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Pierre Bayard

AndThenThereWereToon 13 Feb 10 at 9:16 a.m. GMT

Has anyone else read "Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" by Pierre Bayard?  It's a playful little book that suggests an alternative solution to a certain AC murder mystery.  Just re-reading it myself and enjoying it immensely.

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AndThenThereWereToon 27 Feb 10 at 5:59 a.m. GMT

I agree that he undermines AC's plotting, although he has to really if he intends to suggest an alternative solution to the case.  I didn't think his suggestion was too outrageous, and he's got a point about the murderer assuming Mrs Ferrars didn't write any other letters.  His stuff right at the end about the dark side of Poirot's interaction elsewhere with Hastings was a bit iffy, though.  I'm also not as sure as he (apparently) is that other cases could be reinterpreted.

Yes, he did write a similar book on THotB, which I haven't yet read.  He also wrote one on Hamlet, would you believe, but that one hasn't been translated into English yet.

GKCfan 13 Feb 10 at 9:12 p.m. GMT

I read it.  I don't care for postmodern literary theory, and I felt like he was undermining some of Christie's plotting and character structure, but just because I didn't like it much doesn't mean that other people won't find it interesting. 

Frankly, I hope that this book doesn't fall into the hands of Christie screenwriters, and they find it necessary to figure out the "true" solutions to all of her books and put them in telemovies.

I think that Bayard did the same thing to Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles.