From The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
Posted on 06/02/2005 11:21:46 PM PDT by nickcarraway
New York: Sherlock Holmes, the detective famed for his icy logic, is hot again, brought back to life by authors who believe the supremely rational character strikes a chord in this age of post-9/11 uncertainty.
Seventy-five years after the death of his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes is popping up in historical locales from Hiroshima to Holocaust-haunted Europe in recent portrayals by literary-minded US writers.
Caleb Carr's "The Italian Secretary," a novel commissioned by Conan Doyle's estate, hit book stores last month, following Mitch Cullin's "A Slight Trick of the Mind," featuring the sleuth amid the debris of the world's first atom bomb attack.
"I think that he just embodies the modern era's belief that through reason ... we can solve all our terrible difficulties," Carr told Reuters. "That's been challenged recently by the resurgence of fundamentalist religious thinking."
Pulitzer prize-winning writer Michael Chabon's "The Final Solution" puts Holmes in 1944 Britain hunting for a parrot of a German Jewish boy, who is muted by Holocaust horror. Laurie King, in a book due in June, has Holmes tapping repressed memories of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
The authors have aged Holmes accordingly in the historical novels. Holmes is 89 in the Holocaust tale. The detective is 93 as he ponders the devastation of Hiroshima.
Cullin says the Holmes persona resonates differently today.
"The very idea that such a character could exist, could untangle the knots and problems complicating our lives, makes him more attractive now than, let's say, in the apathy years of the 1980s," says Cullin, who admits his Holmes is "fairly overwhelmed by the horrors and ambiguity of the modern world."
THE ORIGINAL HOLMES
Conan Doyle portrayed Holmes in four novels, including the "The Hound of the Baskervilles," and in 56 stories published between 1887 and 1927. The stories were wildly popular and inspired thousands of imitations and parodies over the years.
By the count of Holmes expert Leslie Klinger, there are probably over 4,000 imitative stories of Conan Doyle's work.
"Most are deservedly ignored; a few are by excellent writers. This year, Chabon, Cullin and Carr joined the list," said Klinger, who has compiled a 1,700-page annotated edition of Conan Doyle's Holmes works.
Carr teams Holmes up with his sidekick Dr James Watson in his book that has the duo dealing with the spectre of ghosts and spirits. Holmes goes solo in the other new entries.
Carr's novel grew out of a short story requested for the forthcoming anthology "Ghosts of Baker Street," commissioned by the Conan Doyle estate to portray encounters between Holmes and Watson with the supernatural.
The novel revolves around two murders in Edinburgh's Holyrood royal castle where a ghost is feared.
Chabon's Holmes is a solitary curmudgeon retired in 1944 in the English countryside. Piquing his interest is a nine-year-old German Jewish refugee whose parrot squawks an enigmatic sequence of German numbers - suspected of being a Nazi code or a numbered Swiss bank account.
Cullin, 37, said he became interested in Holmes when as a boy he had access to a trove of books belonging to a collector living nearby in his hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Asked to house sit, he delved into the library which ranged from Holmes rare editions to Holmes-inspired pornography.
He said his new novel uses the sleuth as a vehicle to explore Japan's postwar identity crisis. It depicts an elderly Holmes regretting what science has brought as he gazes at Hiroshima, flattened by "unfathomable destruction."
ELEMENTARY, WATSON
Holmes' popularity among these serious-minded authors is not a mystery, says Carr, whose books include tomes of history, terrorism analysis and psychological thrillers.
"They used to just be, basically, fun gimmicky things, but now there's this feeling that there can be a much more serious literary undertaking," said Carr.
Carr suggested the reason is "elementary, my dear Watson," - a famous phrase associated with Holmes, but which actually does not appear in Conan Doyle's books but was popularised in the 1929 film "The Return of Sherlock Holmes."
"I think that's because the whole emphasis on reason and on rationality is very threatened right now, and I think that people who still believe in the power of reason are taking Holmes much more seriously than before because of the threat to rational thinking in the post 9/11 world," said Carr.
"In that atmosphere, Holmes is going to shine like a real beacon, to a lot of people."
Editor's Choice The Sherlock Holmes museum Official website of Arthur Conan Doyle
He was the best.
There have been many Holmes books since Doyle's death. I have read several. Someone is always taking a shot.
There was a wonderful bit of cheese twenty years ago, a made for TV movie where Watson's great grand-daughter inherits a storage locker that contains...Holmes, frozen in cryonic stasis in a machine of his own design! He masters the Internet in a day, to discover that Moriarity is "stored"
as a computer program, or some such nonsense. Fun, though!
Never get a Caleb Carr book on tape if he reads it, the guy's got an annoying lisp that you can't ignore enough to enjoy the story.
Holmes and Watson could find Osama Yo Momma...Elementary!
Can't believe the estate wants an anthology of Holmes against the supernatural. Unless he debunks every single case, doesn't that go directly against the spirit of Holmes?
And then there's this:
Asked to house sit, [Cullen] delved into the library which ranged from Holmes rare editions to Holmes-inspired pornography.
Just what the heck would that be? Girls in deerstalker caps?!
That should be Dr. John H. Watson.
Cullin, 37, said he became interested in Holmes when as a boy he had access to a trove of books belonging to a collector living nearby in his hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Sounds like the renown collector of everything Sherlockian, the late John Bennet Shaw.
Maybe he was teaming Holmes up with man who co-discovered DNA?
On the contrary, Jeremy Brett was the quintessential Holmes. (And Sir Edward Hardwick made a fine Watson.)
I remember that movie. One scene in particular stood out, when Holmes sees a sign that says "Adult books" thinking it was a normal book store. He goes in and comes out immediately. Must've been hetero porno, as we all know that Sherlock was top to Watson's bottom...
I liked 'Sherlock Holmes's War of The Worlds' by Manly and Wade Wellman.
It's 30 years old, so "new" Sherlock Holmes stories aren't exactly new...
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