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March 28, 2024, 07:51:48 PM

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Sherlock Holmes.

Started by Sebastian Cobb, December 21, 2019, 06:19:04 PM

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Sebastian Cobb

A while back I was watching an odd but good indie/mublecore film (possible noir) called Cold Weather where the main character happened to like Sherlock Holmes. In this film, there is a conversation where he explains Holmes wasn't 'like the stereotypes, stuffily saying elementary all the tine' and was 'bad ass'. This intrigued me, having never read Holmes, but knowing all the pop stuff.

So I'm mostly through the same book that was in the film - The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. And they were right, he is bloody brilliant. And a coke head.

Sin Agog

Instant detour.  Recently finished reading (most of) Conan Doyle's other series with a fucking impossibly churlish, brazen but always right main character.  Although I picture this guy as looking more like Bluto from Popeye.  There's some inneresting shit in there.  The Lost World everyone knows about, but there are a few more entries, such as the time Prof Challenger and his buds held a tea party while the world died of cosmic gas around them (course the Aryan types held out longest), or the time Challenger theorised that the world was like a giant, thick-skinned echidna so drilled down deep enough to make it scream.  You get the vibe that Doyle quickly became an addled, politically-backwards fool, but I do like his ability to deliver some pretty wild concepts with public schoolboy elan.

Thomas

I love the original stories (and many of the adaptations). The friendship between Holmes and Watson is so warm and funny. Holmes is sharp and calculating, a Bohemian cokehead as you say and a condescending clever clogs, but a very pleasant character to read about. Witty and poetic. I like the format, too, of first-person stories with an in-world reality of their own. There's a gentle sadness in the lack of a definitive ending for Holmes and Watson. We know the former eventually retires to the South Downs and keeps bees, but after that he simply fades, lost to the fiction mists of time.

I read 'The Lost Special' yesterday, a Conan Doyle mystery with a possible cameo by Holmes (an unnamed criminal genius also makes an appearance).

idunnosomename

i mean I'd recommend to get stuck into the big four stories as well

A Study in Scarlet
The Sign of the Four

And post Final Problem (spoiler Holmes dies, except he doesn't)

The Hound of the Baskervilles (ok pre Reichenbach Falls in the story)
The Valley of Fear

The short stories are ace though and it's funny to think what we have comparable to them now, in literature anyway. Not sure they take as long as a TV episode to read.

timebug

Always loved the original Holmes stuff. I think the short stories work better than the novels, but all should be read if you claim to like the stuff.The Basil Rathbone films which were part of my yoof,are hilarious.In practically every one he is pitted against the Nazis; considering the stories are set in Victorian times,this is remarkable! Also in the Rathbone films, Watson is a fucking halfwit.
As any fule kno, this could not/would not happen. Watson is a skilled Doctor/Surgeon and ex-military. And would Holmes really hang about with a fuckwit?
Certainly Holmes is smarter than your average investigator, a towering intellect if you will, so certainly smarter than Watson;but that does NOT make Watson an imbecile.
The first S.H book I read was 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' at school (I think) where I grabbed it from the shelf of the library at random. As I recall, if you did not choose a book within a few minutes, you were forced to read some Dickens.(And I would rather rub sand in my eyes)
So if you have not read any Holmes, get to it.And if you have, give it a re-read!

JesusAndYourBush

I read a book of Sherlock Holmes short stories earlier this year... I'd never read any Sherlock Holmes before and I was utterly disappointed.  The twists and the deduction were all pretty basic, and the whole thing was disappointing.  I think that's maybe because any of the tv versions I've seen have much more convoluted and complex levels of deduction that the originals just don't match up to them.  Or maybe the short stories are weaker than the longer ones?

Waking Life

The 'twists' were never really the main draw for me in the books, just interesting tales. The Rathbone films (only one is actually in Victorian times and don't recall that many Nazis) are my favourite adaptation; Holmes is more of a clever clogs than bell-end and they are just fun, even though they deviate from the books quickly. Struggled through the Jeremy Brett ones, which in turn spawned the Cumberbatch interpretation.

Tempted by Elementary and have a BFI boxset (Peter Cushing!) to get through when I break my legs and get some enforced times off work.

Panbaams

It's years since I read them but I've still got the cheapo editions by Wordsworth Classics I bought as a teenager – all scans of the original Strand magazine stories, so at the end of a story you might get a half-page advert for Dr Everell Fotheringay's Magnificent Empire Slimming Moustaches For Gentlemen, or similar.

I enjoyed Elementary. It was a light watch, but I think that suits the spirit of the original short stories much better than the blockbuster approach that Sherlock took (in between all the self-indulgent stuff). It's an adaptation where Watson gets presented fairly, as a partner to Holmes – but then, they were hardly going to cast a woman in the role and make her a dope.