Agatha Christie: Dramatist

by Kirk Woodward

[This is Kirk Woodward's third guest post since August, after "Stephen Schwartz" on 2 August and his half of "The Originalist Squared" (paired with my own report) on 7 August.  My friend now returns with a discussion of Agatha Christie, the great mystery writer, that combines two of Kirk's strongest interests: mystery novels and theater.  (To remind ROTters, Kirk's an actor, director, playwright, and acting teacher, but he's had an abiding interest in mystery stories and their authors for many decades.  Readers will recall that I posted on ROT a three-part examination of Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason novels on 19 and 22 February and 19 March 2018.) 

["Agatha Christie: Dramatist" is Kirk's look at the Grande Dame of mystery writing, the creator, among other memorable figures, of Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple, as a writer of dramas--not necessarily plays, or not only plays, as we'll see--but as a dramatist in the composition of her novels and stories.  I'll let Kirk give you his thesis--he does it better than I could anyway.  And it's his gig.  ~Rick]

Talk about best-selling books and you have to talk about Agatha Christie. According to some accounts, her works are outsold only by the Bible and the plays of William Shakespeare. She is said to have written books that have sold some two billion volumes, most of them murder mysteries. “An Agatha Christie” is a generic name for a mesmerizing, forward-driven mystery that you can’t put down and that will probably have a twist or a double solution at the end that will astonish you.

Christie, who was born in 1890 and died in 1976, was astonishingly prolific. She would be famous if she’d only written three or four books – say, for example, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), Murder on the Orient Express (1934), The A. B. C. Murders (1936), and And Then There Were None (1939). (If you don’t know why these four books are celebrated, I recommend you read them at once.)

As it is, over her long career she wrote altogether seventy-five novels, mostly murder mysteries, but also several romances (under the name Mary Westmacott). She also wrote 165 short stories, seven radio and television plays, and three volumes of poetry, plus two autobiographies and a travel book, and she found time to participate in a number of archeological digs with her second husband, the archeologist Max Mallowan (1904-1978). 

No one doubts that Christie was highly skilled at the craft of writing mysteries. For some, however, the praise stops there. For example, the esteemed mystery writer P. D. James (1920-2014) said of Christie that Christie “wasn’t an innovative writer and had no interest in exploring the possibilities of the genre.” James called Christie “a literary conjuror who places her pasteboard characters face downwards and shuffles them with practiced cunning,” concluding that “perhaps her greatest strength is that she never overstepped the limits of her talent.”

James surely overstates her case. There are I suspect few who would agree with the statement that Christie had not expanded the genre without a great deal of amplification. However, her attitude toward Christie is common. It was most famously laid out by the literary critic Edmund Wilson (1895-1972) in his essay “Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?” (1945)  in which he wrote that

her writing is of a mawkishness and banality which seem to me literally impossible to read. You cannot read such a book, you run through it to see the problem worked out; and you cannot become interested in the characters, because they never can be allowed an existence of their own even in a flat two dimensions but have always to be contrived so that they can seem either reliable or sinister, depending on which quarter, at the moment, is to be baited for the reader's suspicion. . . .

Mrs. Christie, in proportion as she is more expert and concentrates more narrowly on the puzzle, has to eliminate human interest completely, or, rather, fill in the picture with what seems to me a distasteful parody of it. In this new novel [Death Comes as the End, 1945], she has to provide herself with puppets who will be good for three stages of suspense: you must first wonder who is going to be murdered, you must then wonder who is committing the murders, and you must finally be unable to foresee which of two men the heroine will marry. It is all like a sleight-of-hand trick, in which the magician diverts your attention from the awkward or irrelevant movements that conceal the manipulation of the cards, and it may mildly entertain and astonish you, as such a sleight-of-hand performance may. But in a performance like Death Comes as the End, the patter is a constant bore and the properties lack the elegance of playing cards.

Well now! It is astonishing that anyone would read such a weak literary product as Wilson describes. Wilson of course is unimpressed with the whole genre of mystery writing, but he certainly has little admiration in particular for Christie. What can we say about such disdain for such a popular writer?

The answer, I believe, is a simple one: one sees what one is looking for. Wilson criticizes Christie for not being a novelist in the same sense that Jane Austen, Henry James, or Phillip Roth are novelists. However, Christie’s books do not aim at accomplishing the same things that such writers’ works accomplish. That is because, in a very real sense, she is not a novelist at all. She is a dramatist.

Christie was in fact quite literally a highly skilled playwright. She wrote sixteen plays. They are well constructed, almost all have been staged multiple times, and several of them have been enormously successful. In fact Christie’s play The Mousetrap opened in London in 1952 and is still running, making it the longest running play of all time, heading steadily toward 30,000 continuous performances.

Other notable plays by Christie include Witness for the Prosecution (1953), based on one of her short stories and subsequently turned into a notable 1958 movie, and And Then There Were None (1943). I have seen a production of her own dramatization of Murder on the Nile (1945) and found it a most satisfactory mystery.

However, I am not only claiming that Christie wrote plays, but that she writes her books as a dramatist. What does that mean?

In the first place, it means, quoting one of the earliest and most important pieces of drama criticism, the Poetics of Aristotle (384-322 BC), that “the plot is the soul of the drama.” It is no secret that in Christie’s mysteries, and in most of the books of her time now referred to as “Golden Age mysteries,” the stories are plot-driven.

(The mysteries featuring Lord Peter Wimsey written by Dorothy Sayers, who lived from 1893 to 1957, stand out in their time period because they are more character-driven than Christie’s books. Sayers, however, in my estimation is primarily a novelist.)

Edmund Wilson criticizes Christie for exactly the same plot-driven nature of her books that propels the drama. (It may be unfair to note that Wilson wrote plays, none of which are known or celebrated today.) Christie, I suspect, would not apologize.  A born dramatist, she would maintain that plot comes first. Not at all coincidentally, plot is the primary element her readers read her books for.

A second element of Christie’s nature as a dramatist is that in her work, character is subordinate to plot. That is not to say that character does not matter; in fact Christie is something of a moralist in her writing. It is also not to say that character in a drama should be uninteresting; obviously it should not. But it does mean that character is subordinate to story. The purpose of drama is not to describe character, but to present it through the plot.

Eric Bentley writes in his superlative book The Life of the Drama (1964) that 

In principle, the drama presents human relationships – the things that [people] do to each other – and nothing else. Other things are not presented on stage but, if “there” at all, are merely implied. . . . When we see a play, what is it we see? Possibly against a pictorial background, we watch people encountering each other. This, and, in principle, nothing else: if, say, acrobatics are added, it is strictly as an extra – or as a more demonstrative mode of encounter.

A true novelist is allowed to add, in Bentley’s suggestive word, “acrobatics” at any time in a book. A dramatist is not. Plot is primary for the dramatist, and although the plot is made up of the actions of people caused by their character and motivation, those actions must be embodied in the plot.

A third significance of the idea that Christie is a dramatist is that her scenes are written in the same way that a dramatist writes a scene in a play. That is to say, there is a setting, clearly defined; the scene is related in some way to the previous scene, and involves tension between characters, and it points toward the next scene. To put it more simply, in a Christie book or story you always know where you are and what is happening.

Here is part of a short scene from one of Christie’s works, chosen at random:

POIROT: There is something about this letter, Hastings, that I do not like . . .

HASTINGS: You think – what?

(POIROT shakes his head, picks up the letter, puts it away.)

If you really take it seriously, can’t you do something?

POIROT: As always, the man of action! But what is there to do? The county police have seen the letter but they, too, do not take it seriously. There are no fingerprints on it. There are no local clues as to the possible writer.

HASTINGS: In fact there is only your own instinct?

POIROT: Not instinct, Hastings. Instinct is a bad word. It is my knowledge – my experience – that tells me that something about that letter is wrong – (Shakes his head) I may be making the mountain out of the anthill. In any case there is nothing to be done but wait.

HASTINGS: Well, the 21st is Friday. If a whacking great robbery takes place near Andover then –

POIROT: Ah, what a comfort that would be! 

HASTINGS: A comfort? A robbery may be a thrill but it can hardly be a comfort!

POIROT: You are in error, my friend, you do not understand my meaning. A robbery would be a relief since it would dispossess my mind of the fear of something else.

HASTINGS: Of what?

POIROT: Murder.

A playwright looks in envy at this scene – but it is from a mystery novel (The A. B. C. Murders. I have removed everything but the dialogue), not a play. We see that with great economy the significance of the letter expands from moment to moment, from what an actor would call one “beat” (a section of a scene) to the next, ending in a climax that sends the reader – the audience? – straight ahead to the next scene.

This scene illustrates a fourth point about the dramatic nature of Christie’s work, namely, the quality of the dialogue. Christie’s books are “dialogue books.” As a result they are easily adapted into TV series and movies – and Christie’s dialogue is often more effective than the later inventions of screenwriters.

Note the smooth touch at the beginning of the scene, where Poirot’s fears about the letter are not spoken, and the subject changes instead to the question of what can be done about a threat that has not yet been spelled out. Three subjects of discussion contribute to the action of the scene – namely, the police, Poirot’s “instinct,” and the possibility of robbery – before the real subject, murder, is finally, chillingly made explicit. This is splendid, masterful dialogue writing.

I submit, then, that Christie does not satisfy Edmund Wilson’s tastes because she is writing what she intends to write rather than what he wants her to. She is fundamentally a dramatist and writes like one.

Why, then, did she write novels and short stories, and not just plays? Because a novel is not limited by what have become known, after Aristotle, as the unities of time and place. A play is limited to a certain number of characters and a necessarily limited number of settings; a novel can travel from place to place, introducing characters as it goes. Christie uses this freedom, but always in service of the drama she is writing.

I have tried to describe one aspect of Agatha Christie’s writing. Obviously there are many more, and other writers continue to explore them. I will only mention one more, along the same lines we have been discussing.

Christie is an entertaining writer. She has an adventurous mind, and she is often funny. One of her sources of humor is what an actor would call “breaking the fourth wall,” in other words, communicating with her audience in a way that exceeds the normal limits of her story.

For example, in the novel Dead Man’s Folly (1956), we read the following, spoken by a character in the book:

After all, if Hattie were alive, she couldn’t possibly conceal herself successfully with the whole of the Press and the police looking for her. Even if something like loss of memory had happened to her, well, surely the police would have found her by now?  

This description, as many know, echoes Christie’s highly publicized disappearance and discovery in 1926. Christie did not write about that event in her autobiography, but here she uses it, with a broad wink, to entertain her “audience” in a surprising way.

One more example of “breaking the fourth wall” comes from The A. B. C. Murders:

“Shouldn’t wonder if you ended by detecting your own death,” said Japp, laughing heartily. “That’s an idea, that is. Ought to be put in a book.”

“It will be Hastings who will have to do that,” said Poirot, twinkling at me.

Readers of Christie’s books will understand the significance of that suggestion; Christie used that same idea in a novel written in the 1940’s but published later.

One of the major principles of criticism is that the critic must understand the intention of a work before moving on to judging it. Agatha Christie’s work has particular intentions, and must be judged on how well it satisfies those intentions. Her intentions lie in the world of drama, and she fulfills them well. Playwrights take note!

[When Kirk suggests above that "readers of Christie's book" will "understand the significance" of the notion that Hercule Poirot could "detect" his own death, he explained that he "was trying to insert a little mystery of my own."  I promised I wouldn't reveal more than he wanted to say—so I won't.

[When he discusses why Christie wrote novels instead of  plays, I wondered if he hadn't also suspected that she chose novels because it's easier to get a book published than it is to get a play produced.  There are fewer people involved in the process of publishing a book than in getting a play on the stage as well.  Assuming both the book and the play have some quality, I'd think the writer could make more money off a book than a play.  In other words, might Christie not have chosen the easier and potentially more lucrative route to a career?  (Furthermore, really good books, like Christie's, can last—and sell—forever, but plays, except, of course, The Mousetrap, come and go and can even disappear.)  Kirk generally agreed, saying I was on "the right track."

[Kirk also added, "As a girl Christie loved theater, and wrote little plays; she was also a voracious reader.  She wrote a few small things before her first book, and then it was off to the races."  I imagine that Kirk's suggestions for her choice of literary form are right on, but I still imagine the practicalities entered into her reckoning—along with good fortune.]

