I read some books about this Holmes dude...

[carmen_lj]

Havng nothing else to hand, I read The Beekeeper's Apprentice again, and reading it just after the the Holmes canon has rather dampened my tolerance for much of it. I rather like the adventurey bits and most of Holmes' characterisation but I can't stand the casting of Watson as a good-natured buffoon and quite, quite hate every time Russell says anything at all about him.

But, yes, Sherlock Holmes! Marvellous stuff. Here are some Incredibly Thoughtful comments on what Conan Doyle wrote:

• Hound of the Baservilles is my favourite story. I love it Quite A Lot. And I've enjoyed many a film adaptation, even the bad ones really, but had no idea the novel was so very good. Certainly haven't seen a film that compares to the atmosphere of Watson's memoirs of the adventure. The descriptions of the moors are delicious and the contrast with the streets of London drawn marvellously. Also it's got two of my very most favourite moments in the canon: Holmes getting told that the passenger in the hansom was Sherlock Holmes, and Watson discovering that it's Holmes on the moor. OMG THEY LOVE EACH OTHER.
  
  
• Fraternally, course. I cannot slash them, I don't want to. I do love how Watson is utterly devoted to Holmes and how Holmes very carefully conceals how much he adores Watson and then Watson is in danger and he is a bit "OMG YOU SHOT WATSON I KILL YOU NAO." Not that I condone violence. Ahrrm.
  
  
• Given when there written, one exxpects casual racism, but it was getting rather a bit much in The Sign of the Four. Ye gods, Conan Doyle, enough. This makes me rather sad as ignoring that, it's my second favourite novel, and not just because it has Holmes lulling Watson to sleep with his violin playing. It's also cause there's a Victorian boat chase onna river.
  
  
• Much love to an actual vaguely sensitive portrayal of race issues in The Yellow Face though. That was a pleasant surprise.
  
  
• It must really have sucked to be a Holmes fan from 1917 - 1930. Bloody hell was Casebook a lot of cack. At least a hundred year later you get told "Casebook is a load of cack" but those poor fans had no idea that their canon would suck and keep on sucking for years and years. I imagine this was what it was like to be a Doctor Who fan in the eighties...except for the fact they they were WRONG and the eighties were AWESOME.
  
  
• The very nadir of Holmes for me is The Creeping Man. KEEP THAT NONSENSE FOR YER CHALLENGER STUFF CONAN DOYLE. It was horrid and it is not in my Holmes canon, no.
  
  
• On the other hand, I did mostly love the short stories and there are quite a few so really hating one seems fair enough. Have much love for anything where the villain had a bit of a Mad Plan. So despite general mehness at Case-Book, I do quite love Thor Bridge. Also the Three Garridebs - even if it is a less good Red-Headed League - because of the dude so v obviously lying and so our great detective decides to hideout in the house and that is all he does. BRILLIANT, HOLMES.
  
  
• Almost as brilliant as when he works out where the dudes are in Engineer's Thumb for it to be completely superfluous since the place was on fire and the counterfeiter's equipment all inside.
  
  
• But it does not compare to the GENIUS shown in Devil's Foot when Holmes finds the poison the dudes were murdered with and decides to TEST IT OUT ON HIMSELF (and beloved Watson) just to check it's the right stuff.
  
  
• I do not like Billy.
  
  
• I may have cried at The Final Problem. SHUTUP.
  
  
• I may have loled at The Empty Room though. NICE RETCON CONAN DOYLE. And by nice, I mean absurd. So besides the fact I find it lolarious that Holmes was hiding above Watson onna wee ledge whilst Watson was getting emo over Holmes' tragic, tragic death, the great detective's brilliant plan was to pretend to be dead so Moriarity's dudes wouldn't get him, when Moriarty's CHIEF DUDE was above him on the cliff and THROWING ROCKS AT HIM so presumably had noticed that Holmes was not, in fact, dead? Yes, that is very sensible, Holmes. VERY.
  
  
• During the latter half of Scarlet and Valley of Fear I kept thinking "god, I much do I hate American history, boring," when, in fact, this was contemporary America that was being written about. And some of these characters would remember the civil war cause, heh, it only happened twenty, thirty years ago then, and that's just MADNESS. It just weirdly brought home to me how crazily young the US is.
  
