Strictly Sherlock

Sherlock Sign Board Sightings

I always make the point to my students that Sherlock Holmes has become more than just a world- famous literary character.  He's also an iconic image.  There aren't many characters who could be recognized by their silhouettes alone.  I can think of only three, really: Mickey Mouse, Snoopy, and Sherlock!

 

Because Sherlock's shadow is so easy to recognize, he's become a staple of advertising.  Slap him on a sign and people will know that you're selling something interesting!  You might use him as a link to a product that is mentioned in the canon (pipes, hats, magnifying glasses) or simply to indicate your store is filled with unique 'finds' that might appeal to the curious.

 

Here are two examples I've spotted during my travels.  The first is from a pipe and cigar store in Prague.  It was actually the first interesting thing I saw on the street when we left our hotel.  To me, that signalled we were going to have a wonderful trip!

And just this week, while on a quick Spring Break trip to the Carolina low country, I spotted this sign in the town  of Beaufort.  It marked a little knick-knack shop that is probably popular with tourists.  Would Sherlock approve of the store's name?  Hmmm...well, if I read "The Blue Carbuncle" correctly, he didn't immediately give back that precious stone.  Maybe he hung to it---if so, this title certainly fits!

So where's the most interesting or unusual place you've seen Sherlock on a sign?

Criminal Inspiration

For anyone interested in writing a Sherlockian pastiche, inspiration can be as close as your local newspaper.

 

Case in point---yesterday the Spartanburg Herald-Journal regaled its readers with a report on an utterly bizarre incident in one of the city's oldest cemeteries.  A grave had been vandalized, a coffin broken into, and the head of the corpse removed!  Needless to say, this was a far cry from the regular 'holdup at the convenience store' or 'domestic dispute' that normally makes the paper in this rather sleepy town in the upstate of South Carolina.  If you're interested, just follow this link:

 

Creepy Cemetery Crime!

 

This incident made me think of moments from my two twisted Sherlockian tales.  Shadowfall involves some serious cemetery vandalism (as in all the bodies in Highgate go missing) and Shadowblood finds a head (yes, just a head, but a very regal one) bearing witness to nefarious deeds.

 

And for the record, no, I did not commit the Spartanburg crime!  My scion has already accused me of it, but I promise my misdeeds are strictly limited to the pages of my novels.

 

Reading about the crime, however, reminded me of the great value of everyday incidents.  Mining newspaper and internet stories can turn up golden fictional nuggets.  I often play this game with my students, giving them clipping from the crime reports and asking them to imagine how Holmes would investigate these occurrences.  It's a fun activity, and it gets the creative juices flowing, especially when fellow students keep asking "and then what happens" to the narrator of each tale. And while it is true that many of the things that are pilfered in our world did not exist in Victorian London, a bit of tweaking may unleash a pack of ideas.  Someone boosted a SUV while its owner was getting coffee at Starbucks?  Perhaps Holmes is called in to solve the case of the omnibus that mysteriously vanished while the driver was taking tea with Mrs. Hudson.

 

Finding original ideas is a challenge, and can be as intimidating as placing the first words of a new tale on the blank page.  But turn the hunt for inspiration into a game, and what was once paralyzing and terrifying becomes fun.  Or at least a little less paralyzing and terrifying.

 

And you never know what you might 'dig up' in the process. 

Living Sherlock's Words

Yesterday I had the honor of teaching a session of "Living Words" at Spartanburg's Shepherd's Center.  Living Words is a program developed by Professors Kara Bopp (Psychology) and Jeremy Jones (English/Creative Writing) at Wofford College.  It engages Senior Citizens in discussions and writing exercises to improve cognition skills.  It seeks to keep brains active, as its participants write about many subjects, from memories of childhood to reactions to poetry and fiction.

 

Here's a link to a video about the program, featuring Rosa Lewis, who told me yesterday that she is a big fan of Sherlock Holmes.  As you'll see, she's also a terrific writer!

 

Video on the Living Words Program

 

Any day I can talk about Sherlock Holmes to a new audience is a good day!  The six people in the room were very curious and eager to learn more about the history of the great detective.  I took along 'Sherlock Hares' for a visual aid and talked about how Doyle was inspired by his medical school instructor, Dr. Joseph Bell.  I also introduced the 'students' to the world of scions and pastiche writing.