Perry Mason (Part 3): On Life And Law

by Kirk Woodward

[On 19 and 22 February, I posted “Perry Mason,” a two-part article by Kirk Woodward on the mystery novels of Erle Stanley Gardner on Rick On Theater.  (Before that, Kirk published “Four Actors,” an examination of the acting of four guest stars on the Perry Mason TV series, posted on 30 January.)  While he was composing “Perry Mason,” Kirk collected a number of quotations he found revealing about Gardner’s ideas about life and the law.  He compiled a representative list for ROT and I’m running it here as “Perry Mason (Part 3).”  (A longer version of this list is posted at http://www.perrymasontvseries.com/woodward/.)  I think ROTters will find it amusing—and possibly even informative, as Gardner was, himself, a practicing attorney and had very strong—also practical—feelings about his profession.  ~Rick]

Recently I wrote several pieces for this blog about the Perry Mason books and television series (see “Four Actors,” 30 January, and “Perry Mason,” 19 and 22 February). Erle Stanley Gardner, who wrote the original books, created in Mason a formidable character, made up of equal parts determination and skill.

Gardner himself was for years a practicing lawyer, and one gets a feeling of the kind of lawyer he must have been from the Perry Mason books, which contain comments on the practice of law – sometimes rather extensive comments – and a definite attitude toward life as well.

The quotations that follow are occasionally slightly edited. The most enjoyable way to read all of them, of

course, is to read all the books. Short of that, here is a sampling. All the book titles begin with the words The Case of the . . . . Only the last words of the titles are given here.

ABOUT HIMSELF

Lucky Legs, 1934

“I’m different. I get my business because I fight for it, and because I fight for my clients. Nobody ever called on me to organize a corporation, and I’ve never yet probated an estate. I haven’t drawn up over a dozen contracts in my life, and I wouldn’t know how to go about foreclosing a mortgage. People that come to me don’t come to me because they like the looks of my eyes, or the way my office is furnished, or because they’ve known me at a club. They come to me because they need me. They come to me because they want to hire me for what I can do.”

Counterfeit Eye, 1935

“I play a no-limit game. When I back my judgment, I back it with everything I have. I try not to be wrong. What the hell can a man lose? He can’t lose his life because he doesn’t own that, anyway. He only has a lease on life. He can lose money, and money doesn’t mean one damn thing as compared with character. All that really counts is a man’s ability to live, to get the most out of it as he goes through it, and he gets the most kick out of it by playing a no-limit game.”

“I hate this office routine. [I want], not necessarily a murder case, but a good fight in front of a jury. I like dramatic murder trials, where the prosecution explodes an unexpected bomb under me, and, while I’m whirling through the air, I try to figure how I’m going to light on my feet when I come down.”

Baited Hook, 1940

“How I love a mystery, Della,” he said. “I hate routine. I hate details. I like the thrill of matching my wits with crooks. I like to have people lie to me and catch them in their lies. I love to listen to people talk and wonder how much of it is true and how much of it is false. I want life, action, shifting conditions. I like to fit facts together, bit by bit, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.”

“Regardless of what you may think, Mr. Brownley, I’m not merely a paid gladiator fighting for those who have the funds with which to employ me. I’m a fighter, yes, and I like to feel that I fight for those who aren’t able to fight for themselves, but I don’t offer my services indiscriminately. I fight to aid justice.”

“Dammit,” he said to Della Street. “One of those frosty, reserved, human adding-machines gets under my skin worse than a dozen shysters who try browbeating tactics.”

Mischievous Doll, 1963

“I have always been accustomed to controlling events, within reason. I hate like hell to find myself in a position where events are controlling me.”

Postponed Murder, published 1973

“When I start unraveling a mystery, I can’t seem to find a brake. Every time I put my foot down, it hits the throttle.”

THE TRUTH

Curious Bride, 1934

“What right have I got to sit back with that ‘holier than thou’ attitude and expect [clients] to come clean with a total stranger? They come here when they’re in trouble. They’re worried and frightened. They come to me for consultations. I’m a total stranger to them. They need help. Poor fools, you can’t blame them for resorting to subterfuges.”

Sleepwalker’s Niece, 1934

“Any time I have to depend on perjured evidence to acquit a client, I’ll quit trying cases. If he’s innocent, we’ll get him off.”

Demure Defendant, 1956

“Get this straight. You’re dealing with a murder case. No matter how awkward the truth is, you can’t fabricate a situation that will meet all of the requirements. You can’t get a falsehood that will dovetail with all of the facts. Sooner or later all of the other facts will be known. If your story doesn’t dovetail you’ll have to change it. If you change it under pressure the truth will then be ten times more awkward.”

Beautiful Beggar, 1965

“In the first place, as an officer of the court, I can’t tamper with evidence. In the second place, I’ve always found that truth is the strongest weapon in the arsenal of any attorney. The trouble is lawyers quite frequently don’t know what the truth is. They get half-truths from the evidence or from their clients and try to get by on those half-truths.”

THE LEGAL SYSTEM

Howling Dog, 1934

“We’re a dramatic people. We’re not like the English. The English want dignity and order. We want the dramatic and the spectacular. It’s a national craving. We’re geared to a rapid rate of thought. We want to have things move in a spectacular manner.”

Caretaker’s Cat, 1935

“A lawyer isn’t like a shopkeeper who can sell his wares or not as he chooses. He holds his talents in trust for the unfortunate.”

“That’s what I like about the practice of law – it’s an adventure. You’re looking behind the scenes at human nature. The audience out front sees only the carefully rehearsed poses assumed by the actors. The lawyer sees human nature with the shutters open.”

“A lawyer has a trust to his client. He can set any fee he pleases. If the client doesn’t pay it, the lawyer doesn’t need to take the business; but if a client pays it, it doesn’t make any difference whether it’s five cents or five million dollars. The lawyer should give the client everything he has.”

Perjured Parrot, 1939

“The prosecuting attorney has at his command all the facilities of organized investigation. He uncovers facts. He selects only those which, in his opinion, are significant. Once he’s come to the conclusion the defendant is guilty, the only facts he considers significant are those which point to the guilt of the defendant. That’s why circumstantial evidence is such a liar. Facts themselves are meaningless. It’s only the interpretation we give those facts which counts.”

