Homo Sum » Blog Archive » I like Sherlock Holmes.

I like Sherlock Holmes.

I don’t think it ever occurred to me that Arthur Conan Doyle’s lifespan had convergence with the period in which film, particularly film with audio, was a common technology.

I certainly don’t think of him being alive until 1930–in my mind he’s all about gaslight, and certainly set in the period well before WWI.

However, reality is, as is often the case, not the same thing as my mind.

In my mind he was also a bit less Scottish, but I prefer the reality here I think. Now reading those books where Doyle is a character is going to be a different experience.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “I like Sherlock Holmes.”

Fred Says:
August 8th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
1

I, too, was surprised by the existence of this footage. I’m amused that he considered Sherlock Holmes little more than a trifle that he’d maybe have preferred not to keep coming back to.
Mr. McLaren Says:
August 8th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
2

I had often heard about his downright antipathy for his creation, and I had also heard about his deep involvement with spiritualism, but it is still something to see it so clearly “in person” as it were.
Fred Says:
August 9th, 2007 at 9:15 am
3

Well, he did try to kill off the character at least once. So it was, at best, a complicated relationship. It’s just funny, because the character is so beloved and such a huge part of popular culture, but its creator by and large didn’t care for him.

He was, however, a firm believer in spiritualism and the supernatural — including the Cottingley fairy photographs, which have since been proven (and at the time were maybe obviously) a hoax.