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Cynically Yours, Sometimes
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It was when
I was reading an Agatha Christie
And someone near Jane Marple
Maybe a nephew
Said of her
She is the most cynical person
He (pretty sure it was a he)
Knew
And I thought
Cynicism might be useful,
After all
A quality to keep us sharp
To keep us skeptical
About what we know
And we perceive
In short, cynicism’s smart
And we are smart to
Apply the
Quality, hone it to a talent
On reserve
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C L Couch
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a companion piece to clcouch123.wordpress.com/2022/03/25/give-it-up/
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Christie as a young woman, 1910s.
The Christie Archive Trust, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=96725181
clcouch123 
March 29, 2022 at 7:28 pm
I have read all of Agatha Christie and would love to read her all again. One of the first people I read as a young person who inspired me to be a writer. Though I mostly wrote literary. (I also loved literary classical people–Hemingway, F. Scott both inspired me. Then Margaret Atwood early on. I don’t think you can buy a whole Agatha collection anymore when I tried. Something crazy about it. And cynicism is good–it’s really just critical thinking. Doesn’t always mean negativity. It’s a good bull—- detector. And makes you prepared for the worst, while hoping for the best.
March 29, 2022 at 7:35 pm
I think your last sentence sums up cynicism just right. You’ve read some good people, though I should admit they and their works are favorites of mine as well, though I read them later than you. I gained a real appreciation for Hemingway and Atwood in graduate school.
I’ve read Christie stories over a number of years. My sister Amy is the real expert in the family. She says she hasn’t read all of Christie, but I think maybe she has. We both have a fondness for the Tommy and Tuppence stories. And we appreciate the fact that in her work Christie has her characters grow old and grow in other ways throughout. A whole collection? There must be one somewhere, though it would have to combine novels, plays, and short stories.
I hope your dad’s okay today.