Black-Eyed Blonde, 1944

“A lawyer can’t afford to get too big, Della. He always has to remember he’s a part of the machinery by which justice is dispensed. When it comes to a matter of justice or injustice there isn’t such a thing as big or little. Injustice is a social malignancy.”

One-Eyed Witness, 1951

“Many people misunderstand the duty of an attorney. It’s an attorney’s duty to see that a defendant has a fair trial. If the attorney makes up his mind that the defendant is guilty and therefore won’t represent that defendant, that’s asking an attorney to substitute his own prejudices, his own judgment for the judgment of a Court and a jury.”

Amorous Aunt, 1963

“As far as ethics are concerned, don’t overlook the fact that a lawyer is ethically bound to protect his client. That’s the first and foremost of all the rules of legal ethics. The people who formulate the canons of legal ethics take it for granted that an attorney will be protecting his client, so they lay down rules of professional conduct for the purpose of seeing the lawyer doesn’t go too far. But the number one canon of ethics which should dominate all the others is that an attorney should be loyal to his client and should protect his client.”

Bigamous Spouse, 1961

“It’s more than being loyal to your clients. It’s being loyal to the basic principles of justice. And when you’re trying to do that, you have to take it on the chin once in a while – or at least be ready to.”

Moth-Eaten Mink, 1952

“I never disbelieve a client, but whenever I’m listening to a client’s story, I’m constantly wondering how a jury is going to react to that same story.”

“Crying Swallow” [short story], published 1971

“I’ve practiced law long enough to know that a man should never torture clues to make them point in the direction he thinks they should go.”

CLIENTS

Careless Cupid, 1968

“I have an idea your client is holding something back.”

Mason said, “You can say that for about ninety percent of the clients who come to a lawyer’s office, Paul. I wonder if patients hold out on their doctors. They come to a professional man to get help and then they almost invariably try to color the facts.”

“Clients do strange things. There are several things you can always depend on a client doing. A client will usually hold out some pertinent fact, will substitute his own judgment for yours, and then make some crazy move which affects his status without asking you about it in advance.

“Aside from that, you can’t tell what a client will do. They’re unpredictable.”

Singing Skirt, 1961

“I know as far as I’m concerned, I’d rather have my hand cut off than betray the interests of a client. If I’m representing a client, I want the representation to be honest, loyal and efficient. I make it a point to believe everything my client tells me and to act accordingly in order to protect the best interests of that client.”

Nervous Accomplice, 1955

“I don’t know why it is, but it’s not once in fifty times that you’ll find a client who tells you the entire truth. Nearly all of them, no matter how innocent they may be and how honest they may be, will try to sugar-coat the facts so that they become more favorable.”

Phantom Murder, 1964

“In a murder case many things are entirely different from what they are in other cases. When a man’s life is at stake he will do almost anything.”

GUILT AND INNOCENCE

Caretaker’s Cat, 1935

“Suppose he’s really guilty?”

“Then we’ll find out all about the extenuating circumstances and either make him plead guilty and get the lightest sentence we can for him, or else let him get some other lawyer.”

“That’s not an orthodox way of practicing law.”

“Who the hell wants to be orthodox?”

Silent Partner, 1940

“I’ve always tried to represent clients who were innocent. I’ve been lucky. I’ve taken chances. I’ve played hunches, and the hunches have panned out. Circumstantial evidence can be black against a client, and I’ll see something in his demeanor, some little mannerism, the way he answers a question or something, which makes me believe he’s innocent. I’ll take the case, and it will work out . . . . I do know that a lawyer can’t simply sit back and refuse to take any case unless he thinks his client is innocent. A client is entitled to legal representation. It takes the unanimous verdict of twelve jurors to find a person guilty. It isn’t fair for a lawyer to turn himself into a jury, weigh the evidence, and say, ‘No, I won’t handle your case because I think you’re guilty.’ That would deprive an accused person of a fair trial.”

TRIAL TECHNIQUE

Curious Bride, 1934

“It’s an axiom of criminal law that a man should try everyone except the defendant. You know, sometimes you can try the prosecuting attorney. Very frequently you can try the prosecuting witness. You can start digging around, cross-examining on extraneous matters, trying to show some sort of a motive for murder. Then, if you can get a motive before the jury, you start showing opportunity, and if you can get motive and opportunity, you suddenly switch the accusation and claim there’s just as much ground to suspect the prosecuting witness as there is the defendant. [I’m simply telling you] how criminal lawyers play the game.”

“The way to get to the bottom of a murder,” he said, “is to pick out any pertinent fact which hasn’t been explained, and find the real explanation of that fact.”

Howling Dog, 1934

“There are lots of ways of trying a lawsuit. There’s the slow, tedious way, indulged in by lawyers who haven’t any particular plan of campaign, other than to walk into court and snarl over objections, haggle over technicalities, and drag the facts out so interminably that no one knows just what it’s all about. Then there’s the dramatic method of trying a lawsuit. That’s the method I try to follow.”

“Pick some dominant emotion if you want, but touch on it only for a few moments. Then swing your argument to something else. Then come back to it. The human mind is like a pendulum: you can start it swinging a little at a time and gradually come back with added force, until finally you can close in a burst of dramatic oratory, with the jury inflamed to white rage against the other side. But if you try to talk to a jury for as much as fifteen minutes, and harp continually upon one line, you will find that the jurors have quit listening to you before you finish.”

Substitute Face, 1938

“. . . when you start fighting, never try to hit the other man where he’s expecting the punch. And when you once start a fight, never give up until the other man’s licked. If you can’t do it by hook, do it by crook.”

Black-Eyed Blonde, 1944

“When I find that one theory of a case is hopeless, I squirm around and try to find some other theory. After all, it makes a great deal of difference how you look at a case. It’s what the lawyers call the legal theory on which it is to be tried. . . . A lawyer needs imagination. When you come to one legal road that’s blocked, you back up and try another.”

Empty Tin, 1941

“That is the secret of crime solution. You find the things that are unusual, the things which vary from the normal or average, and, using them as clues, you get away from generalities, and down to specific individual cases.”