 

For our exercise, I stressed Doyle's skill at creating memorable characters with just a few sentences, reading passages that described Mary Morstan and Professor Moriarty.  I then handed out a selection of actual Victorian photographs and asked the participants to use them for inspiration, composing a quick character sketch of a person who could become part of Sherlock's world.  The individual could be a villain, a victim, a suspect, a client---anyone!  The writers got to work very quickly (much faster than the average college freshman, I must admit!) and produced a series of bad guys and good guys. We had nefarious gamblers, scandalous preachers, gloating painters, and even a former Baker Street Irregular(ess) turned actress.  It was a very successful activity, one that I hope to repeat with the Survivors of the Gloria Scott.

 

While there may not be a Living Words program in your town, I'm sure that there are many ways to be involved with Senior Citizens, the differently-abled, and with children.  I've yet to meet a person who didn't like Sherlock Holmes; as his fans, we can bring him to everybody.  In the process, we can touch lives and make people smile.  As Dr. Bopp told me, the most important thing is to bring people something new, and to interact with folks whose social worlds might be relatively small and closed.  Keeping the brain active and investing in conversational skills is important for our mature citizens.  It's essential for us not-so-mature ones as well.

 

I had an absolute blast.  I hope my fellow Sherlockians will investigate the opportunities for themselves deduce how rewarding such an activity can be.

 

A Real Live Babe!

I spent much of yesterday afternoon in the company of Taylor, one of the Baker Street Babes, who graciously travelled up from Charleston to record an interview with me for a future podcast. Let me say that Taylor is an absolutely delightful young woman, a student at the College of Charleston (one of Wofford College's rival institutions!).  She is well-travelled and quite knowledgeable on a number of topics beyond Sherlock Holmes.  We had a lot of fun 'geeking out' about our mutual love of Holmes, Jeeves and Wooster, and the Doctor, as well as shared interests in books and craft projects.  Normally I don't like to find myself at school on a weekend, but this was a very special occasion and I was delighted to get to host Taylor in person.  Skype is a fantastic communication tool, but nothing beats sitting down with someone, face to face.

 

Taylor told me that while she had read some Sherlock Holmes stories as a child, it was the recent movies and the BBC SHERLOCK that has really inspired her.  She showed me pictures of the other Babes and of a group of friends in Charleston who are thinking about forming a scion.  She brought home to me how important the new interpretations of Holmes have been in getting young people excited about the canon.

 

I haven't always been the biggest fan of the new movies, though I do hold that SHERLOCK is the most brilliant thing on television.   It's good to know that these things are out there, bringing in new fans and readers.  I suppose in the 1940s, when the Basil Rathbone films were popular, they sent people back to the original sources as well.  The Granada series certainly inspired legions of new Sherlockians in the 1990s.  In the last few years of teaching my Sherlock Holmes class, I've found students sadly resistant to the Granada series (which is their loss---I blame their short attention spans on bad TV and video games!), but I am hopeful that with two brand new, wildly entertaining interpretations to show clips of, I'll have more success when my class reconvenes in September.  After all, every generation has its Sherlock.

 

I am so happy to see a growing new wave of fans, especially female fans!  When Taylor showed me photos not only of her Charleston pals, but of the many people who were dressed as Holmes and Watson at Dragoncon (a gathering of fans of many different mystery and science fiction genres in Atlanta), I feel vindicated in my assertion that Holmes may be re-imagined and reinterpreted (perhaps even in ways that might make older fans gasp or shake their heads), but he will never be abandoned or given up as hopelessly passe as long as young people like the Babes love him.

 

The only sad part of the visit---learning that I've been a Sherlockian longer than the Babes have been alive!  I feel so OLD!!!!!!

Clues in Creepy Pictures

Before you begin reading, be warned----there are some creepy pictures in this post!  But they are part of the Victorian world, examples of a practice that would have been common in the era of Sherlock Holmes.

 

 

As my pastiches are set in a dark, supernatural world, I often find myself researching the creepiest aspects of Victorian culture.  In Shadowblood there's an incident with spirit photography, a common practice of the time that allowed unscruplous photographers to produce ghosts in pictures by the simple trick of a double exposure.  The picture to the right, of Abraham Lincoln embracing his widow, is one of the most famous of the genre, made by William Mumler. While learning more about photography in this era, I came across another type of picture that is even more disturbing than the spirit image: the Victorian post mortem photograph.

