迈克·德达on 柯南·道尔
Michael Dirda, books columnist for the Washington Post, is the author of a new appreciation of the creator of Sherlock Holmes, On Conan Doyle.
Michael Dirda, books columnist for the Washington Post, is a reader’s reader, a man whose blood flows black with the ink absorbed from the libraries he’s devoured. “Blood” turns out to be an operative word, so to speak, for Dirda, having written about the Western literary canon and the pleasures of tackling challenging books, turns to a lighter subject with his newest book, On Conan Doyle, a highly personal account of the maker of the detective Sherlock Holmes and his creation. Britannica contributing editor Gregory McNamee caught up with Dirda while he was in transit from Washington to New York to promote his new book, and the two had this exchange.
Britannica: In the first pages of On Conan Doyle, you write of encountering the Sherlock Holmes canon at an early age, spending your allowance on a copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles while still in elementary school. In your experience, is it unusual for readers to enter the Holmesian world so young? Is there anything in that world that a youngster won’t—or perhaps shouldn’t—understand? Put another way, would the age of the reader matter to Arthur Conan Doyle himself?
Michael Dirda: You probably know the old quip that the “Golden Age of Science Fiction” is 12 or 13. I would have been just a bit younger than that in 5th grade, but I do think many kids start to discover the great adventure stories of the past just about the time their age enters double digits. Certainly, the TAB Book Club wouldn’t have been offering The Hound of the Baskervilles to elementary schools if it was over the head of the potential readers. No doubt there are elements in the book that will be unfamiliar to kids—what’s a tantalus? and if you know what that is, what’s a gasogene?—but then they may well be unfamiliar to most adults, too. Holmes might speak of the importance of trifles, but in this instance these trifles hardly matter compared to the sheer narrative drive of the stories.
For many years, the most commonly available edition of the complete Sherlock Holmes stories was an old Doubleday omnibus with an introduction by Christopher Morley (the principal founder of the Baker Street Irregulars). In it he talks of devouring Conan Doyle books during his boyhood in Baltimore. Certainly, my own sons—now in their early and mid twenties—read the stories at an early age, then progressed on to the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and the fantasy and science fiction of Jack Vance and Robert Heinlein.
Conan Doyle himself regarded the Holmes stories as entertainments. He must have known that kids, as well as adults, were reading his book. After all, he used this poem as the epigraph to The Lost World, his adventure novel about dinosaurs in the South American jungle:
I have wrought my simple plan
If I give one hour of joy
To the boy who’s half a man
Or the man who’s half a boy.
Britannica: Edgar Allan Poe usually gets credit for inventing the detective story, but it is almost impossible to imagine the genre without Sherlock Holmes. What, in your estimation, is Conan Doyle’s single greatest contribution to the detective story?
Michael Dirda: While Holmes disdains Poe’s detective, Auguste Dupin, as overrated, Conan Doyle was actually a great admirer of Poe. He felt that Poe invented or reinvigorated virtually all the subgenres of fantastic adventure, including mystery, fantasy, horror, and science fiction.
In creating Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle created a figure who embodies all sorts of psychological wish-fulfillments. For instance, he lives just the life that any 12-year-old boy—and many a 12-year-old girl— would want. Holmes lives by his wit in what is essentially a clubhouse, full of clutter and souvenirs, with his best friend close at hand and a mother-figure to provide hot meals. Holmes shoots his gun in the house, regularly likes to dress up in disguise, battles the forces of evil and defeats the bad guys, uses martial arts as well as mental arts, and refuses to obey any authority but his own intelligence and moral sense. What’s not to like?
Holmes set the mold for The Great Detective and every other fictional gumshoe or private investigator must work in his shadow or somehow come to terms with his enormous influence. Like Hamlet, Holmes is also susceptible to constant reinterpretation and reinvention—witness the text-messaging 21st-century Sherlock of Benedict Cumberbatch and the steam-punk action hero of Robert Downey Jr.
Britannica: Let’s suppose that at least one of our readers is in the happy situation of coming to Conan Doyle for the first time. What would you have him or her read first? Second? Would you mind listing, say, the first five things that you’d recommend for a Conan Doyle syllabus?
Michael Dirda: I’d start new readers with “The Red-Headed League” and “The Speckled Band” (both in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes). Both are wonderfully mysterious, with thrilling climaxes. Then I’d suggest going on to The Hound of the Baskervilles. If those three don’t enthrall a new reader, nothing in the Holmes saga will. After that, I’d go back to the beginning, to A Study in Scarlet, and simply continue on through all 56 stories and four novels.
As for five books by Conan Doyle: Obviously you’d want one Sherlockian title, and I’d pick either The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes or The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Both show the detective at the peak of his powers.
Next, I’d send readers to The Lost World, in which Professor George Edward Challenger leads that an expedition into South America to a mysterious plateau. This is undoubtedly Conan Doyle’s most famous non-Sherlockian book and the first of a series featuring Challenger.
Third, I’d suggest a good selection of Conan Doyle’s supernatural tales. No fan of such stories should miss “The Captain of the Pole-Star,” “The Ring of Thoth,” “Lot No. 249,” and at least a half dozen others.