Drowning Duck, 1942

“It’s a question of doing justice to a client. Once you become convinced your client is guilty, you interpret all of the evidence in a false light and weigh it by false standards. When you once get the correct master pattern, every single event fits into that pattern. It dovetails with every other event which impinges upon it. When you get a master pattern which seems to accommodate all of the events except one, and you can’t make that event fit in, it’s pretty apt to mean that your master pattern is wrong.”

Half-Wakened Wife, 1945

“The theory on which you want to work is always the theory on which the other man doesn’t want to work.”

Hesitant Hostess, 1953

“A lawyer who does much trial work has to make snap judgments. The clerk calls out the names of a prospective juror. That person gets up from his seat in the courtroom, walks up to take his place in the jury box. You have an opportunity to watch him for six or seven seconds. In those six or seven seconds you have to reach a snap judgment as to his character, how he’s apt to react to testimony and argument, what kind of a person he is, whether he’s broad-minded or liberal minded, whether he’s bigoted, good-natured or antagonistic.

Vagabond Virgin, 1948

“Of course, you have an opportunity to supplement that first impression by asking him a few questions, but as a rule a man has steeled himself by the time you start questioning him so his appearance is more or less of a mask. He’s trying to convince you that he’s intelligent and important. He knows that he’s in the limelight and he has that natural tendency to put his best foot forward. He’s trying to convince himself he’s something of a judge.

“The first basic principle of cross-examination is to start asking a witness conversationally, affably and in a friendly way about some of the minor points that the witness hasn’t thought over quite so much, and on which he doesn’t expect cross-examination. As long as you’re friendly and affable, if you get adverse answers it doesn’t hurt your case in the least, but if you do uncover a weak point then you can move in on it swiftly and capitalize on the advantage.”

Fugitive Nurse, 1954

“Identification evidence is given the greatest weight in a court, and it’s likely to be the poorest evidence. The person who is really trying to be fair says, ‘I think that was the person whom I saw.’ They riddle him with cross-examination and ridicule. Jurors dismiss his testimony. He’s apt to be telling the truth.’

“You have to hold the interest of a jury. You can’t do it by fumbling around with papers. Any time you make a pass at a witness and then quit and start fumbling around with papers you make it appear that you don’t know what you’re doing, that the witness has the best of you. You’re going to keep throwing questions at the witness. Rapid-fire questions. You aren’t going to pause for anything. You’re just going to keep slamming questions at him. . . . Furthermore, you mustn’t, under any circumstances, keep going over the same things he’s testified to in the same order. . . . Go at him from a different angle. . . . Bore into him. Give it to him hammer and tongs. Don’t let him have any time to think in between questions. The minute he answers one question, fire another one at him.

“Don’t let your mind go blank. Keep throwing questions at him, any questions. Ask him what the weather was. Ask him what kind of tires were on the automobile. Whether they were white sidewalls or not. Ask him exactly where the car was parked. How many feet from the corner. How many inches from the curb. Ask him how he happened to be there. Ask him if he was walking, or ask him if he stopped walking. If he had stopped walking to watch the girl, find out when he stopped walking and why. How long he stood there. Ask him how he happened to be there, where he’d been, how long he’d been there, where he was going, what stopped him, when he started walking again. Just keep throwing questions at him and all the time keep watching him like a hawk, using your powers of concentration to remember everything he says and to correlate every answer, looking for a weak spot.

“If you’re going to be a trial lawyer, you not only have to think of all those things but in addition you’ve got to keep watching the jurors out of the corner of your eye. You’ve got to see what impresses them and what doesn’t. You’ve got to see when they’re getting bored, and when they’re getting bored you’ve got to do something spectacular that will arouse their interest. You’ve got to keep thinking about the record. You’ve got to keep watching for errors. You’ve got to keep an eye on the court. You’ve got to frame your questions so they’re calling for evidence that is legally admissible and not have your questions couched in such phraseology that the other side can object and have the objection sustained. That makes the jury feel you don’t know what you’re doing. . . .

“You’ll get so they’re automatic. You’ll be able to stand on your feet, throw out a steady stream of questions, and keep thinking of all those things and half a dozen others.”

“Object to anything, just so it isn’t important. Let them get in all the important facts whether they hurt us or not. Save your objections for the facts we already know. Throw a little variety into the case and give him something to think about.”

“In a preliminary never object to any questions calling for new evidence. Only object to the form of questions so you keep the prosecutors off balance and keep them from letting a witness have things too easy. Otherwise let them drag in everything they want. You can never tell when something will do some good. The more a witness says the first time he’s on the stand the more he’s apt to contradict himself the second time he gets on the stand.”

Restless Redhead, 1954

“A defendant in a criminal case very seldom has anything to lose by letting the issues become confused.”

Amorous Aunt, 1963

“Don’t object to those things [being introduced into evidence]. That’s the mark of an amateur. Let the evidence go in and then get the guy all flustered on cross-examination.”

Queenly Contestant, 1967

“Razzle-dazzle is not good cross-examination. The purpose of cross-examination is to find out whether a witness is telling the truth.”

MOTIVES

Lame Canary, 1937

“Virtually every man has enemies. Sometimes they’re business enemies. More often they’re personal enemies, people who hate him, people who will look down their noses and say it’s too bad when they hear he’s bumped off, but who will be tickled to death just the same; but it takes a peculiar psychological build-up to perpetrate a murder. A man must have a certain innate ferocity, a certain lack of consideration, and, usually, a lack of imagination.”

“Why a lack of imagination?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “except that it’s nearly always true. I think imaginative people sympathize with the sufferings of others because they’re able to visualize those sufferings more keenly in their own minds. An unimaginative person, on the other hand, can’t visualize himself in the shoes of another. Therefore, he sees life only from his own selfish angle. Killers are frequently cunning, but they’re rarely original. They’re selfish, and usually determined. Of course, I’m not talking now about a murder which is the result of some sudden overpowering emotion.”

“A solution of any crime which doesn’t account for all of the various factors involved is no solution at all. In the long run, Della, the essence of all successful detective work lies in reconstructing the life of the victim. That gives motivation, and motivation makes murders.”

LIFE

Sulky Girl, 1933

“A man can nearly always think his way out of any situation in which he finds himself. It’s merely a paraphrase of the old saying that where there’s a will there’s a way.”

