Chabon on Holmes
January 22nd, 2005Michael Chabon’s review of The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes has been published in The New York Review of Books. The first half (?) has been published online.
Chabon has his pulse on what I think is a large part of the appeal of the Sherlock Holmes stories:
While he was busy scorning the Holmes stories and planning Holmes’s death, and nursing the suppurating pride of a would-be Walter Scott condemned, first by necessity and then by success, to write popular fiction, Conan Doyle was also, from the beginning, tangibly having fun.
And I think Chabon has his pulse on the reason Arthur Conan Doyle himself is so fascinating:
Like most writers, Conan Doyle wrote for money. His misfortune as an artist was to make piles of it, and become famous around the world, by writing stories he did not consider worthy of his talent, while receiving less credit or pay for works that meant more to him; and to be so freehanded in his philanthropy, wild schemes, and spending habits, and so well-endowed with children, that the piles of money were never quite tall enough.