What can I say about The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes that
hasn’t been said already? Not much, I’m
guessing. It’s one of the seminal
classics—and not just of mystery/crime fiction, but literature in general. The stories of Sherlock Holmes are the
bedrock on which the modern mystery is built, and it has been dissected and
analyzed over and over again by literary minds a lot more brilliant than mine. But this is me we’re talking about here. I can’t pass up an opportunity to pontificate
on literary matters. What I’ve got to
say is probably as original as a Def Leppard cover band, but I’ve got to at
least give it a shot, right?
Right. And since everyone and their mother has
already heard about Sherlock Holmes, if not The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, I’m going to skip the plot exposition, the
character introductions, and author profiling.
You already know all about Holmes and Watson and Doyle, so I’m not to
waste my breath… or my keystrokes. And
even if you did happen to crawl out from under a rock yesterday, Wikipedia is your
friend. So with that being said, let’s
talk about this here book.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is the third book in the original Sherlock Holmes series. Prior to that came A Study in Scarlet and The
Sign of the Four, both of which were full-fledged novels. Adventures
differs from its predecessors in that it’s a collection of twelve short stories
that were originally published between July 1891 and June 1892 (that’s one
story a month, if you’re keeping count at home) in The Strand magazine. They
were later anthologized into the volume we have today. Included are the following Holmes short
stories:
I enjoyed reading it—I mean,
I did give it four stars and all—but I had to take it slow. Some aspects of Doyle’s fiction grated on my
nerves like a fork in a garbage disposal.
For one, Holmes’ analytical methods are inductive rather than deductive (I think I mentioned that before in
relation to The
Mystery of the Yellow Room, which could be viewed as a French imitation
of Doyle’s novels, so the similarity makes sense). In a nutshell, that means he builds his
conclusions using observations that only suggest
a certain outcome rather than ensuring it.
For instance, because a man’s fingers are smudged with ink and his cuffs
are worn, Holmes says that he must be a clerk typist. But those conditions could exist if the man
was a starving novelist who liked to read shoddily printed newspapers, or if
he, I dunno, recently voted in an Iraqi election. You get what I mean. The individual details don’t guarantee the
accuracy of his conclusion—which isn’t bad in and of itself, but Holmes is
never wrong, and that’s just annoying as hell.
![]() |
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle |
Other than those two gripes,
I really don’t have anything else to complain about. Sherlock Holmes is Sherlock Holmes. These are timeless stories that continue to
entertain more than a hundred years after they were written. Of course, some people aren’t going to like
them (I could name an ex-girlfriend, for one), but no work of art is ever
universally liked.
Oh, but I do have a general
observation about the text. Two
observations, really—a couple gems of feminist and colonial literary criticism
that I would be remiss not to mention (‘cos then you wouldn’t get to see how
amazingly smart I am). First, several of
the stories involve women being deprived of their monetary rights by their
relatives—father, brother, uncle, what have you. This alone could be seen as an early
appearance of feminist activism in literature.
Doyle seems to be genuinely concerned about the state of women’s
property rights in Victorian England; however, at the same time he inserts
comments about women’s irrationality and “women’s intuition”—as if women are
incapable of rational thought and any correct conclusions they might have must
be based upon an ethereal sixth sense rather than any sort of deductive
logic. Therefore in some ways Doyle
appears to simultaneously be feministically progressive on some issues and chauvinistic
on others—quite an interesting dichotomy, if you think about it.
Secondly (and this is the
Colonial bit), half of the stories here, as well as the earlier novels A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of the Four, deal with
foreigners as the cause of trouble.
Americans, Indians, Germans—their nationalities run the gamut. But this high instance of foreigners as
perpetrators indicates an overall distrust of those who are not properly
“English bred,” which has survived in some respects to this very day. Doyle expresses the very English, very colonial viewpoint that the colonial
machine is necessary in order to “protect the savages from themselves.” After all, if it wasn’t for English law and
order they’d just be killing and raping indiscriminately, right? That’s the thinking, at least. Of course, this viewpoint has been severely
diluted (if not gone the way of the dinosaurs entirely) in our day and age, but
it’s an interesting observation about the literature of the era. Interesting to me, anyway.
With that said, I’ll spare
you any further literary analysis (for now) and cut to the chase. I give The
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes four out of five stars. I’d recommend you read it for yourself, but I
have a feeling most of you already have. If you haven't, you can get every one of Doyle's classics absolutely free on Project Gutenberg--and free is good.
My favorite Sherlock Holmes story is "Hound of the Baskervilles". Have you read it yet? I love your review. I do enjoy the Sherlock Holmes books, but I also find Holmes immensely annoying. In the new BBC series, Holmes supposedly has Aspergers, which I think explains a lot.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Teressa! Yeah, I read The Hound of the Baskervilles a while back and really enjoyed it. It's a great story.
DeleteI'd heard about the BBC series, but I didn't know they'd cast Holmes as having Asperger's. What a great twist on an old classic! Thanks for stopping by!
Oh and do you want in on the tour? Stephen can probably fit you in on the end of it? If not then the next one totally.
ReplyDeleteHells yeah I want in on the tour! I'll hit up you and Steve on the FB group tonight after the little guy is in bed. Thanks!
DeleteHi Jonathan. I really enjoy your reviews. I love the series. I haven't read all of it, yet. BTW. After reading this, I've got a mental pic of a Def Leppard cover band trying to vote in an Iraqi election ...whilst perusing “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”. :) Bah-dah-bing...bah-dah-boom. Too good!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, Scarlett. I'm just glad someone enjoys my corny jokes. ;)
DeleteOne of my favorite characters, all time! I know he isn't too convincing as a real human being, but I don't mind that, I tend to think of him as a superhero.
ReplyDeleteLoved your analysis of Doyle's writings :) following you now!
please do visit me at my book blog, and if you like it, please do follow!
Thanks, Amrit. Yeah, Holmes isn't terribly believable, but in this case, he's probably more endearing because he's so much larger than life.
DeleteThanks for the follow, and consider yourself followed back!
Free is very good! I might have to try this. I've never seen the movie or read anything Sherlock Holmes so I never had interest in it, but after reading this I'm kind of intrigued. Holmes sounds like House (from the t.v. show House lol). They both solve mysteries the same way it seems.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by today! To answer the question you left on my blog:
Book Expo of America (BEA) is an event that's going on this week in NYC for authors, bloggers, librarians, etc. to meet, network, give out ARCs, etc. I feel like it's a lot of YA blogs that go so maybe that's why you didn't hear of it sooner. A lot of us couldn't go so they do ArmchairBEA (all online). They have a list of topics to post about and then you can link up on their site. Then we all visit each other's blogs and learn more about each other and network. Yesterday was introductions and today's Giveaway/Best of 2012 day! It's a great way to meet more bloggers since there are so many out there now.
-Melissa
You can always download one of the short story collections and try a story or two to see if you like it. That way there's not a huge time investment.
DeleteAnd BEA sounds absolutely fantabulous! Now I wish I had enough time off and money to go up there and roll around in all those glorious books.
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