  
• I love Watson lots. I love Holmes trying to teach Watson his methods and Watson applying them and Holmes going yay but you are a bit wrong and Watson keeps trying and that he has a good memory for colour and that Holmes knows Watson would spot he was not really dying if he got within four yards of him. And I love him being judgey at Holmes for being a sexist jerk and that Holmes says something jerky about women and Watson is about to say LESS JERKINESS HOLMES when he gets interrupted by Plot Developments.
  
  It makes me v sad that his wife dies and I am well-judgey at Conan Doyle for that.
  
  
• I thought His Last Bow to be a lovely and fitting epilogue to the series.
  
  
• This is a list of my ten favourite short stories, in no particular order:
  
  The Problem of Thor Bridge
  The Adventure of the Devil's Foot
  The Musgrave Ritual
  The Naval Treaty
  A Scandal In Bomhemia
  Silver Blaze
  The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
  The Red-Headed League
  The Five Orange Pips
  The Man With the Twisted Lip

Comments

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Special-needs!Watson is something I dislike in the King books. It first seems to have developed in the early US radio adaptations, and then spread to other media adaptations to the point that when anyone actually writes Watson being as competent as he can be in the books people react to it as a big twist on canon.

The Valley Of Fear is really sketchy because it mostly repeats coal mine owners' propaganda about early American trade unionists being evil thugs.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

Special-needs!Watson is something I dislike in the King books.

i like to think that russell is lying about watson because she's a bit of a bitch.

The Valley Of Fear is really sketchy because it mostly repeats coal mine owners' propaganda about early American trade unionists being evil thugs.

it was really quite annoying. the last few times i've re-read VALL i've just skipped the american section because it's the story of one brave man against... workers' solidarity? bah. doyle wasn't so good with american stories. though at least the idea of killer mormon ninjas is amusing. also: early unions have so much money that they can hire expensive criminal masterminds from another continent?

[calapine.livejournal.com]

I was wondering where the whole Watson Is An Idiot and subsequent omg!shock at Watson being portrayed as Not An Idiot thing came from, yo.

I was paying so little attention to that section the whole Big Companies Good, Trade Unions Bad thing went over me haed, but hurrah for more reasons to Justify Dislike. Ahem.

[scarletsherlock.livejournal.com]

I love reading your thoughts! I'm always so excited to see what people think when they discover/rediscover the original canon. If you haven't seen it already, try to get Leslie Klinger's The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, which is huge and AWESOME. http://www.lesliesklinger.com/index.html I love Klinger, he's great. I met him at a convention once and the man is a walking encyclopedia of Sherlock Holmes and Dracula.

Re: Mary Russell: I feel exactly the same. I enjoyed The Beekeeper's Apprentice (minus the Watson parts, argh) but I think the series goes progressively downhill after that.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Cushing!Holmes! Hurrah!

And I know that feeling - it's awfully exciting when New Who people go and watch Classic and say all shiny new things with their shiny new ideas.

I shall make note of this book.

[edithmatilda.livejournal.com]

I have much fondness for Michael Chabon's The Final Solution which manages to work because of being intensely unholmesian. And it has a parrot in it. It does my head in to think that a Holmes story could be set during WWII because that is Modern Recent Stuff and Victorians aren't and what do you mean it's not that long between them. Stupid history being the shape of time and not preconception.

Also generalised Holmes yay. Obviously.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Yes, but it's Extra Special Long between Victorian times and WWII because of the jump between living memory and Actual History. TRUFAX.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

The Klinger annotations are a new version, with all-new notes, of the old annotated ones edited by Baring-Gould. It's nice to have both. You can get an omnibus of the old ones relatively cheaply. (http://www.amazon.com/ANNOTATED-SHERLOCK-HOLMES-Fifty-Six-Complete/dp/B000H58L0O/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240410208&sr=8-5)

The interesting thing about Holmes stories is that if you read both sets of annotations and the hundreds of thousands of quibbles and attempts to explain away those quibbles that the Baker Street Irregulars have written over the years (you gotta love an organization that REQUIRES you to essentially write fanfic, albeit pseudoscholarly fanfic, as a condition of full membership), you realize that most Holmes stories do not stand up to plot scrutiny at all. They're not even well-written, in many ways. But Holmes and Watson are such great creations that we don't care.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is probably Doyle's finest hour. Most of the time he didn't seem to care about atmosphere much - except here.

