Posted on 02/12/2021 2:00:42 AM PST by nickcarraway
The first ever mention of Sherlock Holmes came in A Study in Scarlet, published in Beeton’s Christmas Annual of 1887. Dr Watson is looking for lodgings, and meets an old acquaintance who knows of someone he could share with, but does not recommend.
More than 130 years on, Holmes remains Watson’s, and our, almost constant companion. Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective landed a Guinness World Record for the most frequently portrayed human literary character in film and television in 2012, beaten only by the (non-human) Dracula. He remains enduringly popular on screen: when Benedict Cumberbatch plunged off the roof at the end of the second series of BBC1’s Sherlock, more than nine million viewers tuned in to find out what had happened to him. Last year, Netflix estimated that, in just four weeks, 76 million households watched Enola Holmes, starring Millie Bobby Brown as the sleuth’s little sister and Henry Cavill as Sherlock.
And then there are the endless literary takes. There are Anthony Horowitz’s sequels, or Andrew Lane’s tales of a teenage Holmes. Star basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has written novels about Holmes’s older brother Mycroft; Nancy Springer wrote the Enola Holmes books, giving Holmes and Mycroft a younger sibling. James Lovegrove has combined the worlds of Holmes and HP Lovecraft in the Cthulhu Casebooks. Nicholas Meyer’s forthcoming The Return of the Pharaoh is drawn “from the Reminiscences of John H Watson, MD”, while Bonnie MacBird’s The Three Locks, a new Holmes adventure, is out in March.
“My step-grandmother, Dame Jean Conan Doyle, tried hard to stop the world doing what it liked with her father’s fictional characters. In the end she realised this was a fruitless exercise,” says Richard Pooley, director of the Conan Doyle estate and step- great-grandson of the author.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
You can definitely see him age rapidly from Season 1 on.
I believe it was Isaac Newton who stated something to the effect that if he saw further than others it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. Up until the mid-19th Century most great painters and sculptors and academies placed little value or virtue in original subject matter, but rather the ability to reinterpret or, "reimagine," subjects from classical mythology or the Bible.
Of course it is far more complicated than that and you won't have to look hard for exceptions, but broadly speaking, in times of high illiteracy, a painter, sculptor or stained glass window maker wanted their audience to immediately recognize their subject matter, highly disincentivizing clever originality. Again, generally speaking, it is a hallmark of modern, abstract, non-representational art that wishes to leave the viewer confused, disoriented and their art subject to individual interpretation.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the broad concept of reinterpreting or expanding upon old stories and old characters - it is how our culture is transmitted. Within that broad concept however, some reinterpretations may be very well done, while others suck. Take for example, from modern pop culture, the whole Batman mythos. Both the Christian Bale and George Clooney versions were reinterpretation and reimagining of a long-existing character. One (Bale's) version was extremely well done and will long be recognized as great cinema, while Clooney's interpretation will soon be forgotten by those who haven't done so already.
Mycroft was Doyle. And smarter than Sherlock by sherlock’s own admission.
I want to be member of mycrofts social club — where the only rule was no talking to other members.
I’ll take the opportunity to recommend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s historical novels. Better than the Sherlock Holmes stuff if you ask me and many others. Available for free at Project Gutenberg, and I think you can get these in print if you prefer.
These may be his best historical novels, but there are others.
The White Company
http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/903
A great look at the Hundred Years War from the perspective of a knight and his men at arms.
Sir Nigel
http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/8629
Prequel to the above.
The Adventures of Gerard by Arthur Conan Doyle
http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/1644
Wonderful story of a French hussar (light cavalryman) officer during the Napoleonic Wars.
The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard
http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/11247
Follow up to the above.
For some real history, we have:
The Crime of the Congo
http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/37712
If you want to understand the details of Belgian King Leopold’s genocide in Africa, this is a great place to start.
A little off topic, but George Macdonald Fraser’s use of Thomas Hughes’s character Harry Flashman was a creative and successful literary device. (Flashman even encounters Sherlock Holmes in one story.)
As I recall, Mycroft was described as brilliant but lazy.
Sherlock Holmes was actually based on a real subsaharan african named Shoolok Homeby. Shoolok, obviously a woman, was renowned for their transgender mobility, having changed genders no fewer than six times between four different genders. Professionally, Homeby, was able to always find the white male culprit to the many horrid crimes they fabricated. There is a movement to name all public schools after Homeby.
I would add the two novels “The 7% Solution” and “The West End Horror” both by Nicholas Meyer. I enjoyed Nicol Williamson’s portrail of Holmes in the film ‘7% Solution” also.
But, no one can beat Jerremy Brett. He WAS Holmes, just like David Suchet WAS Poirot. Others have played the part, but, those two WERE the character.
Basil Rathbone was just playing a detective named Sherlock Holmes, and, as they changed the stories so much, you can’t really say it was Doyle’s work.
The Radio programs weren’t much better.
I WOULD recommend, if you can find them, the BBC radio programs from the 50s and 60s that had the talents of Charlton Hobbs and Norman Shelly. While they are edited down for the time format, they stay very fateful to the stories, and, Hobbs’ voice IS the voice of Holmes (even more so that Brett), and Shelly’s IS Watson.
And they never talked about their ‘implied’ older brother.
In the traditions of the time, the oldest brother inherited the title (there is some hint of the father being a minor Lord of the Realm). If so, then the second son, Mycroft, would be expected to go into Government Service, and, the third, Sherlock,would be cast out on his own to be a wastrel or find a job. In “A Study in Scarlett” he had to find a roommate to help pay rent, and, in “the Priory School” he receives a hefty check from the Duke and says he is a poor man. Of course, after that hefty check, he was no longer.
I think “lazy” is unfair..
“Uninterested” or “couldn’t be bothered” is more accurate.
He worked on things he cared about quite hard.
He was just a mythanthrope (sp?), which I fully appreciate.
If anyone likes parodies of Sherlock Holmes, I can recommend the Schlock Homes stories by Robert L. Fish, and the Warlock Holmes series by G. S. Denning.
I find it amusing that Holmes often upbraids Watson for his writing syle, telling him that he ignores the science and the details of the case, focusing instead on the dramatic and the "unimportant". Holmes' idea of good writing is a treatise on what can be learned from the various types of tobacco or the depth of footprints.
I agree with much of what you're saying... we stand on the shoulders of giants... in all fields.
That said there's a difference between writing something old in a new and better way and the whole cloth theft of a fictional character created by another writer . It crosses some kind of line with me... But yeah - in many cases when it's done it's done better. Often worse...
Years ago a friend who was teaching writing told me there are only 7 themes for novels ... should have asked her what she thought they were...
Thanks for finding that... interesting.
Interesting to read this....for years a large hand painted portrait of Holmes adorned my mothers living room, painted by a family member who likely knows more about Holmes and Watson than they did themselves!
......”Many film historians and critics - including Alan Barnes — feel that Rathbone was the best at portraying Holmes”......
Yes
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