Thoughts on A Study in Scarlet, plus love letter from Holmes to Watson
I have now finished reading A Study in Scarlet - so much for getting off the high before I submerged myself in canon. It was a very fun read, and I'll be right off to the library after lunch for more.
The plot was a pretty straightforward crime tale - well, up until the second half, when the narrative jumped straight across the Atlantic to a little girl and her protector in the barren West. :-) I'm imagining Ferrier as Zeb Macahan, more or less. Anyway, the jump, while jarring, did make me even more eager to find out the solution, so in that sense it served its purpose. It did rather have a feel of pre-crosscutting narrative, though, which of course it is.
If I were in the habit of solving the mysteries I read, I would complain that Doyle doesn't play fair - in a whodunnit, the reader should always have access to all the clues. Here, Holmes gets the main clues in a telegram that he sneakingly keeps to himself. But fortunately, I'm not in the habit of solving mysteries, and in any case, I suppose this book precedes the conventions of whodunnits.
I didn't always buy Holmes's inductions, either. There were places where I felt rather like when I read the dialogues of Socrates in high school: "Yeah, well, it's easy to always be right when you can control the outcome, isn't it?" The counterarguments sometimes presented themselves. But then, Holmes does admit that it' easier for him to reach a conclusion than it is to explain how he did it, so maybe the things he noticed but didn't explain where the ones that ruled out other possibilities.
In general, Holmes is not the most likeable of characters at this point; he's bragging and petulant and blushes at compliments, yet it's all rather endearing, particularly taking into account that he might grow out of it, since he's only 27.
o.O
WHAT.
I don't know why that surprised me so much. Obviously, he had to have been 27 at some point, and why not in a book? But despite my general Holmes-ignorance, I clearly had a strong mental image of him, because I had seen RDJ as an unusually young Holmes, when in fact he's nearly two decades older than Holmes is in this book.
You guys, Sherlock Holmes is younger than me.
Anyway, moving on. It was fun to see little ways that the film aligned with the bok in ways I didn't expect it to. For instance, Holmes really does prefer playing random dischords on his violin to actually playing it, the only difference being that in the book he at least uses his bow. And while there aren't any explosions or running around in tunnels, Holmes and the two policemen wrestle down the perpetrator (I'm assuming at this point in the story Watson's too ill to participate), and at one point Holmes jumps up on the back of a coach and clings to it while it's in motion, which isn't something I can see Hercule Poirot do. Okay, I can, but the mental image is hilarious. So the people who have said "he's not just cerebral, really" are quite right.
On a complete side note, I'm not very well versed in English history, and so up to this point, "Maiwand" to me had been an adorable little boy in the third grade who likes adventure books. You can imagine the mental disconnect. :-) It makes me half want to write a character called Maiwand into a Sherlock Holmes story just to see how Watson would react. Though perhaps that wasn't a first name back then and only became one because of the battle. *Calls dad * Hmm, dad hasn't heard of it as a small name, so that's probably the case. I could always make the character a small boy as well.
Yes, yes, I am contemplating fic, of course I am. I shouldn't, considering the VERY many unfinished stories I have on my hard drive (not least of all the blessed SPN/Joa crossover), but what can I do? *grin *
Meanwhile, I've done something vaguely fic-like that takes much less time. morthel showed me some form letters from bureauofcommunication.com, and I immediately used it to draft (with a little bit of help from morthel) a letter from Holmes to Watson as he swallows his pride and tries to woo him back:
And that is all. :-)
The plot was a pretty straightforward crime tale - well, up until the second half, when the narrative jumped straight across the Atlantic to a little girl and her protector in the barren West. :-) I'm imagining Ferrier as Zeb Macahan, more or less. Anyway, the jump, while jarring, did make me even more eager to find out the solution, so in that sense it served its purpose. It did rather have a feel of pre-crosscutting narrative, though, which of course it is.
If I were in the habit of solving the mysteries I read, I would complain that Doyle doesn't play fair - in a whodunnit, the reader should always have access to all the clues. Here, Holmes gets the main clues in a telegram that he sneakingly keeps to himself. But fortunately, I'm not in the habit of solving mysteries, and in any case, I suppose this book precedes the conventions of whodunnits.
I didn't always buy Holmes's inductions, either. There were places where I felt rather like when I read the dialogues of Socrates in high school: "Yeah, well, it's easy to always be right when you can control the outcome, isn't it?" The counterarguments sometimes presented themselves. But then, Holmes does admit that it' easier for him to reach a conclusion than it is to explain how he did it, so maybe the things he noticed but didn't explain where the ones that ruled out other possibilities.
In general, Holmes is not the most likeable of characters at this point; he's bragging and petulant and blushes at compliments, yet it's all rather endearing, particularly taking into account that he might grow out of it, since he's only 27.
o.O
WHAT.
I don't know why that surprised me so much. Obviously, he had to have been 27 at some point, and why not in a book? But despite my general Holmes-ignorance, I clearly had a strong mental image of him, because I had seen RDJ as an unusually young Holmes, when in fact he's nearly two decades older than Holmes is in this book.
You guys, Sherlock Holmes is younger than me.
Anyway, moving on. It was fun to see little ways that the film aligned with the bok in ways I didn't expect it to. For instance, Holmes really does prefer playing random dischords on his violin to actually playing it, the only difference being that in the book he at least uses his bow. And while there aren't any explosions or running around in tunnels, Holmes and the two policemen wrestle down the perpetrator (I'm assuming at this point in the story Watson's too ill to participate), and at one point Holmes jumps up on the back of a coach and clings to it while it's in motion, which isn't something I can see Hercule Poirot do. Okay, I can, but the mental image is hilarious. So the people who have said "he's not just cerebral, really" are quite right.
On a complete side note, I'm not very well versed in English history, and so up to this point, "Maiwand" to me had been an adorable little boy in the third grade who likes adventure books. You can imagine the mental disconnect. :-) It makes me half want to write a character called Maiwand into a Sherlock Holmes story just to see how Watson would react. Though perhaps that wasn't a first name back then and only became one because of the battle. *Calls dad * Hmm, dad hasn't heard of it as a small name, so that's probably the case. I could always make the character a small boy as well.
Yes, yes, I am contemplating fic, of course I am. I shouldn't, considering the VERY many unfinished stories I have on my hard drive (not least of all the blessed SPN/Joa crossover), but what can I do? *grin *
Meanwhile, I've done something vaguely fic-like that takes much less time. morthel showed me some form letters from bureauofcommunication.com, and I immediately used it to draft (with a little bit of help from morthel) a letter from Holmes to Watson as he swallows his pride and tries to woo him back:
And that is all. :-)