You are allowed to have cried a little at The Final Problem, because your reaction would still be nothing compared to the letters and the screaming and the wailing and the ashes and sackcloth that prevailed among Doyle's readership at the time. Some people would have burned him at the stake for it if they could have. It was a huge calamity. Srsly.

If you are a fan of "Watson's not as dumb as people seem to think he is" (I am too), you owe it to yourself to read Stephen King's story, "The Doctor's Case," where Watson solves the case before Holmes does, partially because (it turns out) Holmes is allergic to cats. Long story. Unfortunately the collection is out of print. I am trying to find some way to get this story to people who need it urgently.

There's some similar sentiment about Lestrade, and this novel by M J Trow (http://www.amazon.com/Supreme-Adventure-Inspector-Lestrade/dp/0812883136/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240410843&sr=1-2) is worth reading.

I don't know whether you would like Carole Nelson Douglas' books from the point of view of Irene Adler - Holmes isn't really in them except as a passing character - but the first few are definitely fun, if a bit overwrought.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Oh, here's the Holmesian collection with the Stephen King story. (http://www.amazon.com/New-Adventures-Sherlock-Holmes/dp/0881844357) Five or six listings of it were "unavailable," I just didn't scan hard enough. The collection is good overall, but the King story is the standout. (He also writes a mean Cthulhu mythos tale.)

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Thank you v much for the recs! I shall endeavour to get hold of these books, yes.

[eponymous-rose.livejournal.com]

This makes me really want to re-read the canon start-to-finish all over again.

I still haven't tackled any of the Russell books, mostly because of the whole clueless-Watson thing. After amazing portrayals like Michael Williams in the Bert Coules BBC audio canon (have you heard any of them? they're utterly spectacular, and manage to make a lot of the lacklustre stories considerably more interesting), it bugs me when so many people make a buffoon out of him. Also, he's kind of my favourite, so I am biased that way.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

they're utterly spectacular, and manage to make a lot of the lacklustre stories considerably more interesting

HE MADE THE MAZARIN STONE *GOOD*. that is a spectacular feat.

man, when is the moffat/gatiss holmes special coming out? i want to see it.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Bumbling Watson makes me sad. Conversely, it always makes me happy when we're reminded he's a two-fisted gambling ladies-man sort of fellow.(good that he got over that gambling habit, though, that was no good). I find it difficult to read Holmes without Watson around because...well, I suppose because no one else ever was quite as good at showing us the inside of Holmes' head. It's never quite right coming from anybody else, and when Holmes does the narrating himself, I tend to want to thump him if they've got the characterization at all right. He's wonderful, but quite frustrating sometimes.

"The Empty Room" really was rather silly, wasn't it?

[calapine.livejournal.com]

It was absurd, and yet I forgive for Watson's reaction at Holmes' return.

[tree_and_leaf]

I adore Watson, and the bashing he constantly gets makes me sad (points for Nick Meyer's Seven Per Cent Solution: his Watson is intelligent, and there is a lovely dynamic between the two). Though it's a bit sketchy that Watson seems unsure of how many women he's married....

[kismeteve.livejournal.com]

Though it's a bit sketchy that Watson seems unsure of how many women he's married....

That's one of my favorite things about him- I find it hilarious. I just shake my head and go "Oh, Watson."

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Bumbling Watson is the reason why I never got further with Laurie King then the first one. (Okay, I browsed a bit through No.2 as well, but that was it.)

I have an unreasonable amount of love for the scene in The Silurians where the Brig and the Doctor call each other Holmes and Watson.

[stunt-muppet.livejournal.com]

And where it's the Brig calling the Doctor "Watson", no less. I love that scene too, and that's a big reason why. :)

[stunt-muppet.livejournal.com]

There's mischaracterized Watson in the Mary Russel books? Boo. I haven't read The Beekeeper's Apprentice yet, since reading it before I'd really got into Holmes canon felt a bit like cheating, but even with just a few stories and a handful of Granada movies under my belt I'm really fond of Watson. But then, I tend to be very fond of the Watson character-type in TV and books, so I wasn't really surprised that I loved the original.