 

Today, photography is cheap and easy.  Everyone has thousands of pictures of friends and family, including more than one we wish hadn't popped up on Facebook!  But in the 1800s, photography was still expensive.  Louis Daguerre introduced the daguerreotype in 1839, and it soon replaced the more expensive painted portrait for the middle classes.  But because of the long exposure time required, having one's picture made was still a big event and fairly pricey.  As one had to hold very, very still, it was especially difficult to make pictures of infants or young children.

 

Yet infant mortality was high.  Without a picture, a child who died at a tender age might be forgotten by future generations.  Thus the practice of post mortem photography began as a way to remember the very young.  But soon families were also choosing to commemorate older members as well, sometimes by gathering the entire family for a picture with the deceased.

 

Some of the eariest and saddest pictures show mothers or fathers cradling deceased children.  These pictures are fascinating to me as a historian. Many students of history believe that when infant mortality rates were high, parents did not develop intense attachments to their children until the children were older.  Babies were more or less interchangeable and disposable.  While I agree that attitudes about children and childhood have changed over time---for example, the Puritans would think we were insane for considering an 18 year old a kid, or listing college students as 'dependents'---I don't believe that people in the earlier ages were insensitive to loss.  Certainly by the Victorian era, parents valued and loved their children.  Looking at these photographs is like touching raw emotions for tragedies that are over a century old.

 

Some photographers, perhaps responding to a family request, would make the picture more artistic by posing the deceased in a way that mimicked sleep.  Children were surrounded by flower arrangements or holding favorite toys.  Sometimes the deceased was supported between his/her parents, or watched over by surviving siblings.  The dead might even be a kind of display of the success of the living.  The coffin finery and the beauty of the shroud would certainly be a reminder that mom/dad/grandmother/etc had been 'put away properly' yet was still considered a part of the family.

 

By the late 1800s, it was not unusual for these photographs to be copied and mailed out to far-flung family members.  This way, even those would could not attend the funeral could participate in the grief and mourning.  It also provided a resource for someone who had never seen the deceased in life to know what the lost one had looked like.

 

Victorians kept these images handy, in albums or (in some cases) on the wall.  The practice of post mortem photography does continue in some regions of the world and can still bring comfort, especially to families who have lost infants at birth.  However, the custom became much less common in the western world in the early 20th century as cameras were cheaper and snapshots easy to make; family photography no longer required professional assistance.  With plenty of pictures of family members in their active years, the idea of taking a loved one's picture in a casket became much less attractive and acceptable.

 

Today, a trip to an antique store, or even a perusal of old albums might well turn up some of these unique photographs.  However, I would suggest that any photograph believed to be a post mortem be evaluated by a professional.  While researching this topic, I found a lot of debate over certain images---is that person dead or just really stiff?  Because of the long exposure, living people were often 'tied' onto metal devices that held their head and limbs in place, so the presence of a pole between a subject's feet is not necessarily proof she could not support herself!  The photo on the left is one that is debatable; take a good look at the girl on the right.  Photographers would sometimes paint eyes on closed eyelids, and there does seem to be something creepy and unnatural about the young lady in the dark dress.  But then, maybe not---maybe she's just the ancester of Wednesday Addams!

 

When we think of the world of Sherlock Holmes, we think of the romantic things: the trains, the carriages, the beautiful dresses, the pipes, the cloaks.  What we often don't think of are the things that might have been on the wall. Watson mentions portraits of his heroes, and Holmes's bedroom is covered with images of celebrated criminals, but what other pictures were lying around?  If Mrs. Hudson was a widow, did she have one last photo of her husband?  And might Holmes have noticed, for example, a missing family member in a group mourning portrait like the one on the right---and seize upon it as a clue?

 

But perhaps the most important thing we can gain from these images is a simple reminder---these were real people, with real emotions and needs.  It's so easy, because we are removed in time and generations, to see them as stock characters and maybe to even snicker a bit at what we think of as their 'excesses.'  But what would they think of us?  Perhaps they would wonder why we live like we won't die, or why we expect the bereaved to quickly 'snap out of it' and 'get on with life.'  They lived surrounded by death, whereas we have managed to push death off to one side, so that it happens far from our view, in hospitals and nursing homes, or at the scene of shielded-from-our-eyes accidents.  They might well argue that their attitude was healthier, or---at least---it worked for them and helped them gain a matter of control over grief in a world where bereavement arrived on a very rapid and often unexpected basis.

