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THE_CASE_OF_HOLMES

                                        April 6, 2008

A subject I've been interested in
of late is the predecessors and
contemporaries of "Sherlock
Holmes".  Conan Doyle seems like a
bright but not terribly brilliant
man and sometimes I wonder how he             "Conan Doyle made mistakes which
he came up with this pair of                  completely invalidated some of
characters that have wedged                   his stories, but he was a
themselves permanently into human             pioneer, and Sherlock Holmes
consciousness.                                after all is mostly an attitude
                                              and a few dozen lines of
Calling Doyle's creation an "act of           unforgettable dialogue."
genius" would seem an exaggeration:
he had a number of predecessors                  Raymond Chandler
(Edgar Allen Poe, Wilkie Collins,                "The Simple Art of Murder"
Gaboriau).  And Doyle's genius is
not evident in his other creations                    One does not
(neither Professor Challenger or Sir                  measure a painting
Nigel have anything like the staying                  by the number of
power of Holmes).                                     brush strokes.

   One might hypothesize that
   Doyle just "got lucky"...
   if it weren't for the
   record of his published
   contemporaries.


                   Sherlock Holmes was an immediate
                   hit, and Doyle was both unable and
                   unwilling to keep up with the public
                   demand.  The magazines resorted to
                   publishing a vast array of imitators
                   and variants: I own a massive
                   anthology containing a selection of      "The Rivals of
                   what is presumably the best of            Sherlock
                   these, and they're all terrible,          Holmes", Vol 1
                   almost without exception.                 and 2.

                   Few of these stories get even
                   as far as Poe's "Rue Morgue":
                   bizarre circumstances
                   surrounding a logical puzzle.
                   None get any where near Doyle's      One can not just
                   invention of engaging character.     shrug off Holmes as
                                                        a case where the
                                                        first mover was
                                                        locked-in and took
                                                        the whole prize.








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