Arthur conan doyle

Thursday

Julia Yost

Not all portrayals of Sherlock Holmes hit the mark

A great literary character, like a gemstone, has many facets. Sherlock Holmes looks different depending on where the light hits him: reasoning machine or bohemian creative, misogynist or white knight, disciplined professional or (in Dr. Watson’s words) “self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.” Film adaptations, of which there are no end, pick and choose their angles. Purists rush to tell us which onscreen Holmeses are valid and which travesty Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation. Occasionally the purists themselves betray Holmes, who had more going on than they recall. As for me, I’m purer than the purists. But when it comes to onscreen Sherlocks, I’m one big soft spot. Even by my liberal standards, Amazon’s recent streaming series Young Sherlock fails.

sherlock holmes

Wednesday

Gareth Rubin

How I wrote the newest Sherlock Holmes novel

I don’t think anyone has ever come up with a word to describe an authorized author. It’s not quite a tautology. The writer, who has been invited to write a novel continuing the body of work of another, might, possibly, be an example of literary parthenogenesis. Or, more pejoratively, karaoke. Who knows? But either way, it’s a growth industry. You will have seen the new authorized James Bond novels, the recently crafted Miss Marple and George Smiley outings that have appeared on the bookstore shelves over the past few years to some fanfare – despite the fact that those characters’ creators are very much pushing up the daisies.

1880 Sherlock Holmes Drawing (Getty)

Monday

Christopher Sandford

How Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle invented the modern celebrity feud

1922 saw its fair share of shocks in the literary world, among them the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. But perhaps the strangest book-related event of the year didn’t involve any writing at all, at least not as performed by human agency. Instead, the author was a ghost. The setting was a darkened room at the Ambassador Hotel in New Jersey’s Atlantic City, where on the warm Sunday afternoon of June 18, 1922, Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame sat down between his wife Jean and the celebrated escapologist Harry Houdini to hold a séance. The first two of these individuals were advocates of spiritualism, the last of them a skeptic.