Resonance

[sartorias]

Sherlock Holmes, Lord of the Rings, and why we need fiction, in a in a riff about investment and resonance.

This is one of my favorite subjects of all--if you feel like discussing any of it, please jump in, either here or there.

Comments

[whswhs]

"Did Arthur Conan Doyle even exist?"

A number of years ago, I ran a series of games in the genre of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Planetary-two series about worlds of covert superheroes, both of which brought versions of characters from a wide variety of popular fiction on stage in more or less superheroic interpretations. I had a player character who had studied bartitsu with Sherlock Holmes, and one who had been built by Charles Babbage and upgraded by Charles Dodgson, and I brought on stage characters from everything from the Lensman novels to Tommy. My catchphrase for the campaign was, "This is set in a world where Adolf Hitler is real but Leni Riefenstahl never existed."

Of course, we know that Doyle actually existed: He was Watson's literary agent.

[sartorias]

Heh!

[sartorias]

Oh, yes indeed. Poetry mainlines resonance.

[sartorias]

I like it because of Lucy Liu. (And I absolutely loved what they did with Moriarty, I have to admit.) But chacun a son goute.

[whswhs]

The most Austen-like moment I've had in reading any recent fiction was about two-thirds of the way through Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon, where Captain Laurence realizes that he has misunderstood the actions and the character of another officer in the aerial corps, and as a result has put himself in a false moral position and needs to make things right. That was exactly the kind of crisis an Austen character might well face.

[sartorias]

That is true.

[honorat]

I love these kinds of discussions and have read all the comments with interest. I, too, have never found the Jane Austen spin-offs enjoyable, because I have never met one in which the most important character in Austen (for me) has been captured--her narrator. Austen's sly satire, or indeed any satire, is impossible to re-create in another era. I am beginning to believe one can only write successful satire about one's own time.

Now I do love Sherlock because of that clever blend of familiar characters with new settings. Conan Doyle was not writing satire, and his narrative voice was John Watson's, so his work is much easier to build upon and transpose. You've made me curious about Elementary.

My last sight of The Hobbit must have been 30 years ago, so I was unable to compare the book with the movie when I was watching it and was free to enjoy it very much for the work it was rather than left to mourn the work it was not.

[sartorias]

My chief delight in Elementary is that there re interesting women.

I wonder if that is a pattern, re enjoying Hobbit as it's been years since reading it?

[3rdragon]

It sounds like your response to The Hobbit 2 was similar to mine, but coming from a different lens: I DID imprint on The Hobbit, and while I haven't read it recently, even just thinking about the story is strongly evocative for me. And I walked out of the theater saying, "That was a pretty good movie. Possibly better than the first one. But whatever material they were drawing on, that was not The Hobbit I remember. And somehow I really doubt it was in the appendices, either."

It's a response I often have to movies of books (though sometimes they're just terrible, end of story), but Jackson's The Lord of the Rings hit close enough for me (mostly; I too missed The Scouring of the Shire) that I'd been hopeful for this one. But less hopeful after seeing Hobbit 1.

[sartorias]

Yeah--I thought Hobbit 1 was disappointing in so many respects.

[whswhs]

I actually found one thing about Desolation a bigger disappointment: The first film had the one utterly marvelous scene of Bilbo's conversation with Sméagol, but the scene of Bilbo's conversation with Smaug in the second film struck me as falling a long way short of it, with its emphasis on physical comedy distracting from both the sheer terror and the character interaction.

[lenora_rose]

Sadly, I suspect there's a lot more of Bilbo's conversation with Smaug in the "extended edition" they'll release in several months. because that's how Jackson does things now.

(With Fellowship of the Ring, it seemed like the film as shown in the theatre stood alone, even if I felt there were improvements in the extended version. By Return of the King, however, it seemed like the theatrical release was "Here's a really extended trailer for the real movie, which you'll have to buy later".)