Baited Hook, 1940

“Whoever got anything in life by being careful? Every time you stop to figure what the other fellow’s going to do, you unconsciously figure what you’d do in his place. The result is that you’re not fighting him, but yourself. You always come to a stalemate. Every time you think of a move, you think of a perfect defense. The best fighters don’t worry about what the other man may do. And if they keep things moving fast enough, the other man is too busy to do much thinking.”

Lonely Heiress, 1948

“I like to watch people around a depot. It’s fascinating. You can see so much of human nature that way. People aren’t on their guard when they’re dead-weary or when they’re completely removed from their usual environment. A person who lives here in the city feels he’s on his own home ground, no matter what part of the city he’s in, unless it’s the depot. But the minute he walks into the depot he’s started, so to speak, on a complete change of environment and he lets his guard down.”

Phantom Fortune, 1964

“Make up your mind to one thing, Mrs. Warren. After water has run downstream and over the dam, you can’t find any way on earth of getting it back upstream and over the dam a second time. Take things as they come. Concentrate on the present, forget the past.”

Bigamous Spouse, 1961

“Money was made round so it can be kept in circulation. Did you ever realize, Della, that if I take a dollar and pay it to Paul Drake, and Drake pays it to his landlady, and the landlady pays it to the grocer, that dollar is doing a man-sized job in the economy? Whereas, if I put the dollar in my pocket and sit on it – “

Perjured Parrot, 1936

“Let’s cheer up; let’s get this feeling of hopelessness completely licked.”

Perry Mason (Part 2)

by Kirk Woodward

[This is Part 2 of Kirk’s essay on the Perry Mason mystery novels of Erle Stanley Gardner.  (If you haven’t read Part 1, I strongly recommend going back to 19 February—the post just below this one on the Rick On Theater site—to be sure you have all the background to this discussion.)  Here, Kirk picks up where he left off, examining the various approaches to constructing Gardner’s mystery stories that make his novels different from most of the rest of the genre.

[In this part of the post, Kirk touches on the TV series of 1957-1966.  Gardner was still writing the novels while the series was on the air and many of the books were adapted as episodes.  Gardner also allowed the successful TV show to influence some of the ways in which the novels changed over the later years.  I’m sure ROTters will enjoy the conclusion of Kirk Woodward’s “Perry Mason.”]

The practice of law

A collection of Perry Mason’s comments about the practice of law gives a fascinating picture of determination in the service of justice. Here are some remarks found in The Case of the Grinning Gorilla (1952. The titles of Mason mysteries all begin with The Case of the . . . ; as I did in Part 1, in referring to Mason books I will use only the parts of the titles that are unique.)

:

“I make my living by knowing something about law and something about human nature. I stand up in front of juries. I cross-examine witnesses. I have to know a lot more about human nature than the average man.” 

“You don’t get to understand human nature by listening to what people tell you when they’re talking to you. That’s when you see them with their make-up on, with their best foot forward. You learn about human nature by watching people when they don’t know they’re being watched, by listening to conversations that they don’t know are being overheard, by prying into their thoughts whenever you can find what their true thoughts are. You learn about people when you see their souls stripped naked by suffering.”

“I saw no reason to comply with an empty legal formality.” (Della Street replies to this, “I think probably that last remark is a very complete index to your character.”)

“We’re never going to get anywhere by denials and evasions, and being on the defensive. This is a case where we’re going to have to carry the fight to the other man.”

“When a lawyer has to argue with himself to try to talk himself into believing a client’s story, it’s a damn sight better to keep anyone else from ever hearing that story.”

“There’s a difference between retreating until you can fight at the right time and at the right place and just running away.”

“You have to take them as they come, Jim. You can’t skim the cream all the time. Every once in a while Fate hands you something.”

“We advise our clients for their best interests, not ours.”

Mason often describes himself as a fighter. His comments on his own motivations don’t go much farther than these (from Runaway Corpse, 1954) in a conversation with a District Attorney:

Vandling said, “The district attorney in Los Angeles gave me quite a briefing about you. He told me you were tricky, shrewd, diabolically clever, and while he didn’t say in so many words that you were crooked he intimated that you’d cut your grandmother’s throat in order to obtain an advantage for a client.”

“Why not?” Mason asked, grinning. “After all, I’m supposed to represent my clients. Then again you’re not my grandmother.”

Gardner certainly would have approved of the comment by Leslie Charteris (1907-1993, the creator of the series of novels featuring The Saint) that he created his great series character as a protest against “the miserable half-heartedness of the age.” Mason sees the law as a great ideal, and its ambiguities as a testing ground for personality.

I’m a hunter, Della. Some men get their thrills in life out of standing up to a charging lion or tiger. Some like to shoot small birds; some just like to hunt, not for what they kill, but for the thrill of hunting. Well, I hunt murderers. And, Della, I want to bag that murderer. I don’t want Tragg to do it. I’m willing he should have the credit, but I want to be the one to do the hunting, and finding. (Haunted Husband, 1941)

To that end he will sacrifice even the typical human ideal of the happy family life. And it seems to have sacrificed him as well. He never mentions parents, and says he has no brothers or sisters. And of course he is unmarried.

Mason is the classic example of Benjamin Franklin’s precept in his Autobiography (1790): “I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, make the execution of that same plan his sole study and business.”

Mason lives in an apartment; we don’t learn much more about it than that it has curtains and he reads in his chair. He has a good car; he dines out and eats well; he goes camping with cronies and makes what they call Thousand Island Gravy. Otherwise he is a saint to the law. Where does this devotion come from? We aren’t told, but it may remind us of Bible verses like Psalm 119:34: “Give me understanding, and I shall keep Your law; indeed, I shall observe it with my whole heart.”

The family structure

Mention of marriage brings us to the central emotional feature of the books – the nature of Perry Mason’s “family.” Gardner periodically tries to establish a romance between Perry and Della Street, his secretary. (After Gardner’s wife died, very late in his life, Gardner married his secretary.) Perry and Della discuss marriage (for example, in Lame Canary, 1937; Golddigger’s Purse, 1945; and Caretaker’s Cat, 1935), but they never marry; they move toward marriage, and then away from it. Their moments of hugging and kissing don’t feel quite right to the reader.

The reason for this dance of closeness and distance, I believe, is that in a psychological, or even psychic, sense, Mason’s team actually is a family. Mason is the paterfamilias; Della and Paul Drake are his children, and Burger and Tragg are alternately cranky and bearable relatives. (Sergeant Holcomb is an unpleasant neighbor.)

