Thoughts on Agatha (Jillian)

I have been hiding from the internet lately, in case somebody noticed. I've been languishing in creative silence for a while - to give my craft some room amidst a very noisy, self-important world. But something has caught my eye this fine day in August, and it again involves Agatha Christie... and the Daily Telegraph.

Today, in the DT, Laura Thompson makes the point that the publication of Agatha's private notebooks "will do nothing to reveal what made her tick." She does make an interesting point. Her novels were so clever it is no wonder that readers (or is it really the publishers?) are still dying to know how she was able to pull it off... believing that there must be some sort of magic embedded in her stories to make them work. The notebooks, apparently, reveal the scribblings and the notes she made that eventually gave way to her books... perhaps offering a glimpse into her own special writing process. But thinking as a writer, myself, I wonder: would I want my random, often-disorganized mess of proto-novel writings to be put on public display? After all, writing is such an intimate, highly personal art...

Thompson says:

She [Agatha] would have rued the publication of the notebooks, that is for sure. She gave away nothing; and that was how she liked it. Only in the six straight novels that she wrote between 1930 and 1956 did she reveal anything of herself, within the protection of a pseudonym. She was devastated when her secret identity, "Mary Westmacott", was exposed in 1949, even though the novels received reviews that most authors would have been glad to claim. The pseudonym, like the facade of "Agatha Christie" that she wrapped around herself, was a means to keep the world at bay.

She is herself a mystery - such that became the centre of the Doctor Who episode "The Unicorn and the Wasp". But when one attempts to open up her life and spread it out so that others can have a part of the mystery... it ceases to become sacred, respectful of how she preferred her legend (if it can be called such) to be carried on into history. Of course, very rarely does one have the choice to write one's legacy.

My thoughts about this article are mainly in regards to preserving Agatha as she is: a writer who chose to keep her writing protected under a mask, her secrets remaining secrets... and finding contentment in that.

I must return to work now. Trying to blog and answering the annoying phone is a daring feat all its own.