Will keep your recs and commentary in mind; the few Holmes stories I've read have been mostly out of order but I'm finally starting at A Study in Scarlet and going through in sequence, which I think will be much more enjoyable.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

I v much enjoyed the reading the canon in order (I'd read Scarlet and Adventures yonks but clearly wasn't in the mood for Holmes as my memories were of being rather bored), though I did cheat at the end and switched Case-Book and His Last Bow, for I'd heard Case-Book was less well-regarded and I wanted to read the Epilogue last.

Watson is the sort of character that it's v easy for me to dislike but, alas, I cannot here and instead get annoyed at Holmes when he's rude to him.

[uncanny-rman.livejournal.com]

The game is afoot! Sorry, I couldn't resist. ;)

Can one be a Holmes fan if one has not read the books? I flicked through a collection of short stories a few years ago and read a Ladybird Book version of Hound of the Baskervilles. The glowy green dog on the cover scared me.

I've only ever seen Young Sherlock Holmes, and that isn't even proper canon!

[calapine.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd say I was a fan before I read them based on having read Scarlet and Adventures and hating them but loving the Cushing telly series.

[airie-fairy.livejournal.com]

I really must start reading these books. Only recently have they seemed to run deeper than mystery novels, and so I haven't found myself inspired before, but now I'm curious about all of Sherlock's weirdness.

American history is pretty blah up until WWI, at which point it becomes and remains infuriating.

[airie-fairy.livejournal.com]

Gah! WWII I mean. Damn Roman numerals.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

OMG THEY LOVE EACH OTHER.

they do, they really do. i do slash them inasmuch as i think holmes was very repressed and watson was straight, but mostly i love their man love and don't care if it is fraternal or romantic or both.

Given when there written, one expects casual racism, but it was getting rather a bit much in The Sign of the Four.

if you ever get round to watching the ian richardson films (and you should, he's wonderful, although the films themselves aren't classics) be forewarned that there is an utterly ridiculous and embarassing scene in the sign of the four where holmes gets into a knock down drag out fight with tonga. yes, you haven't lived till you see a six foot tall man scissor kick a dwarf in blackface. *facepalms*

The very nadir of Holmes for me is The Creeping Man.

lols. i was watching dead alive for the first time ever last night and was thinking how it had a striking resemblance to CREE. except with more zombies and lawnmowers, obvs.

Almost as brilliant as when he works out where the dudes are in Engineer's Thumb for it to be completely superfluous since the place was on fire and the counterfeiter's equipment all inside.

ahahahaha i loved that so much! and then holmes is really Quite Unsympathetic when their client is like, "i lost a bunch of money, blood, sanity, and my thumb, and what have i got to show for it??" and holmes is like, "um... experience. lol."

also i love how so many holmes stories end with "...and then we got there, but our client was already dead," or "...and then holmes did something totally illegal and/or unethical to solve the case", or "...and then holmes was totally wrong and actually nothing had happened."

But it does not compare to the GENIUS shown in Devil's Foot when Holmes finds the poison the dudes were murdered with and decides to TEST IT OUT ON HIMSELF (and beloved Watson) just to check it's the right stuff.

this is a very hilarious scene in the granada adaptation.

I may have loled at The Empty Room though. NICE RETCON CONAN DOYLE. And by nice, I mean absurd.

i take it all as evidence that holmes was totaly and completely lying about why he disappeared for three years.

It makes me v sad that his wife dies and I am well-judgey at Conan Doyle for that.

it is so so so sad in the bbc radio adaptation YOU HAVE NO IDEA. poor watson.

but I can't stand the casting of Watson as a good-natured buffoon and quite, quite hate every time Russell says anything at all about him.

since the books are written from russell's perspective and she's shown on many occassions to be less than completely truthful or accurate about things in her life that she doesn't like talking about, i tend to think she is lying and painting watson a fool deliberately out of jealousy. which may make you wonder why i like the books, then, but i never said i liked russell because she was nice.

[biichan.livejournal.com]

since the books are written from russell's perspective and she's shown on many occassions to be less than completely truthful or accurate about things in her life that she doesn't like talking about, i tend to think she is lying and painting watson a fool deliberately out of jealousy.

Oooooh, good point.

[biichan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Watson-Is-Stupid meme really gets to me too. The first time I'd read the Russell books I'd only read Baskervilles and maybe a handful of the short stories, so I was able to brush it off a bit, but now that I've read so much more Stupid!Watson is a damn good way to make me put your book down and walk away. Pity, that. I remember quite liking the Russell books as a teenager.