Perry Mason doesn’t marry Della, then, because the relationship would be too weird; it would feel as if he had married his daughter. So the efforts to kindle sparks between Perry and Della are doomed; because of the way the stories are structured, such a pairing would strike us as icky, even if it were not literally so. (When a new Perry Mason series starring Monte Markham appeared on network TV in the 1970s, the producers indicated that Perry and Della would be a sexually active couple. The series was a failure.)

I am not claiming that this interpretation is “true” in terms of the stories – that “Della really is Perry’s daughter” – or that Gardner intended to present the situation this way, but that this is how the situation feels to the reader, and apparently how it felt to Gardner too, since he was not able to overcome the structural resistance between Perry and Della, like trying to bring two magnets together at the same pole.

Readers and audiences love families. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, as created by Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) are a family, and readers can hardly get enough information about their relationship. Lord Peter Wimsey, Bunter, and Harriet Vane, as created by Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957), are a family. We still want the Beatles to reunite as a family, even though alas that is impossible. The family relationship in the Mason books gives the stories an emotional strength, even if a slightly odd one, that carries them through. (A contemporary example of the same pattern can be found in the Harry Potter book series:  Harry, Ron, and Hermione can be thought of as brothers and sister, Dumbledore as the father, Voldemort as the evil uncle, Draco Malfoy as the mean cousin, and so on.)

Mason says the same things that every other ordinary male of his time might have said about women; but he is a gentleman, and, when actually offered a sexual encounter, he is practically a monk, again illustrating his remarkable single-mindedness – a constant theme of the books, and a quality at the core of his character.

The plot hook

The “engine” of the plots of the Mason books, the “hook” that gives them their distinctive nature, is that Mason invariably does something that puts him in as much trouble as his client is in – he runs the risk of being disgraced, or jailed, or, worst of all, disbarred and forbidden to practice his sacred craft any more. He must then fight as hard to extricate himself from the mess as he fights for his client; and, to make things more difficult, if their interests clash, he must put those of the client ahead of his own.

A typical Mason client looks guilty as sin because someone has deliberately arranged appearances that way. It is not always clear whether Mason sees through the deception from the start, or whether he is merely acting according to the principle that everyone is entitled to an effective defense. He often proclaims that he only defends the innocent; he is not interested in getting scoundrels off. However, appearances damn his clients; how does he know they are innocent?

In any case, each defendant is by definition an underdog in some way. Gardner does not always view the law from the defense’s perspective; he wrote books with a District Attorney, Doug Selby, as the hero. Even in those cases, though, Selby is fighting heavy odds. Gardner was a scrapper in real life – an acquaintance is said to have called him “a contentious son of a bitch” – and the series characters of his stories are scrappers too.

Keeping current

The practice of law in the United States has evolved over the decades, to the point where Perry Mason would find much of it unfamiliar. Pre-trial discovery, in particular, would remove a number of strings from his bow, or make them more difficult to use. However, in the books Mason stays current with the law, just as Gardner stays current with what happens in society.

The writer Penelope Gilliatt(1932-1993) once remarked how interesting it was to watch the hemlines go up and down over the years in Agatha Christie’s long-running mystery play The Mousetrap (which opened in 1952, and is still running). In the same way, one sees both social and legal fashions change in the Mason books. Perry Mason begins as practically a tough-guy detective out of a book by Dashiel Hammett (1894-1961); Gardner, always on the watch for a market for his writing, freely imitated the core concepts of other writers. (His Bertha Cool and Donald Lam bear a remarkable and I would guess not coincidental resemblance to Rex Stout’s characters Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.)

But as the years pass, Mason becomes much less obnoxiously tough, and more the sophisticated lawyer, a fact Gardner comments on in his introduction to a reissue of Lucky Legs (1967), originally published in 1934, where he notes that the early Perry Mason was seldom without a set of master keys to use when breaking and entering, but gradually settled down to become a law-abiding member of the bar, shunning his initial cavalier lawbreaking.

The reader of the books in sequence sees the Miranda warning of 1966 (“You have the right to remain silent,” etc.) coming into effect, irritating the police but interestingly not seeming to influence Mason at all – he frequently instructs his clients to stay silent anyway, and he knows all about their need for an attorney.

As legal fashions change, so do social. Gardner keeps Mason’s world as unrestricted by time period as possible (a remarkable bit of foresight); but we see glimpses of speakeasies, of the Depression, of World War II, of beatniks and the turmoil of the 1960’s (Gardner and Mason don’t have much use for it, but Mason treats everyone even-handedly until he reaches the point of exasperation). People lose their fortunes in the Depression, soldiers come home from war shell-shocked, rationing makes it difficult to buy tires. Gardner doesn’t connect his stories to particular dates, but the real world does make shadowy background appearances.

Gardner was an active, participatory sort of man, and his books demonstrate his powerful curiosity. Gorilla includes a great deal of speculation about the possibility of hypnotizing animals – and what would you do with them then? – plus substantial interest in the actual habits of gorillas, chimpanzees, and monkeys. Typically a Gardner book reflects a lively interest in what’s going on in the world.

Through it all, as noted, Mason continues to get himself in trouble as he tries to get his clients out of it. The major difference between the books and, in particular, the TV movies starring Raymond Burr (1917-1993) that began in 1985, is that on TV Mason is of course a tough cross-examiner, but not particularly a risk-taker, while the Perry Mason of the books can hardly resist an opportunity to throw himself into the fire.

Perry Mason on TV

The original TV series falls somewhere between these two stools, but of course any faults of the years of the series (1957-1966) are redeemed by the extraordinary cast. It is well known that Burr was barely allowed to audition for the role at all; Gardner saw him audition for the antagonist, the role Burr frequently played in movies, and announced, “That’s Mason!” It can be said that Burr did not fit Gardner’s physical description of Mason (not that he ever describes him extensively): his features are not steely or craggy, but soft. But Burr had the extraordinary gift of making the simplest line, like “Then what did you do?” crackle with significance.

He also seemed to contain a deep well of kindliness. When I was a child, my parents took me to hear him speak to the Bar Association, and he gave me his autograph afterwards. I recall him as pleasant and considerate.

