{"id":176,"date":"2002-10-23T20:54:00","date_gmt":"2002-10-24T00:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=176"},"modified":"2002-10-23T20:54:00","modified_gmt":"2002-10-24T00:54:00","slug":"doyle_arthur_co_1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2002\/10\/doyle_arthur_co_1\/","title":{"rendered":"Conan Doyle, Arthur: (01) A Study in Scarlet"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet<\/cite><\/strong> is the first Sherlock Holmes story and kind of an odd one. The title refers to the famous image of “Rache” written on the wall in blood above a murdered man, which I imagine any number of writers have borrowed over the years (I seem to recall Diana Gabaldon doing so in Drums of Autumn<\/cite>, for instance, though I don’t have my copy to check).<\/p>\n

Though I believed this is considered a novel, it’s really more a novella, running to a hundred pages in my paperback copy. What’s more, nearly half of it is a strange interlude, which provides the backstory for one of the characters. It strikes me as a poor narrative choice; not only does it kill the momentum of the story, but it’s presented in a very awkward omniscient voice. (It also contains a highly unflattering portrait of the early days of the Mormon Church, if that matters. I have no idea how accurate it is [a quick Google mostly turns up sources with axes to grind], but I wouldn’t be surprised if Doyle had taken some liberties; “The Five Orange Pips,” for instance, struck me as rather too sensational to be based in fact.)<\/p>\n

I did get more of a sense of Watson’s character from this book, as I’d hoped. He seems like a reasonably decent sort, for his time and place. What’s more, the introduction to this edition (“On the Significance of Boswells,” by Loren D. Estleman; it’s the Bantam Classic two-volume complete collection, those very brown paperbacks) indicates that Holmes continues to evolve as a character over the series (and not just in how many times he’s been married). I’m looking forward to seeing that, because Holmes really is a jerk at times—more noticeably so in this story. Then again, I suppose the drugs may have something to do with that (having just read the first page or two of The Sign of Four<\/cite>) . . .<\/p>\n

I note in passing that it’s interesting that, in this story, Holmes speaks of actually earning money from his detecting. In the short stories in Adventures<\/cite>, I recall nary a mention of Holmes pocketing any fees, and indeed, a few people say they’ve come to him because they’ve heard he’ll help poor people for free. I wonder if the few wealthy clients paid him off-camera, or maybe he’d amassed a private fortune in the meantime?<\/p>\n

Going back to the story: I think A Study in Scarlet<\/cite> is a perfectly good fifty page story with an unfortunate growth in its middle. I imagine one could skip the historical digression entirely and not miss much, and I rather recommend doing so.<\/p>\n

[ In other news, I’ve installed a new version of BlogKomm<\/a>. You can now subscribe to comments threads that you’ve posted to—just check the appropriate box, and you’ll get any new comments in the thread via e-mail. (Of course, this means you have to 1) post and 2) leave your e-mail address when you do so, so not everyone will be able to use it.) Do let me know what you think of it, and please<\/em> send me any bugs or issues. The developer is very responsive and I’ll pass your comments along.<\/p>\n

(The new version also has an alternative notify feature, where you can e-mail a particular person to tell them that you’ve responded to their comment. I’ve chosen to enable the subscription instead, since comments threads on this book log tend to be fairly focused, but again, I’m open to feedback.) ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet is the first Sherlock Holmes story and kind of an odd one. The title refers to the famous image of “Rache” written on the wall in blood above a murdered man, which I imagine any number of writers have borrowed over the years (I seem to recall Diana … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Conan Doyle, Arthur: (01) A Study in Scarlet”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,6,16],"tags":[175],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-mystery","category-sherlock-holmes-mystery","tag-conan-doyle-arthur"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}