writing sentences like: 'But then one doesn't exactly introduce people - not when somebody had just been killed' - but her sympathies did not lie with Lady Angkatell. On the other hand, she paints a warm portrait of Midge, forced to work as a salesgirl during the week, and who spends her weekends among people who haven't the faintest idea of what work really is. Spirited, lively, Midge loves Edward hopelessly. Edward, for his part, thinks himself a failure: he hasn't succeeded at anything in his life, not even at becoming a writer, he writes short stories of disenchanted irony for obscure journals read only by bibliophiles. Three times he proposes marriage to Henrietta, without success. Henrietta is John mistress, she admires his strength, his radiant personality but John is married. His murder shatters the delicate balance of unfulfilled desire between the character Edward finally realises that Henrietta will never want hi that he can never measure up to John; but nor can bring himself closer to Midge, and his life seems to completely ruined. It is at this point that The Hollow becomes a strange,
In every Sherlock Holmes story you immediately recognise the characteristics of the character; but, as well as that, the author never fails to introduce some new peculiarity (the cocaine, the violin, the existence of older brother, Mycroft, the taste for Italian opera . . . certain services rendered long ago to the crowned heads of Europe . . . the first case Sherlock Holmes ever solved when he was still an adolescent). Each new detail that is revealed casting new areas of shadow, and in the end developed a character who was truly fascinating: Conan Doyle succeeded in creating a perfect mixture of the pleasure of discovery and the pleasure of recognition. I always felt that Agatha Christie, on the other hand, put too much emphasis on the pleasure of recognition. In her initial descriptions of Poirot she had a tendency to limit herself to a couple of stock phrases, restricted her character's most obvious traits (his mania for symmetry, his patent-leather boots, the care he:' lavishes on his mustachios); in the more mediocre other books, you even get the impression that the phrases had been copied directly from one novel to another.
That said, The Hollow was interesting for other reasons. Not simply for the ambitious character of Henrietta, the' sculptor, in whom Agatha Christie tried to portray not1 only the agony of creation (the scene where she destroys a statue just after labouring to finish it because she sensation that it is lacking something), but that suffering which is particular to being an artist; that inability to be truly happy or unhappy, to truly feel hatred, despair, ecstasy or love; the sort of aesthetic filter which separates, without the possibility of remission, the artist from the world. The author had put much of herself into her character, and her sincerity was obvious. Unfortunately, the artist, separated in a way from the world, sensing things only in a vague, ambiguous, and consequently less intense manner, became as a result a less interesting character.
Fundamentally conservative, and hostile to any idea of the social redistribution of wealth, Agatha Christie adopted very clear-cut ideological positions throughout her career as a writer. In practise, this radical theoretical engagement nonetheless made it possible for her to be frequently cruel in her descriptions of the English aristocracy, whose privileges she so staunchly defended. Lady Angkatell is a burlesque character, only barely credible and often almost terrifying. The author is clearly fascinated with her creation, who has clearly forgotten even those rules which apply to ordinary human beings; she must have enjoyed writing sentences like: 'But then one doesn't exactly introduce people - not when somebody had just been killed' - but her sympathies did not lie with Lady Angkatell. On the other hand, she paints a warm portrait of Midge, forced to work as a salesgirl during the week, and who spends her weekends among people who haven't the faintest idea of what work really is. Spirited, lively, Midge loves Edward hopelessly. Edward, for his part, thinks himself a failure: he hasn't succeeded at anything in his life, not even at becoming a writer, he writes short stories of disenchanted irony for obscure journals read only by bibliophiles. Three times he proposes marriage to Henrietta, without success. Henrietta is John mistress, she admires his strength, his radiant personality but John is married. His murder shatters the delicate balance of unfulfilled desire between the character Edward finally realises that Henrietta will never want hi that he can never measure up to John; but nor can bring himself closer to Midge, and his life seems to completely ruined. It is at this point that The Hollow becomes a strange,
Similar Books
