Okay, this is actually kinda great. Bayard's other book on this subject - [b:Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of The Hound of the Baskervilles|3476806|Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong Reopening the Case of The Hound of the Baskervilles|Pierre Bayard|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1312050651l/3476806._SY75_.jpg|3518135] - rubbed me the wrong way because I simply don't believe that characters have lives outside the page, or that any useful literary theory can come from that. Here, he's much more analytical. From Oedipus to Agatha Christie, Bayard is clearly using these texts as discussion points for his broader thoughts on textual authority, and his mastery of the subject shines through.

The first section is a detailed recap of the plot of Christie's famous The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The second is an examination of Christie's oeuvre from the point of view of both rational investigation and literary criticism. The third section is a broader discussion of truth and authorial voice. The final section returns to Ackroyd to put forward arguments why Hercule Poirot may have got it wrong - and finally an allegation against a different character entirely.

This is not heady academic stuff. Bayard is a populist critic at best, although he is pretty darn good at translating dense subjects for a general audience. It's worth noting that the book contains spoilers for roughly every single Christie novel without warning, so you'd better be either indifferent or well-read in the subject.

This book will interest people with a broader enthusiasm for literary theory but especially crime fiction fans. While his solution for the Ackroyd murder was rather obvious (it was my assumption from page one), his broader points about how we interpret texts, and the purposes of crime fiction, are salient. Occasionally borderline absurd, but salient! ( )

Three quarters of it was fascinating, and the other quarter was Freudian. Not being a fan of Freud, I could have lived without that part. I wonder if Agatha Christie put anywhere near the amount of thought into writing as Bayard did into analyzing. I know that I'll never read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd the same way again. Bayard had a lot of interesting ideas about how the mystery author and reader interact, and methods of misleading us while still providing all the relevant information. It would be interesting to see a similar exercise done with some of Sayers' books.

An intriguing point to ponder was that although any literary work appears to be a closed world, bound by the statements of the author, it really just consists of fragments of a world, "made up of parts of characters and dialogues, in which entire swaths of reality are missing." Therefore, "the text is not legible if the reader does not give it its ultimate shape--for example, by consciously or unconsciously imagining a multitude of details that are not directly provided." So we really do read between the lines, and every reading is different.

For the record, I made the same choice for an alternative murderer as Bayard did, but we took different routes to get there.

For anyone who intends to read this: There are HUGE spoilers for Endless Night, Curtain, and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, as well as briefer ones for numerous other Christie books. ( )

#§*#°!!
questo saggio dovrebbe essere venduto con un'avvertenza: "non leggetelo se non avete prima letto l'opera omnia della Christie".
l'autore, che come tutti i francesi è un maestro nell'analyse de texte, procede, sulla scorta delle teorie freudiane, alla rilettura psicanalitica del romanzo da cui prende spunto per il titolo, operazione che ha già portato a termine con altri autori (Laclos, Maupassant, Proust).
peccato però che, oltre ad analizzare il testo in oggetto al fine di dimostrare come Hercule Poirot sia vittima di un processo delirante e sia possibile, rianalizzando e interpretando i fatti, stabilire verità alternative al finale propostoci dall'autrice, si spinga a rivelare colpevoli ed espedienti narrativi di almeno un'altra dozzina di opere della Christie (metà delle quali non le avevo ancora lette!)
per chi non vuol correre rischi, l'elenco completo è postato in questa discussione:
http://www.anobii.com/anobi/forum_thread.php?tid=39551&…

Though heavier in the theory department than the subsequent Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong, Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? still shares some of that other works same flaws in that Bayard occasionally pushes some of his theories and postulations to the near breaking point. Still, it's enjoyable in its own right, though definitely not recommended for Christie fans who have yet to make their way through the majority of her works (as spoilers aplenty abound). ( )

Ne faites jamais confiance à un auteur pour dire la vérité sur la fiction qu'il crée. Agatha Christie n'a pas désigné le "véritable" meurtrier dans le Meurtre de Roger Ackroyd. Brillante démonstration et l'une des brillantes réflexions de Pierre Bayard sur la lecture. ( )