Like tree_and_leaf, I totally recommend Nicolas Meyer's The Seven Percent Solution. Especially because Watson is actually able to manipulate and fool Holmes at one point and while Holmes was completely coked up to the gills and that probably helped, it's still pretty cool. And it's got Sigmund Freud in it. For great justice.

He wrote another Holmes book called The West End Horror which is pretty cool too. It has cameos from Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and both Gilbert and Sullivan. Oh and at one point I think Bram Stoker is a suspect.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

The bit about Bram Stoker in that book, where he is suspect ...

[minor spoilers, but they won't ruin the book for anyone by any means]

... because he vanishes all the time and then they eventually find out he has a secret apartment and he must just be keeping a mistress, and then they learn he goes there to work on Dracula, is absolutely true. Stoker was tremendously embarrassed by Dracula, which he considered pornographic. By the standards of his time, parts of it were.

I liked West End Horror much more than Seven Percent Solution, which never did much for me at all.

[columbina.livejournal.com]

P.S. for calapine: Just now occurs to me I've shot my mouth off several times in this thread and you have no earthly idea who I am.

I belong to nonelvis. She showed me this because she knows how much I'm a big ol' Holmes geek. Apologies for crashing.

[calapine.livejournal.com]

No probs - random people turn up in ma LJ a lot and it is quite great.

[padawanpooh.livejournal.com]

Watson is hardly mentioned after the first couple of Russell books. In fact I'm reading #6 now (The Game) and I haven't seen his name yet, not once.

I like the Russell books a lot but the treatment of Watson is absolutely woeful.

The very nadir of Holmes for me is The Creeping Man. KEEP THAT NONSENSE FOR YER CHALLENGER STUFF CONAN DOYLE. It was horrid and it is not in my Holmes canon, no.

Hey! You're not dissing Prof Challenger there, are ya liddle lady/?!?!

I'd add just one story to your (excellent) list of faves: The Solitary Cyclist.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

professor challgener is awesomesauce. also i love how doyle cosplayed him for one of the books.

[fyrdrakken]

Oh! I just remembered tilly_stratford has been going through Holmes audio plays and movies lately and critiquing them as she goes. It would be worthwhile for you to check her recent entries for same, to get further recs of Holmes media.

ETA: Even quicker, here's her Sherlock Holmes tag.

[neadods.livejournal.com]

It's gotten to the point that I check how Watson is treated before I invest in any pastiche. Watson is not a stupid man and Holmes a tolerant genius. Watson is a normally intelligent man... and Holmes is a rather intolerant genius. With a soft spot.

During the latter half of Scarlet and Valley of Fear I kept thinking "god, I much do I hate American history, boring," when, in fact, this was contemporary America that was being written about.

Does it make you feel any better to know that I'm just as bored by a lot of that? It's either tedious or eyerolling (and considering the attitudes of the time, occasionally both.)

My favorites, in no particular order are:

Hound of the Baskervilles
Scandal in Bohemia
Solitary Cyclist
Adventure of the Speckled Band (even though it makes no sense)

There is, if you can find them, some really brilliant and fairly true to canon audios with Clive Merrison as Holmes. What I particularly like is that even in canon words, occasionally Watson gets a shot in at Holmes by being very sarcastic when called for.

[oltha_heri.livejournal.com]

It's also cause there's a Victorian boat chase onna river.
Favorite chase scene. Ever. I have a thing for rivers in Victorian novels though, I always love it when Dickens goes down there.

I may have cried at The Final Problem.
I didn't cry, but it did give me a nightmare, then again I was eleven when I first read it so I may be excused. (Seriously though, I'm more scared of Moriarty than anything else, I would gladly face an army of zombies armed only with a spork than Moriarty.)

On the American front: Yes, we be babiez. Love us because we are cute and squishy and RULE YOU ALL! (Though truly: we are squishy.)

Oh also did you see Brett's Red Headed League, 'cause it had Richard Wilson, and there was a moment with his eyebrows and I was like: OMG GAIUS HAS DOOMED US ALL... like serious, serious eyebrows of doom and I forgot what show I was in, and then Brett showed up with his charisma and made me pay attention.

...I really need to get myself a Holmes icon, but I shall use this in support of 80's Who. And really anything that comes up with Ace can't be that bad.