The Saddest Almost-Bride

I'll confess that I'm obsessed with weddings.  As a social historian I find them absolutely fascinating.  The way traditions and expectations have changed over time is a running commentary on societal values, especially on the expectations for  women.  Weddings and engagements play a very significant part in the canon.  Check out fellow MX author Dan Andriacco's blog on the number of romantic entanglements in just the Adventures alone!

 

Dan Andriacco's Blog on Canonical Weddings

 

Some of my wedding obsession can be traced back to those pre-dawn hours on July 29, 1981 when I watched the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana.  What a spectacle that was!  It occurred just at the time when a lot of high school friends were also planning their weddings.  Throughout the mid-80s I attended ceremony after ceremony where the bride wore a huge, poofy dress and carried a bouquet that spilled over her skirts, a la Diana.  By the time Andrew and Fergie tied the knot, even more brides were duplicating her look.  I attended one wedding where the bride's gown was a exact (though certainly cheaper!) replica of the Duchess's finery.

 

But by the early 90s the weddings of my generation were over.  Everyone had paired up and gone on about the business of starting a family.  Everyone except me.  While I am not the only single woman in my high school class (sadly, divorce has plagued us), I am (to my knowledge) the only female who has never married.

 

Which is perhaps why I feel so sorry for Miss Mary Sutherland.

 

When I read this story with my students, they perceive Mary as a figure of fun and find this story comic.  They fixate on the description of her looming behind the pageboy "like a full-sailed merchant-man behind a tiny pilot boat."  The laugh about her mismatched boots and her near-sightedness.  The fashionistas in the crowd sometimes mock the assortment of colors in her attire (Watson gives us slate, brickish red, black, brown, purple, grayish, and gold) .   There's something about Mary that any of us might recognize if we met her in the street---she's the woman who reads the magazines and goes for every trend, without realizing that the trick of looking sharp is NOT to wear every trend at once. (She's definitely a candidate for What Not To Wear)  And finally, my students will say "She's just so stupid!  How could she not know that was her stepfather---it's such a bad disguise!"  By the end of the reading of the story, the large majority of my young people will agree that she is getting what she deserves by not being told about the horrible trick her stepfather and mother have played on her.  It's almost as if they blame her for her misfortune and don't care that she may spend the rest of her life pining for a man who never existed.

 

My thoughts on the tale are very different.  I see Mary as a sad character, a woman ensnared in the trap of Victorian mores.  She's a good woman, probably religious (one thing he stepfather wants to ban is a Sunday-school treat), so kind that she doesn't even demand what is rightfully hers but supports herself by typing (despite her disability).  Maybe she isn't the "daintiest thing under a bonnet," but other than her size, Watson certainly doesn't describe her as hideous.  Her face might be broad and somewhat vacuous but it is also "good-humoured" and even Holmes, in his summation of the case, refers to Mary as a woman with a "good, amiable disposition" so "affectionate and warm-hearted in her ways" with "fair personal advantages" beyond her little income that a bloke would want to scoop her up, if she could just be allowed to meet him.

 

So why does Mary fall for Hosmer Angel (who certainly doesn't sound like a catch, with his tinted glasses, whispery voice, and big side whiskers)?  It's because she's lonely, unable to meet people of her own age, and desperate to have her own family circle.  Though we don't learn Mary's exact age, she's described as a woman (not a girl) and the invitations to the ball certainly indicate that she is of an age to be out in society, as does the abortive marriage.  She hears that mental clock ticking, she knows time is running out---so she is the natural prey for the evil stepfather.  He's heard her woes and her fears; he knows a little charm will easily overcome a crude disguise to capture a woman who so desperately longs to be loved.