Fourth, for a sampling of Conan Doyle as a historical novelist, I’d recommend the two volumes of stories about Brigadier Gerard. These are the memoirs of an old Napoleonic hussar who recalls his swashbuckling, amorous, and often very funny adventures of his youth. The retired Edinburgh University Professor Owen Dudley Edwards thought they were the best historical short stories of all time.
Last, I’d suggest either Conan Doyle’s Through the Magic Door, a set of essays in which he talks about his favorite books and writers, or his letters. It can almost substitute for a good biography—plus Conan Doyle’s letters are exceptionally entertaining and often very funny.
Britannica: You’re well known as a reader and commentator on literature. Let’s slip sideways to the world of film, though. Has filmdom ever done Conan Doyle justice? Do you have a few
favorite films, moments, actors?
Michael Dirda: There have been more films featuring Sherlock Holmes than any other fictional character. The stage actor William Gillette portrayed him for 40 years, and was the model for the image of Holmes in America through the illustrations done by Frederic Dorr Steele.
My favorite Holmes films are the first two featuring Basil Rathbone, The Hound of the Baskervilles and the almost expressionist Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The later movies in this venerable series are enjoyable, but of lesser quality. To my mind, Jeremy Brett, in the British TV productions of 20 years ago, was the best all-around Holmes, though he did sometimes overplay the neurotic side of the detective’s personality. I think the recent BBC Sherlock offers a very winning portrait of the young detective and the young Watson and of the friendship that develops between them.
Britannica: I imagine you have a long list of authors to whom you’d like to turn your attention, and no end of bookish topics to write about. That said, can you give us a hint about what you’re working on? What might we expect to read from you next?
Michael Dirda: At the moment, I haven’t begun a new book. I’m fairly eclectic in my interests: contemporary fiction, cultural history, literary biography, and neglected or half-forgotten books from the past and other countries. As I write this now, during the last two weeks I’ve written pieces about Haruki Murakimi’s new novel IQ84, the supernatural fiction of Arthur Machen, and the 50th anniversary edition of Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. I’m working on a review of the occasional journalism of William Gibson, the noted science fiction novelist, and on a brief essay on The Space Merchants, the 1950s sf classic by Cyril Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl.
Because of my interest in popular fiction, I have occasionally thought of writing a long book about “The Great Age of Storytelling,” that is, roughly the years 1875 to 1940. I would also love for some publisher to ask me for another collection of my essays. Occasionally, too, I mull over the possibility of writing a novel or continuing my youthful memoir An Open Book with an account of my life at the Washington Post.
Michael Dirda, books columnist for the Washington Post, is a reader’s reader, a man whose blood flows black with the ink absorbed from the libraries he’s devoured. “Blood” turns out to be an operative word, so to speak, for Dirda, having written about the Western literary canon and the pleasures of tackling challenging books, turns to a lighter subject with his newest book, On Conan Doyle, a highly personal account of the maker of the detective Sherlock Holmes and his creation. Britannica contributing editor Gregory McNamee caught up with Dirda while he was in transit from Washington to New York to promote his new book, and the two had this exchange.
Britannica: In the first pages of On Conan Doyle, you write of encountering the Sherlock Holmes canon at an early age, spending your allowance on a copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles while still in elementary school. In your experience, is it unusual for readers to enter the Holmesian world so young? Is there anything in that world that a youngster won’t—or perhaps shouldn’t—understand? Put another way, would the age of the reader matter to Arthur Conan Doyle himself?
Michael Dirda: You probably know the old quip that the “Golden Age of Science Fiction” is 12 or 13. I would have been just a bit younger than that in 5th grade, but I do think many kids start to discover the great adventure stories of the past just about the time their age enters double digits. Certainly, the TAB Book Club wouldn’t have been offering The Hound of the Baskervilles to elementary schools if it was over the head of the potential readers. No doubt there are elements in the book that will be unfamiliar to kids—what’s a tantalus? and if you know what that is, what’s a gasogene?—but then they may well be unfamiliar to most adults, too. Holmes might speak of the importance of trifles, but in this instance these trifles hardly matter compared to the sheer narrative drive of the stories.
For many years, the most commonly available edition of the complete Sherlock Holmes stories was an old Doubleday omnibus with an introduction by Christopher Morley (the principal founder of the Baker Street Irregulars). In it he talks of devouring Conan Doyle books during his boyhood in Baltimore. Certainly, my own sons—now in their early and mid twenties—read the stories at an early age, then progressed on to the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and the fantasy and science fiction of Jack Vance and Robert Heinlein.
Conan Doyle himself regarded the Holmes stories as entertainments. He must have known that kids, as well as adults, were reading his book. After all, he used this poem as the epigraph to The Lost World, his adventure novel about dinosaurs in the South American jungle:
I have wrought my simple plan
If I give one hour of joy
To the boy who’s half a man
Or the man who’s half a boy.
