Book review: O, Jerusalem: or, Sherlock Holmes and the case of published fanfiction
Warning: This isn't going to be a review so much as a case-study of one girl's involvement with a series. This is because my introduction to this series, the Mary Russell books by Laurie R. King, affected me in a personal way. This is also because I only read this particular novel out of interest in the fandom itself, thereby rendering fairly irrelevant (to me) how I feel about it as a stand-alone work of fiction. Not to mention the fact a review of a series' fifth book means very little to those who haven't read the first four.
The first Mary Russell book, The Beekeeper's Apprentice, appeared in 1994, when I was fifteen. Already a die-hard Sherlockian, I fell into that book hard, given that its protagonist was a fifteen year old girl with long blond braids and a penchant for reading whilst walking. All things I shared. What I did not share, but wanted to, was her literal stumble into the world of Sherlock Holmes, retired but still vital and convinced, eventually, to take this budding genius under his sardonic eyebrows.
It was like a Mary Sue I didn't even have to write.
Then came A Monstrous Regiment of Women, and the Sherlockian crowd, amusedly tolerant of the first book, started to rumble about the romantic direction the novel had lured them in and decried King for hijacking their guy. The folks I was hanging with gave up on Russell, either then or after the next few books.
I gave up too, but for different reason: the reason I know now to be that while Russell grew up, married Holmes, and (to my mind) became less interesting, she was no longer a stand-in for me. Her interest in religion, her annoyance with Holmes (snarky I suppose, but not in a way I responded to), her being married and all, didn't get me where I lived. She started coming off as cocky, intolerant, and reacted in ways I couldn't understand.
Recent discussions with and reading of cesario and lizbee brought me to the realizations above and prompted me to attack, again, O Jerusalem, the book I'd bought and started but abandoned several years ago. And through that new self-knowledge, I gained an appreciation of the text. I knew what Russell meant to me, and how I'd come to feel betrayed by her, and I could kind of enjoy it on this level. Perhaps the book's setting in the inter-BEEK timeline helped somewhat: here, Russell is not yet married, and there is some lovely tension in a nighttime Dead Sea outing. Even so, her religious interest is something I share Holmes' dismissal of (though I try not to; it's just not in me at this stage of life), and a felt that King borrowed a bit from T.E. Lawrence (flogging, anyone?) and that, in the end, the "crime" itself was not all that interesting.
But looking at it from a fan perspective, and picking up this series again in an attempt to rejoin the community rather than for its own sake, is an interesting experience and one I've not had before. Do I let my later objections outweigh my intial fervor? Or do I give in to the fact that it's a small fandom with some highly talented, intelligent people in it I'd like to associate with? What is the worth of a fan-object in these days of internet and livejournal and established engines of fandom?
And how come Holmes' authors (other than Doyle, of course) get to write pastiches rather than fanfic?
The first Mary Russell book, The Beekeeper's Apprentice, appeared in 1994, when I was fifteen. Already a die-hard Sherlockian, I fell into that book hard, given that its protagonist was a fifteen year old girl with long blond braids and a penchant for reading whilst walking. All things I shared. What I did not share, but wanted to, was her literal stumble into the world of Sherlock Holmes, retired but still vital and convinced, eventually, to take this budding genius under his sardonic eyebrows.
It was like a Mary Sue I didn't even have to write.
Then came A Monstrous Regiment of Women, and the Sherlockian crowd, amusedly tolerant of the first book, started to rumble about the romantic direction the novel had lured them in and decried King for hijacking their guy. The folks I was hanging with gave up on Russell, either then or after the next few books.
I gave up too, but for different reason: the reason I know now to be that while Russell grew up, married Holmes, and (to my mind) became less interesting, she was no longer a stand-in for me. Her interest in religion, her annoyance with Holmes (snarky I suppose, but not in a way I responded to), her being married and all, didn't get me where I lived. She started coming off as cocky, intolerant, and reacted in ways I couldn't understand.
Recent discussions with and reading of cesario and lizbee brought me to the realizations above and prompted me to attack, again, O Jerusalem, the book I'd bought and started but abandoned several years ago. And through that new self-knowledge, I gained an appreciation of the text. I knew what Russell meant to me, and how I'd come to feel betrayed by her, and I could kind of enjoy it on this level. Perhaps the book's setting in the inter-BEEK timeline helped somewhat: here, Russell is not yet married, and there is some lovely tension in a nighttime Dead Sea outing. Even so, her religious interest is something I share Holmes' dismissal of (though I try not to; it's just not in me at this stage of life), and a felt that King borrowed a bit from T.E. Lawrence (flogging, anyone?) and that, in the end, the "crime" itself was not all that interesting.
But looking at it from a fan perspective, and picking up this series again in an attempt to rejoin the community rather than for its own sake, is an interesting experience and one I've not had before. Do I let my later objections outweigh my intial fervor? Or do I give in to the fact that it's a small fandom with some highly talented, intelligent people in it I'd like to associate with? What is the worth of a fan-object in these days of internet and livejournal and established engines of fandom?
And how come Holmes' authors (other than Doyle, of course) get to write pastiches rather than fanfic?