 

I think the reason my students dismiss Mary with little sensitivity is because it is hard for them to imagine a world in which marriage was so important.  Some of them will marry, others will live with partners, and some will probably spend their entire lives without committed relationships.  Our 21st century world is one of great choices, and most people plan to be out of their parents' house and on their own by their mid-20s at the latest.  But for a Victorian woman, marriage was everything.  Respectable employment didn't mean a freewheeling single lifestyle.  Servants and governesses lived with their employers, women like Mary lived at home with parents.  Very few women lived completely alone, and the strict rules for being escorted everywhere (note who goes with Mary and her mother to the gasfitters' ball---they don't go alone, but on the arms of their former foreman) made it very hard to be a young lady going solo.  While there were of course a few women in the Victorian age who gloried in remaining single, for most women life revolved around marriage and family.  Mary was probably really worried about being an "Old Maid"  or a "redundant woman" and missing out on her chance to have children on her own. 

 

I guess the other reason I feel sorry for Mary is that I know what it's like to time-travel and go back into a Victorian world.  My hometown is about 100 years behind the rest of America!  Especially when I was in my 30s (when I guess they still had 'hope' for me!), it was very common to be greeted by people with the question "aren't you married yet?"  It didn't matter what I achieved in terms of career or publication, it was always "hasn't she found someone"?  So maybe I feel more for Mary than others do, because I know the sting of the ugly word 'spinster'.

 

One of the things we all struggle with is putting ourselves into different mindset of the Victorian world.  I also think that's why SHERLOCK is so brilliant, because updates the situations, making them more relevant to our times without sacrificing the essentials of the characters of Holmes and Watson.

 

And because I like to invent lives for the characters after their appearances in the canon, I console myself with thinking that a short time later that 'cold-blooded scoundrel' James Windibank met Holmes's prediction and ended his life on the gallows.  Mary's mother---who in my mind is even more evil than Windibank for agreeing to such a cruel deception---succumbed to a hideous disease and Mary married a handsome nobleman who made her forget that Hosmer Angel had ever existed!

 

And Mary lived happily ever after......at least in my mind.

 

 

 

 

 

Sherlock's Gift

Sherlock's style of observation and deduction is more than just a great literary trick; it is a gift to all of Doyle's readers, because it presents a method we can try for ourselves.  A Sherlockian never has to be bored while waiting to catch a train/plane/bus.  All around us, fellow humans provide great specimens for mental experimentation.

 

All me to demonstrate.

 

Yesterday I pulled into a gas station.  The way the station was arranged, once I had committed to a path I could not get out of it.  There were two vehicles ahead of me at the two pumps, and the one directly in front of me had its lights on, so I assumed the person driving it had finished the transaction and was about to pull away.  My wait time should have been no more than a minute.  How wrong I was!

 

A minute ticked by, then two, then five!  What was wrong?  Finally, a woman stepped out of the driver's side and I realized that the pumping of gas had not yet begun!  I was frustrated, but I couldn't move, so I spent my time making careful observations and toying with deductions about the lady.

 

She was driving a gleaming new Mercedes SUV, so my instinctive impression was that she had money.  This was further confirmed by the large sticker for an elite private school in the back window.  The woman was of average height, clad in jeans, boots, a turtleneck, and a fuzzy vest, with a cap on her head.  I focused on the clothing: the vest bore the North Face logo, which I associate with the well-heeled students at my college.  I couldn't peg the brand of jeans, but they sat low on her hips and the rear was covered in rhinestones and swirls, tres trendy.  Her glasses also screamed gaudy designer (pinkish-red, the latest in big frames) and huge, tear-drop earrings twinkled their cost.  Her nails were so long and heavily lacquered that I was surprised she could handle the gas pump.  Her hair hung from the back of the dark cap in a ropey ponytail.  My suspicion, based on its stiffness and too-perfect edges, was that it might well have been a hair extension.  Her cap was pulled low, and with the addition of the glasses it was hard to see her face, but what I could see was heavily made up.  And naturally she was talking on an iphone covered with a rhinestones shell.

 

She did not put down the phone as she pumped gas!  And after completing her transaction, she got back into her Mercedes and continued to talk, making no effort to pull away from the line despite the fact that people were backed up behind her.

