“Hercule Poirot, a Belgian detective who became internationally famous, has died in England. His age was unknown.

Mr. Poirot achieved fame as a private investigator after he retired as a member of the Belgian police force in 1904. His career, as chronicled in the novels of Dame Agatha Christie, his creator, was one of the most illustrious in fiction.

At the end of his life, he was arthritic and had a bad heart. He was in a wheelchair often, and was carried from his bedroom to the public lounge at Styles Court, a nursing home in Essex, wearing a wig and false mustaches to mask the signs of age that offended his vanity. In his active days, he was always impeccably dressed.

Mr. Poirot, who was just 5 feet 4 inches tall, went to England from Belgium during World War I as a refugee. He settled in a little town not far from Styles, then an elaborate country estate, where he took on his first private case.”

This is the beginning of the only obituary of a fictional character ever published by The New York Times. The text, printed in 1975, the year of Agatha Christie’s last Poirot novel, is not a mere obituary; it is a substantial biography and critique. On November 3, the fourth adaptation into a film of the novel ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ (first published in 1934) was released.

Characters of such strength no longer appear in literature or film. I wonder why.

Perhaps because the literary canon has changed, or even the very idea of canon has been deconstructed. Yes, while Agatha Christie’s novels could be regarded condescendingly as minor, “entertainment” literature, the classic canon still provides a foundation.

And one of the fundamental elements of this canon is the individuality and uniqueness of a human person. People are not an amorphous mass, individuals are not interchangeable, individuality prevails over collectivity. It is the only way for a writer to build unique, unrepeatable, memorable characters. It is the only way to create real, singular human identities, who are ultimately regarded as real people — even in death.

By contrast, much of the modern critical framework suggests that human identity itself is a politically driven fiction, a “social and cultural construct” meant to preserve the power of the “dominant class.” There is no more destiny, just fragmented, seemingly senseless episodes. There is no more free will, just external social influences of class, race and gender. The individual is dead, and literature and film only deal with masses and collectivities. The few strong characters that still appear are treated ironically, as part of a broader impulse to deconstruct them, with the result that what we get is no longer a portrait, but a caricature.

None of this is separate from economics. The lifeblood of the economy — money — has become so diluted it feels almost fictional. When Poirot made his debut, there was the gold standard, and inflation used to erode public debt was openly condemned, not praised as innovative miracles bombastically labeled as “quantitative easing.” Markets and private enterprise were free, and the customer was king, not some marketing influencer. Elementary logic was still valued. Education still aimed to build character. Today, with so few left, we end up back with Poirot.

Article originally published in The Market for Ideas magazine.

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