{"id":813,"date":"2016-05-08T19:22:54","date_gmt":"2016-05-08T19:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=813"},"modified":"2016-07-17T03:05:56","modified_gmt":"2016-07-17T03:05:56","slug":"the-case-of-the-conjurors-trick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=813","title":{"rendered":"The Case of the Conjuror’s Trick"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"800px-A_Study_in_Scarlet_from_Beeton's_Christmas_Annual_1887\"Sherlock Holmes. Just that name conjures up a lean man in cape and deerstalker tracking through the moors or pacing 221B Baker Street over a multi-pipe problem. Holmes long ago achieved literary escape velocity, transcending Victorian London, crime fiction and even Conan Doyle. First sleuthing upon the page in 1887\u2019s A Study in Scarlet<\/em><\/a>, these days scads of pastiches and reinterpretations are published every year. Holmes movies, television series, theatre productions. Holmes societies across the world. The game has never been more afoot.<\/p>\n

What about him has such lasting magic?<\/p>\n

Last year\u00a0I found myself immersed in that question,\u00a0tasked at\u00a0Killer Nashville<\/span><\/u><\/a>\u00a0to moderate a panel on modern incarnations of Mr. Holmes. Wonderful authors Nikki Nelson-Hicks and Stephanie Osborn held forth expertly\u00a0on what makes Holmes timeless: his towering analytical capacity, his fit as mythic archetype, his addictions and failings of vanity.\u00a0Nikki and Stephanie\u00a0lauded the deftly-drawn London\u00a0backdrop and wit and ingenuity of the stories and the growth of the characters–Conan Doyle kept Holmes fresh and (mostly) alive in print\u00a0for over forty years. All yes, but for Casual Fan Me there’s more to why Holmes works as well today as a generation before WWI. Fortunately, I don\u2019t need epic deductive powers to suss out the secret behind Sherlock Holmes. He tells us himself:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI know, my dear Watson, that you share my love of all that is bizarre and outside the conventions and humdrum of everyday life.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"BookFifty-six of Conan Doyle\u2019s sixty Holmes outings came through the eyes of Dr. Watson. Good old Watson, forever grabbing his pistol and never-minding Holmes\u2019 squalor and hailing the next hansom cab. Watson\u00a0isn’t Holmes\u2019 sleuthing or mental equal–neither of them thought that, either–but\u00a0it’s wrong to demote\u00a0dear Watson\u00a0for it. His real partner is you and me. The reader.<\/p>\n

Holmes is gloriously over-the-top:\u00a0master of disguise, expert fighter, damn near a superhero (and he kind of thought that of himself, didn\u2019t he?). If we were\u00a0in his point-of-view, either he\u2019d bang on disproportionately about clinical detail, or he\u2019d sit in unlikeable\u00a0judgment of bumbling Lestrade or some red-headed dupe.\u00a0Or worse,\u00a0he wouldn’t\u00a0bother explaining a thing, and\u00a0we would have to\u00a0read\u00a0his solutions as magic.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cA conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his trick…\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Such was how\u00a0Holmes chastised Watson over dramatizing the cold science of detection. And yet\u00a0Holmes understood how his own perspective stepped all over the drama: he tells us precisely so in 1926’s \u201cThe Adventure of the Blanched Soldier,\u201d a rare tale from his POV:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI am compelled to admit that, having taken my pen in my hand, I do begin to realize that the matter must be presented in such a way as may interest the reader…\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Holmes, too\u00a0clued-in to be a boring narrator. This Watson chap, though, has to struggle. Normal, prone to (gasp!) emotion, stuck with a limp, but clever, able to eventually grasp his friends deductions and diagnose\u00a0certain bad habits yet still marvel at feats of intellect. What does Watson know about rare poisons and shipping timetables and the relative ash qualities of tobacco varieties? Ah, the struggle, the stuff of fiction. Watson must sift out the clues, or else Holmes prods him to dig into what is seen but not yet observed–and he does it at our pace.<\/p>\n

Which circles back to the enduring Mr. Holmes. We\u2019re fascinated with him because Watson is, too–and that\u2019s because, if Holmes is the canon\u2019s most fascinating character, Watson is its most interesting. What I mean: I\u2019m fascinated by meteorology–weather systems, tornados, etc.\u00a0 but I can\u2019t do much with or about a storm. I only semi-grasp the science. The dirt-poor grad student jumping in a minivan to chase a super cell, though, now that\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t that Watson? Chasing the\u00a0conjurer’s trick? And I don\u2019t mean any ghostly hounds or criminally-brilliant opera singers or international crime lords. Watson is chasing Holmes. What makes him tick. Holmes the problem-solver survives because Conan Doyle made him the canon\u2019s greatest and deepest mystery. More than fumbling over\u00a0any given\u00a0case, Watson fumbles through time to learn his great friend–and never quite learns him. Thus we<\/em> never quite learn him. There’s a cipher aspect to Holmes,\u00a0that iconic silhouette in deerstalker and pipe, a figure open to as many enthusiastic interpretations as there are enthusiastic interpreters.<\/p>\n

first appeared in SinC-Middle Tennessee’s newsletter, April 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sherlock Holmes. Just that name conjures up a lean man in cape and deerstalker tracking through the moors or pacing 221B Baker Street over a multi-pipe problem. Holmes long ago achieved literary escape velocity, transcending Victorian London, crime fiction and even Conan Doyle. First sleuthing upon the page in 1887\u2019s A Study in Scarlet, these… Continue reading The Case of the Conjuror’s Trick<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,6],"tags":[9,112,5],"class_list":["post-813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-mystery-and-suspense","category-this-whole-writing-thing","tag-crime-fiction","tag-sherlock-holmes","tag-writing","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3CG0W-d7","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":383,"url":"https:\/\/robertmangeot.com\/?p=383","url_meta":{"origin":813,"position":0},"title":"Behind The Short Story: “Aix to Grind”","author":"rtmcontrol","date":"June 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, I was in Aix-en-Provence, and sure, I was studying a\u00a0Picasso in\u00a0a museum's\u00a0first room, only a token velvet rope between me and it, and okay, I even thought, \u201cman, this is how many million euro hanging how many steps from the door?\u201d But no, I wasn\u2019t casing the joint. 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