Britannica: Edgar Allan Poe usually gets credit for inventing the detective story, but it is almost impossible to imagine the genre without Sherlock Holmes. What, in your estimation, is Conan Doyle’s single greatest contribution to the detective story?
Michael Dirda: While Holmes disdains Poe’s detective, Auguste Dupin, as overrated, Conan Doyle was actually a great admirer of Poe. He felt that Poe invented or reinvigorated virtually all the subgenres of fantastic adventure, including mystery, fantasy, horror, and science fiction.
In creating Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle created a figure who embodies all sorts of psychological wish-fulfillments. For instance, he lives just the life that any 12-year-old boy—and many a 12-year-old girl— would want. Holmes lives by his wit in what is essentially a clubhouse, full of clutter and souvenirs, with his best friend close at hand and a mother-figure to provide hot meals. Holmes shoots his gun in the house, regularly likes to dress up in disguise, battles the forces of evil and defeats the bad guys, uses martial arts as well as mental arts, and refuses to obey any authority but his own intelligence and moral sense. What’s not to like?
Holmes set the mold for The Great Detective and every other fictional gumshoe or private investigator must work in his shadow or somehow come to terms with his enormous influence. Like Hamlet, Holmes is also susceptible to constant reinterpretation and reinvention—witness the text-messaging 21st-century Sherlock of Benedict Cumberbatch and the steam-punk action hero of Robert Downey Jr.
Britannica: Let’s suppose that at least one of our readers is in the happy situation of coming to Conan Doyle for the first time. What would you have him or her read first? Second? Would you mind listing, say, the first five things that you’d recommend for a Conan Doyle syllabus?
Michael Dirda: I’d start new readers with “The Red-Headed League” and “The Speckled Band” (both in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes). Both are wonderfully mysterious, with thrilling climaxes. Then I’d suggest going on to The Hound of the Baskervilles. If those three don’t enthrall a new reader, nothing in the Holmes saga will. After that, I’d go back to the beginning, to A Study in Scarlet, and simply continue on through all 56 stories and four novels.
As for five books by Conan Doyle: Obviously you’d want one Sherlockian title, and I’d pick either The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes or The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Both show the detective at the peak of his powers.
Next, I’d send readers to The Lost World, in which Professor George Edward Challenger leads that an expedition into South America to a mysterious plateau. This is undoubtedly Conan Doyle’s most famous non-Sherlockian book and the first of a series featuring Challenger.
Third, I’d suggest a good selection of Conan Doyle’s supernatural tales. No fan of such stories should miss “The Captain of the Pole-Star,” “The Ring of Thoth,” “Lot No. 249,” and at least a half dozen others.
Fourth, for a sampling of Conan Doyle as a historical novelist, I’d recommend the two volumes of stories about Brigadier Gerard. These are the memoirs of an old Napoleonic hussar who recalls his swashbuckling, amorous, and often very funny adventures of his youth. The retired Edinburgh University Professor Owen Dudley Edwards thought they were the best historical short stories of all time.
Last, I’d suggest either Conan Doyle’s Through the Magic Door, a set of essays in which he talks about his favorite books and writers, or his letters. It can almost substitute for a good biography—plus Conan Doyle’s letters are exceptionally entertaining and often very funny.
Britannica: You’re well known as a reader and commentator on literature. Let’s slip sideways to the world of film, though. Has filmdom ever done Conan Doyle justice? Do you have a few
favorite films, moments, actors?
Michael Dirda: There have been more films featuring Sherlock Holmes than any other fictional character. The stage actor William Gillette portrayed him for 40 years, and was the model for the image of Holmes in America through the illustrations done by Frederic Dorr Steele.
My favorite Holmes films are the first two featuring Basil Rathbone, The Hound of the Baskervilles and the almost expressionist Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The later movies in this venerable series are enjoyable, but of lesser quality. To my mind, Jeremy Brett, in the British TV productions of 20 years ago, was the best all-around Holmes, though he did sometimes overplay the neurotic side of the detective’s personality. I think the recent BBC Sherlock offers a very winning portrait of the young detective and the young Watson and of the friendship that develops between them.
Britannica: I imagine you have a long list of authors to whom you’d like to turn your attention, and no end of bookish topics to write about. That said, can you give us a hint about what you’re working on? What might we expect to read from you next?
Michael Dirda: At the moment, I haven’t begun a new book. I’m fairly eclectic in my interests: contemporary fiction, cultural history, literary biography, and neglected or half-forgotten books from the past and other countries. As I write this now, during the last two weeks I’ve written pieces about Haruki Murakimi’s new novel IQ84, the supernatural fiction of Arthur Machen, and the 50th anniversary edition of Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. I’m working on a review of the occasional journalism of William Gibson, the noted science fiction novelist, and on a brief essay on The Space Merchants, the 1950s sf classic by Cyril Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl.
Because of my interest in popular fiction, I have occasionally thought of writing a long book about “The Great Age of Storytelling,” that is, roughly the years 1875 to 1940. I would also love for some publisher to ask me for another collection of my essays. Occasionally, too, I mull over the possibility of writing a novel or continuing my youthful memoir An Open Book with an account of my life at the Washington Post.