The family unit in the series – Barbara Hale (1922-2017) as Della Street, William Hopper (1915-1970) as the private detective Paul Drake, William Talman (1915-1968) as District Attorney Hamilton Burger, and Ray Collins (1889-1965) as Lt. Tragg – is also perfectly cast, again not necessarily in keeping with the descriptions in the books. Hopper was tall but not glassy-eyed or bug-eyed. Talman was not “bear-like”. Collins was not Mason’s age, and tall, but older, and short. But surely none could have been equaled.

In the books written after the TV show had begun to take hold, the characters subtly begin at least not to contradict those on TV. (Gardner, as is well known, played a judge in the last episode of the TV series, incidentally one of the best examples of a “final episode” of a TV series.)

Keeping the formula fresh

Since the TV series usually ended up in the same courtroom every week, we may forget that Gardner worked hard to vary the characteristics of his books. By my count about a quarter of the books in the series either do not end in a trial at all, or end in some sort of a hearing other than a trial, or in a county other than Los Angeles, and the District Attorney, Hamilton Burger, does not appear in every Los Angeles trial, although he tends at least to make an appearance toward the end, when he anticipates that Perry is at long last about to lay an egg.

It should go without saying that Gardner is a master plotter, from the initial incident (in Gorilla, Perry purchases a series of diaries at an auction) through the denouement, which may contain a surprise inside the surprise. One of the surest signs of the high quality of Gardner’s plotting, to my mind, is that not all Perry’s schemes pay off. Some backfire, getting him in trouble; some simply don’t amount to anything, a realistic observation – nobody’s perfect, and Mason makes mistakes, and loses his temper, like anyone else.

What’s in a name?

The mention of Burger brings up the topic of Gardner and names. He loves triple-names and middle initials, although none of the core team has them. Names of peripheral characters can be exotic, as though they had been assembled by a quick visit to the phone book (although there are plenty of ordinary names as well). Those in Gorilla are not as bizarre as, say, Eduardo Marcus Deering, the District Attorney in Duplicate Daughter (1960), or Dr. Herkimer Corrison Renault in Runaway Corpse (1954), but neither are they ordinary:

Helen Cadmus
Benjamin Addicks
Josephine Kempton
Nathan Fallon
James Etna
Mortimer Hershey
Sidney Hardwick
Fern Blevins
Herman Barnwell

And was Gardner aware from the start that his DA’s name was Ham Burger? 

Religion

There is little about religion in the Mason books. In Caretaker’s Cat (1935) a clergyman is suspicious and afraid to open the door of his house, an attitude that bemuses Mason and Drake. The title character of the Stuttering Bishop (1936) is evaluated primarily in terms of his professional responsibilities, but it is also reported that in Australia he was “one of the most human ministers I’ve ever seen. He didn’t have the smug, self-righteous attitude so many preachers have. He was a man who wanted to help people – and he helped me.”

Then there’s the following interesting conversation from Stepdaughter’s Secret (1963). A client is speaking:

“There was a chaplain in that prison who took an interest in me. I won’t say that he gave me religion, because, in a way, he didn’t. He simply gave me confidence in myself and my fellow man, and in a divine scheme of the universe.

“He pointed out that life was too complicated to be accidental, that it took a master plan to account for life, as we knew it; that fledglings emerged from the egg, grew feathers and poised on the edge of the nest with the desire to fly because of what we call instinct; that instinct was merely a divine plan and a means by which the architect of that divine plan communicated with the living units.

“He asked me to consult my own instincts, not my selfish inclinations but the feelings that came to me when I could deliberately disregard my environment and put myself in harmony with the universe. He dared me to surrender myself in the solitude of night to the great heart of the universe.”

“And you did?” Mason asked.

“I did it because he told me I was afraid to do it, and I wanted to show him I wasn’t. I wanted to prove he was wrong.”

“And he wasn’t wrong?”

“Something came to me – I don’t know what it was. A feeling of awareness, a desire to make something of myself. I started to read, study and think.” 

And in Haunted Husband (1941), Mason tells a woman a parable of life and death that I have not seen elsewhere, and that would stand out in any discussion of death and immortality. If the reader is not familiar with it, I highly recommend it. It begins, “If only we had the vision to see the whole pattern of life . . . .” Needless to say, the passage is integrated with the plot.

Looking for a savior

I described above the “hook” to the plots of the Perry Mason books, in which Mason immerses himself in his client’s case to the extent that he is in almost as much trouble as the client is. I have saved to the end a comment on the “myth” underlying this device. (By “myth,” of course, I do not mean something fictional, but rather a significant underlying story.)

Not to put too fine a point on it, Perry Mason is a Savior. He enters a world not his own, participates in it, and saves his devotee from death. In other words, Mason is a Christ figure. Jesus as he appears in the gospels is not merely someone, even a loving someone, who looks at us, possibly sees the best in us, and pleads our case with God. That would be fine, of course (and would correspond to the TV Mason movies), but that’s not the Jesus story. Instead, as the author of Hebrews 5:2 writes, “He can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness.”

I am not claiming that Gardner was a Christian – I have no idea. (He requested that the only religious event at his graveside be a reading of the Twenty-Third Psalm.) I definitely am claiming that the Mason books resonate because of their mythic structure, because they dramatize the situation of all of us who get ourselves deep in life’s messes, and pray – whatever that may mean for us – for help. In the Mason books, that help is provided – which is also the upshot of the Christian story.

The poet W. H. Auden (1907-1973), in The Dyer’s Hand (1962), writes in a famous essay called “The Guilty Vicarage” that murder mysteries end in “a real innocence from which the guilty other has been expelled, a cure effected, not by me or my neighbors, but by the miraculous intervention of a genius from outside who removes guilt by giving knowledge of guilt.” That, perhaps, is the root of the appeal of the Perry Mason books, and why many people like me still read them.

[Well, that’s Part 2 of the Perry Mason two-fer.  I called it the conclusion . . . but is it?  Kirk’s working on reediting a possible addendum, a sort of coda to “Perry Mason.”  I won’t provide any details—in case he decides not to include it—but if he does, it’ll be a little lagniappe for ROT readers.  Keep an eye out for “Perry Mason (Part 3)”—it could appear at any time.]