 

Unlike Holmes, I did not confirm my deductions.  I could only play with what I had observed, and spin a theory as to what it meant.  I found that in the process of doing this, not only had I killed some time (and kept myself from doing what I really wanted to do, which was slam my hand on my car's horn to get her to MOVE!), but I had also created a character.  My deduction made her a woman in her late 30s/early 40s, fighting against age and trying to be cool by adopting the trapping of youth--designer jeans, vest, cap, hair extensions, mod glasses.  She was wealthy, but not on her own; the very length of her fingernails would prevent her from engaging in any real work.  She was daddy's princess before she was her husband's trophy wife---witness her complete disregard for anyone else's needs or time, not to mention issues of safety.  And why was she on the phone so long?  Surely a call to a housekeeper or hubby could have been quickly ended.  The child in her life is probably too young for long and intense conversations, because the sticker is for a primary school.  This was an extremely intense conversation, as the lady never looked up once.  There was none of the usual flapping about that people do when they're on their phones and only half-heartedly engaged in conversation.  This older woman was dressed to be young and hot---she ignored the feelings of others---and she was tied to her phone like a lifeline...hmmm.

 

Aha!  She's talking to her lover!  She's having an affair!

 

Well, maybe not.  But it was so much fun to pull that imaginary person out of those real life observations.  If I were composing a Holmes story set in the modern world, she would certainly be a character in my tale---she'd be the one who gets killed off in the first pages, because she infuriated me!

 

This is Sherlock's gift!  Try it for yourself and you'll find that you never have to be bored, as long as there are strangers around.

Thoughts On A CBS Sherlock

As most everyone in the Sherlockian world knows by now, CBS is considering doing an American version of the critically acclaimed and wildly successful SHERLOCK.  Here’s a link to one of many notices about it. 

 

 Rant About CBS Version of SHERLOCK

 

Most of the responses I have read to this announcement have been the voices of outrage.  How dare CBS ‘steal’ this idea!  How derivative!  How stupid!  I won’t watch it, nobody should!

 

So, at the risk of having everyone hate me, let me offer this devil’s advocate position: why don’t we give CBS a chance before we condemn what they do?  Don’t throw Persian slippers at me yet!  Please listen to my argument.

 

First of all, nothing CBS can conjure up will ever be better than SHERLOCK.  We all know it cannot be topped as a modern re-imagining of the traditional Holmes canon.  It deserves its accolades fully.  (And if you’d like to know even more about it,  please check out the amazing  fan website Sherlockology and listen to our friends at the Baker Street Babes.  I have to recommend them, even though we don't have Seasn Two in America yet, because these people do great work for this show and Sherlock Holmes in general.) The American version, whatever it is, won't top SHERLOCK for quality of writing or acting.  We can accept this as an opening premise.

 

But what an American version could do is push the envelope for Sherlock Holmes in yet another direction.  This would require courage and creativity (admittedly not qualities usually found in Hollywood) and a deeper understanding of Holmes’ role as a character beyond the confines of the Victorian era.  That is exactly why SHERLOCK works---the team understands that if you get the character and the relationships correct, the rest is flexible.  SHERLOCK is not a carbon copy of the canon.  CBS now has a chance to prove, with imaginative flair, that Holmes’ spirit is an enduring one, perfect for crashing down traditional boundaries.

 

At the conclusion of my class on Sherlock Holmes, I ask my students to imagine themselves as Hollywood directors, about to make a Sherlock Holmes movie or TV show.  They have complete freedom and a bottomless bank account (imagination is a wonderful thing).  I ask them to tell me whom they would cast in the key roles.  Every year, the students toss back wonderful answers---if only CBS would come and listen to them!

 

An African-American Holmes and Watson are the duo most frequently offered.  Why not?  Why not keep the characters and the relationship and simply change the skin color?  Intelligence is a human factor, not a racial one; showing an African-American Holmes and Watson would be ground-breaking!  The series could be set anywhere---in a big city, a small town, in a black community or in a larger, racially diverse one.  Morgan Freeman is the most popular choice for Holmes in my student poll, and while I seriously doubt CBS could hire him, there are many wonderful actors of color.  And why not be very bold, flip all expectations, and show a non-white Holmes and a white Watson?  As long as the character is true, and the deductions sharp, does anything else matter?

 

Here’s another proposal---make Holmes and Watson female!  I’d love to see talented actresses take on these roles.  I think a heroine who is as cold and calm and calculating as Holmes would be a great balance to the ditzy women on TV these days.  Turning the gender tables would require a lot of rethinking; it would be a greater risk than simply changing Holmes’ race and location.  But think how amazing it could be.

