What’s the Matter with Robert Graves?

/ jt

Quote of the day:

Very few of us are what we seem.
—Agatha Christie

Robert Graves, the writer of the novels I, Claudius and Claudius the God, which were turned into the successful BBC TV series I, Claudius, became friends with Agatha Christie and her husband during World War II when they found themselves neighbors. Although they dwelt in different artistic worlds, they did exchange thoughts on problems that writers faced. Christie remembered Graves’s advice “that washing up was one of the best aids to creative thought.” So Christie would often clean her house to help her get past writer’s block.

Christie even dedicated one her novels to Graves; more about that in a subsequent post.

So how did Graves repay the friendship? Why he wrote a glowing article about Christie for the New York Times Book Review.

Just kidding.

What he actually wrote was a diatribe against whodunits in general and Agatha Christie in particular. Published on August 25, 1957, it was entitled “After a Century, Will Anyone Care Whodunit?” 

Robert Graves.

Here is what his venomous pen had to say about his erstwhile friend:

Will the twenty-first century English literature course include Agatha Christie–statistically the most popular detective-writer today? An embarrassing question, because she was my country neighbor during the last war, and I have the greatest affection for her; besides, she has dedicated one of her books to me. And when I once asked why she wrote, she answered: “I was an only child and told stories to amuse myself; I still do.” The pure pleasure of self-amusement communicates itself to her readers, and she shines at the ingenious distractions of their attention. Yet though she knows the Devonshire countryside well and is not only a qualified pharmacist, an enthusiastic gardener, but a capable archaeological worker, nobody could promise Agatha immortality as a novelist. Her English is school-girlish, her situations for the most part artificial, her detail faulty. Nevertheless, the novels are sure-fire stage successes–on the stage, critical judgment is mercifully suspended–and she may well figure in future histories of the theatre.

Graves also trashes Edgar Allan Poe, Dorothy Sayers, and Arthur Conan Doyle among others, but he does find it in his heart to praise Erle Stanley Gardner (“though his stories follow a ritual pattern almost as rigid as that of Greek drama, the legal situation is always novel and fascinating”) and Selwyn Jepson. Uh, who is Selwyn Jepson?

It’s not yet 2057, but from what I can see, Dame Agatha’s books are still selling like—well, according to Wikipedia, Christie is the most successful novelist of all time, outsold only by Shakespeare and the Bible.

Agatha Christie.

But that’s not all. Nearly all, if not all, of her mysteries and thrillers (she also wrote romances under the name of Mary Westmacott) have been adapted into movies and/or TV shows, often more than once. And they are still being tuned out, some more successfully than others.

But even that’s still not all. There have been many books written about not only Christie herself but her creations. For example:

To name just a few. (In case you’re wondering, yes, I have all those books, most of them in ebook format.) Still, her books have sold over two billion copies and there seems to be no end in sight. She must have struck a chord with the public.

Meanwhile, perhaps it’s worth taking a closer look at Robert Graves’s magnum opus. He based his tales of the emperor Claudius on the writings of the Roman historians Suetonius and Tacitus, who were not necessarily the most reliable chroniclers as they had axes of their own to grind. Part of the problem was that whenever someone died in those days, if there was no clear reason for the death, poison was suspected. So Livia was blamed as a calculating murderess who wanted her son Tiberius to become emperor. She was almost certainly blameless, but Graves accepted the Roman historians’ accounts uncritically. It made for a great soap opera, but not necessarily very good history.

But why would Robert Graves write such a piece about his friend Agatha? I’ve put my little grey cells to work on the problem and I can’t come up with an explanation. I guess it’s just going to have to remain a mystery.

 

 

 

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