Patterns and Craft

[sartorias]

I've been on the run showing my house guests all over Southern California. Too bad we can't do internet runs while sitting on the freeway. I could have caught up on every missed post going back ten years. Ah well, wait for the implants.

One observation before I get to the post I had some ideas about. Monday my visitors wanted to see The Getty

Comments

[coppervale]

Yep. ;)

[negothick]

You always get right to the heart of the matter. "Love" is the secret ingredient, and maybe it makes readers excuse the lack of craft. People love Dickens more than they love Trollope, though critics found the latter the better craftsman. Dickens was messy, but damn he loved what he did!

[marycatelli]

except that Doyle loved his medieval works and though Holmes miserable hackwork. He didn't throw him over the waterfall for nothing.

[kalimac]

Love and talent, then. Doyle had no talent for medievalism (you can really tell the difference between the Victorians who did and those who didn't), but he did for the Holmes stories. And I think he enjoyed himself doing them more than he let on; it was the public who loved Holmes more than he did, and who wouldn't let Holmes go, that Doyle found dismaying.

[marycatelli]

One can think so. One can think all sorts of things. The thing is, is there any evidence that he did enjoy them?

[kalimac]

The mere fact that he let the series go on as long as he did in the first place. He didn't have to write sequels to "A Study in Scarlet" in the first place - and Holmes was not even that major a character in that first story!

Also, the fact that most of the Holmes stories - even the post-revival ones - are written with wit, imagination, and gusto, and not as weary hackwork. You can tell that from the few late ones that do read like weary hackwork.

[marycatelli]

"he let the series go on"? He was forced to by financial necessity. Shoving Holmes over the falls was a none-too-subtle hint that he didn't like them.

And the second paragraph begs the question. What you find when reading is not necessarily what he felt when writing.

[kalimac]

"He was forced to by financial necessity." Not at first.

As a person who has been reading for more than a few years, and who has read enough work that the authors testified they were enthusiastic about, and enough work that the authors wrote grudgingly because they were expected to only, I can tell the difference. There are consistent characteristics that are not difficult for a sensitive reader to spot.

Nor is it true that Conan Doyle consistently disliked Holmes. His biographies make that clear. His dislike grew in the course of, and as a reaction to, what he considered public over-adulation, and was not inherent in the stories themselves. It's a mistake to picture him writing every subsequent Holmes story with grim resignation. And in his later years he came to an acceptance of what Holmes had done for him.