 

Finally---in my imaginary memo to CBS---I’d say why be stuck in the modern world? You could set it in the past, even in the Victorian era if you’re that unimaginative (Holmes as a former Pinkerton agent?).  What about a Holmes and Watson who can time travel, or a canon set in the future?  (Yes, folks, I hear you, that would just be ripping off Doctor Who…)   If all that’s too much, what about a globetrotting Holmes and Watson?  Every episode could feature an exotic locale and be tied to a historical event in that country (Doyle knew a thing or two about blending the far-flung and the historic with the local and current, didn’t he?!).

 

My point is this: there aren’t many original ideas in entertainment.  Most of our crime-solving shows are, to some degree, based on Holmes’ legacy anyway.  If CBS simply tries to duplicate SHERLOCK, it is most likely going to fail.  Critics will blame ‘oversaturation.’

 

But I beg to disagree; I think true fans of Holmes can’t get enough of him.  And while everyone has
some take on Holmes that they despise, I think most of us are willing to at least check out a new interpretation.  CBS’s best chance for success, in my humble opinion, is not to try to copy SHERLOCK, but to go for broke with a daring and radical new translation.  Change Holmes’ race, sex, age---send him to the future or the past, send him around the world---just remember that it is his mind and his relationship to Watson that counts.  I truly believe that an exciting, risk-taking Sherlock Holmes series would be good for our world.

 

Of course, we most likely won’t get that.  We’ll probably get a stupid sit-com, or a version that is nothing more than a bland Xerox of the British original.  And for that, I sincerely apologize for my country.

 

But right now I can’t be angry that there’s another version of Sherlock Holmes in the pipeline.  I’ll keep an open mind and crossed fingers, hoping for the best.

 

And if it sucks---which, sadly, it probably will!---I’ll be the first to scream.  You’ll hear me all the way across the pond.

 

I Don't Want To Be Spoiled!

Sometimes it can be terriby hard to be an American.  I consider myself very patrioticc; even my historical 'fields' are all in American history.  We do make a mean apple pie, we've produced great statesmen and fantastic writers/artists, and our scenery is epic.  But, on occassion, it can be awfully difficult to be a 'Yank.'

 

No, I'm not just talking about the South Carolina Republican primary, though that is a very special torture that we're going through at the moment.  What I'm referring to is that fact that we'll have to wait a few more months for the second season of SHERLOCK to air over here.

 

Do you have any idea how difficult that wait is?  Especially when every facebook and twitter feed is lighting up with photos, reviews, and fan speculation?  I'm madly in love with the series, I think it is simply brilliant!  I can't wait to use it in upcoming classes and to have it to enjoy on my new blue-ray player.

 

But the wait!  And the constant pressure of not being able to read material on it---arggghhhh!  I do appreciate how my correspondents and friends on-line have been so good about warning whether their essays and blogs contain spoilers.  And I'm determined to be good and not try to watch the show via broken-up pieces on Youtube (I find that really ruins the experience).

 

But it's so hard to wait.  I hope everyone across the pond realizes how lucky they are!  They have SHERLOCK...we're stuck with Newt and Mitt and other simply vile things....

Gala Galore

This past Saturday, the Survivors of the Gloria Scott celebrated our annual Sherlock Holmes Birthday Gala.  We've had some problems in the last couple of years, as our usual place for the party no longer has a private room.  While some of us have no qualms about parading around in full Victorian costume, other members seek to be more discrete.  We've moved more toward formal than Victorian attire as a result, but it is still a very jolly occasion.  This year, a last minute change of venue sent us scurrying to a new restaurant, where we occupied two tables in the room with the bar.  (I'm sure many Sherlockian would hold that being close to the bar is a 'good thing'!

 

That's me in the red dress!

 

The evening proceeded with the Musgrave Ritual, followed by the usual toasts to the Queen, to Doctor Watson, Irene Adler, the Survivors of the Gloria Scott, and to Sherlock Holmes.  Dinner arrived and was simply scrumptious.  My gentleman held that it was probably the best salmon he'd ever had, and considering his love of seafood, that is really saying something.  The desserts were also incomparable.

 

The only problem was the question of how we could present the skits, since there were other people in the room.   We solved that problem by simply walking around and asking permission; everyone we spoke to was delighted and several of the restaurant's patrons watched and applauded.  The waitresses were especially amused.  Who knows, maybe we will entice some new members to join us!

 

Our only disappointment was that by the end of the evening the police had not been called!  Darn!  We must try to be more rowdy next year!