Maybe I’m about to be whooshed for missing the joke, but I noticed that in his response to “Did Sherlock Holmes really exist?” Dex wrote “Many authors bring Holmes into contact with real-life contemporary people, such as Sigmund Freud or Oscar Wilde or Jack the Ripper or Harry Flashman”. While the creative talents of Thomas Hughes and George MacDonald Fraser deserve our respect, it’s not right to further confuse a reader who was already unsure about Sherlock Holmes.
Dex wrote, “Sherlock Holmes is fictional. Let’s get that straight once and for all.” immediately after part one is titled, which was a long treatise on why Holmes is fictional yet why so many people eagerly pretend he was real. Near the end of part one, he announces he himself is pretending Holmes was real before dealing with part two. Anybody who gets confused by that needs remediation in reading comprehension.
Little Nemo refers to Dex mentioning the fictional character of Harry Flashman in a lineup of “real-life contemporary people”. While I agree with Little Nemo, I just thought this was too funny to complain about.
You’d think I’d get tired of being whooshed. Apparently not.
Yeah, I felt a little twinge about that when I wrote it, but I also figured, the heck with it. I find the whole Sherlock Holmes game to be enormously fun, and I couldn’t resist adding ol’ Flashy to the list of “real-life” contemporaries… especially against such obvious fictional characters as Tarzan or the Loch Ness Monster.
For those of you on AOL who are interested in the world of Sherlock Holmes analysis, there’s a Sherlock Holmes chat most Sunday nights (8 PM to 9 PM Eastern time, barring holidays) in the Mystery Chat Room… you can find it easily enough using keywords.
Nessie is fictional!? :eek: :eek:
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And let’s not get started on the issue of whether or not Dracula’s a fictional character.
Thank you so much for the answer to this question. I recently started to read the book “The Beekeeper’s Apprentice” by Laurie King and found myself asking this very question. There is a preface by the editor and a note from the author included at the beginning of the book that contradict each other and I was very confused. As I had never read any other Sherlock Holmes books, I was not sure which to believe.
Hello and welcome to the SDMB. The original piece by Dex was what got me hooked on the Board. I hope you stick around – there are a lot of interesting people and conversations to be found.
I would sincerely suggest you read the original stories before going too far into Laurie King’s Russell novels. I think you will miss a lot of detail if you don’t have a good background in the first stories. (Need to walk before you run and all that. 
) Start with ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and go from there as far as you wish. The short stories can each be finished off fairly quickly. While the Holmes stories can’t be considered great literature, Doyle was a good story teller and they are decent tales.
Ummm… you mean, of course, that Watson was a good story-teller, of course. And I’d say they’re more than decent tales – they’re top-notch storytelling. I mean, c’mon, they’re around 80 - 100 years old, and they’re still great fun to read. There’s not a lot of other stuff from that era that’s still read, once you exclude “great literature” like Dickens and Oscar Wilde and all.
For those who care, there is a wonderful New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, by Leslie Klinger. The first two volumes (covering the short stories) are just out.
If you’re new to Holmes, read some of the short stories first. I agree with Mycroft, the first batch of short stories (“Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”) are a good place to start, and not a huge time commitment. If the stories intrigue you and you want to get into the Game, the Baring-Gould Annotated Sherlock Holmes is what you want next, and it’s still available on Amazon et al. Klinger’s new work is (so far as I’ve got into it, which isn’t very far) basically an update of Baring-Gould, a tad more scholarly and a trifle less fun.
Getting that twinge again?
But wait dear reader
Sherlock Holmes is to receive a posthumous Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Society of Chemistry.
It comes 100 years after Holmes returned from the dead to solve the case of the Hound of the Baskervilles.
Usually such honours are reserved for Nobel Laureates and other distinguished academics and industrialists.
Sorry don’t ask but that is old news. (The date on the news item is October 16, 2002.) In awarding the medal they had a RSC member named Dr. John Watson (!) place the medal around the neck of the Sherlock Holmes statue near the corner of Baker Street and Marylebone Road.
Dex, I’m sorry. I’m so ashamed. Of course I meant Watson. In addition I debased myself further. In curtailing my normal high enthusiasm for the subject (a hobby turned to obsession - my book shelves and bank account will attest to that) in an effort to not be too overbearing, I went too far in downplaying the quality of the original Canon. Yeah I love it all, but it can’t just be my opinion. There must be something good about the stories as they continue to sell large numbers of books a hundred years later and create the following they do. There is not too much literature that manages to accomplish that!
I’m so glad you know about (and have?!) Les Klinger’s New Annotated Sherlock Holmes. I got my copy last Thursday when Les was in our area on a book signing tour. An inscribed copy no less! I was in such a state of ecstasy that if I could have made the time, I would have started a MPSIMS thread on it. The thrill of books, appreciation of authors, editors and independent booksellers, etc. Instead I raked leaves all weekend, and that’s not worth a another thread.
Fans of Alan Partridge will know that he is a great fan of Sherlock Holmes, the real person. For those who have not have heard of him, Alan is a spoof (and hilariously terrible) radio/TV presenter played by Steve Coogan. In this BBC radio transcript, he discusses the (non) reality of Holmes with “Britain’s greatest living novelist Lawrence Camley”.
I’ve met Les Klinger several times (friend of a friend stuff), I did not know that his book was out. Thanks for the heads up!
I wonder what the chances are of a mini-dope fest at McSorley’s this January 7th?
Thank you most kindly for your superior and condescending pedantry, but then you always did consider yourself the smarter brother didn’t you?
Down here in the colonies we have adopted a calendar in all respects the same as that of the mother country and therefore I was able to deduce, despite my inability to recall every moment, that 2 years have passed since I first saw the quoted piece.
Old news or otherwise I merely alerted other readers to its existence because it seems to have escaped Dex’s wide ranging attentions, and I felt that it offered an interesting perspective on “your brother’s” ability to pierce the fourth wall.
I remain your humble servant yadayadayada.
MODERATOR HAT ON:
don’t ask, I going to assume that your marks are not, in fact, personal insults (which would be a violation of the rules of this Forum) but are instead merely efforts at witty repartee. Note: you did say “is to receive” rather than “has received.”
PS - How can that award be posthumous? Holmes clearly hasn’t died yet – there’s never been an obituary in the TIMES, and there certainly would have been for so distinguished a personage.
Thank you your Administratorshipness. Your interpretation of my remarks is naturally accurate to a “T”. Perhaps I took umbrage at the tone of dismissal Mycropt adopted in discussing my contribution and merely wished to point out its “fighting ignorance” credentials.
Holmes is certainly not dead, rumour has it he resides at Gracelands.
And “is to receive” is a quote from the 2002 article but point taken.
Parenthetical aside: I try to be very careful about “reading tone” in emails or posts, ever since an unfortunate incident some years back, where an intended joke was mis-interpretred, causing much anger and considerable hard feelings. I recollect the interchange between Gandalf and Bilbo in The Hobbit – the term “Good Morning!” can mean quite a range, from simple pleasantry to brusque dismissal, depending on tone of voice.