Dr. John H. Watson, M.D. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lightconductor) wrote2009-11-20 08:46 am
lightconductor) wrote2009-11-20 08:46 am
On Green Carnations and other things...
I am not getting very many hours this week. The weather is too much crap. Oh well. I'll survive, but I'm bored. So instead, I'll pointlessly share things I'm reading.
I ordered a book a while ago. Yesterday it came! It was almost a week late. Also, it's a discard from the Pierce County Library, which is, apparently, in Washington. I had to look that up.
One of the traditions of Sherlockiana is that of the pastiche. This is probably because Watson likes to drop in little details of "this was shortly after Holmes was extremely brilliant and solved this case with the clipper Alicia/the giant rat of Sumatra/the notorious canary-trainer, but I'm not going to tell you, nya nya," and people like to fill in the blanks. It's not fanfiction, apparently. It's pastiching. Because you're trying to sound like Doyle and trying to be authentic and it's pefectly okay to publish the stuff if you want.
90% of it I'm not very interested in, and would definitely never spend money on, but I'm kind of into Donald Thomas. Donald Thomas himself is a historian, who writes both non-fiction and historical fiction, and has several books of Sherlock Holmes pastiche, often taking place in the the early 20th century, in which he involves Holmes with actual crimes of the era, so it ends up being a sort of cross between Sherlock Holmes and true crime, and the whole thing is sort of neat.
His Watson, also, is very nice and capable. I don't stand for stupid Watsons.
He goes with this set up: In 1904, Holmes retires to the Sussex countryside to keep bees (this is canon). However, after a few years, he gets bored and restless and moves back to Baker Street to go back into active practice (not even remotely canon, but widely loved and believed). Watson, for his part, remarries somewhere around here (supported by canon), but since his wife is very often away (where?!) he usually ends up living at Baker Street 90% of the time anyway. And bemoans, at one point, the difficulty of parking his car on Baker Street.
Because he totally has a car (canon). ;)
And then Watson is, apparently, writing these collections up after Holmes finally dies, but they are secret and will not be released to the public for a century or so because they're just so scandalous.
So yeah, I offer this as context so that when I say that these stories are slightly slashy (as is the canon), this is what I mean. Yes Watson is married, but he lives with Holmes anyway. What the hell.
Anyway.
Oscar Wilde seems to keep popping up in things I'm reading lately. Here we go:
"All the same, those cases in which he was unable to secure a verdict for his client were few indeed. More often than not, as in the tragedy of Dr Crippen, they were investigations where the client turned away from the advice that had been offered. There was never a more memorable and obdurate example of this than the late Mr Oscar Wilde, who visited our Baker Street rooms on a windy afternoon in February 1895."
Hello, Mr Wilde. I'm glad to see you're not having buttsex and making dirty puns today.
"It must be said that the self-admiring paradoxes and the egregious vanity of the playwright were anathema to Sherlock Holmes. They were two men, each accustomed to being the centre of attention, and therefore ill-suited to one another's company. I do not think, however, that the pathological inclinations of Mr Wilde much perturbed my friend."
Oh, uh. That's good to know.
"Holmes had been well-acquainted with the work of Professor Krafft-Ebing since its first appearance in German nine years earlier."
Richard von Krafft-Ebing was a psychiatrist and sexologist (a word you do not hear anymore) specialising in sexual deviancy, and his book Psychopathia Sexualis was an early and influential study of sexuality, including homosexuality. He eventually came to the (unusual) opinion that homosexuality was not mental illness or perversion, but an anomaly you were born with.
"Indeed, he was to contribute three cases to later studies by Dr Havelock Ellis,"
Havelock Ellis was another sexologist, this one British, with unusally liberal thoughts on homosexuality, and his book Sexual Inversion was the first English text on the subject. Also, he had a sort of unconventional marriage with his wife, who was openly lesbian, and they lived apart. Is it bad that I already knew who both Krafft-Ebing and Ellis were before this? Anyway.
"...as well as making avilable to him findings based on his own privately published monograph, 'The Mechanism of Emotional Deviation.'"
Wait.
Wait.
What?
Wait, Mr. Thomas. What... are you trying to tell me that of all the monographs Holmes published, in amongst the essays on identifying cigarette ash and fingerprints and god-only-knows what else, he wrote a monograph on, uh, 'emotional deviation'?
On the mechanism of it?
Mr Sherlock Holmes, he of the cold, analytical mind, and only speaking of the softer emotions with a gibe and a sneer, and the "I should never marry myself, Watson"?
Writing... a monograph...
... on gay love.
Right, fuck this, I give up. There is nothing further I can say about this.
I ordered a book a while ago. Yesterday it came! It was almost a week late. Also, it's a discard from the Pierce County Library, which is, apparently, in Washington. I had to look that up.
One of the traditions of Sherlockiana is that of the pastiche. This is probably because Watson likes to drop in little details of "this was shortly after Holmes was extremely brilliant and solved this case with the clipper Alicia/the giant rat of Sumatra/the notorious canary-trainer, but I'm not going to tell you, nya nya," and people like to fill in the blanks. It's not fanfiction, apparently. It's pastiching. Because you're trying to sound like Doyle and trying to be authentic and it's pefectly okay to publish the stuff if you want.
90% of it I'm not very interested in, and would definitely never spend money on, but I'm kind of into Donald Thomas. Donald Thomas himself is a historian, who writes both non-fiction and historical fiction, and has several books of Sherlock Holmes pastiche, often taking place in the the early 20th century, in which he involves Holmes with actual crimes of the era, so it ends up being a sort of cross between Sherlock Holmes and true crime, and the whole thing is sort of neat.
His Watson, also, is very nice and capable. I don't stand for stupid Watsons.
He goes with this set up: In 1904, Holmes retires to the Sussex countryside to keep bees (this is canon). However, after a few years, he gets bored and restless and moves back to Baker Street to go back into active practice (not even remotely canon, but widely loved and believed). Watson, for his part, remarries somewhere around here (supported by canon), but since his wife is very often away (where?!) he usually ends up living at Baker Street 90% of the time anyway. And bemoans, at one point, the difficulty of parking his car on Baker Street.
Because he totally has a car (canon). ;)
And then Watson is, apparently, writing these collections up after Holmes finally dies, but they are secret and will not be released to the public for a century or so because they're just so scandalous.
So yeah, I offer this as context so that when I say that these stories are slightly slashy (as is the canon), this is what I mean. Yes Watson is married, but he lives with Holmes anyway. What the hell.
Anyway.
Oscar Wilde seems to keep popping up in things I'm reading lately. Here we go:
"All the same, those cases in which he was unable to secure a verdict for his client were few indeed. More often than not, as in the tragedy of Dr Crippen, they were investigations where the client turned away from the advice that had been offered. There was never a more memorable and obdurate example of this than the late Mr Oscar Wilde, who visited our Baker Street rooms on a windy afternoon in February 1895."
Hello, Mr Wilde. I'm glad to see you're not having buttsex and making dirty puns today.
"It must be said that the self-admiring paradoxes and the egregious vanity of the playwright were anathema to Sherlock Holmes. They were two men, each accustomed to being the centre of attention, and therefore ill-suited to one another's company. I do not think, however, that the pathological inclinations of Mr Wilde much perturbed my friend."
Oh, uh. That's good to know.
"Holmes had been well-acquainted with the work of Professor Krafft-Ebing since its first appearance in German nine years earlier."
Richard von Krafft-Ebing was a psychiatrist and sexologist (a word you do not hear anymore) specialising in sexual deviancy, and his book Psychopathia Sexualis was an early and influential study of sexuality, including homosexuality. He eventually came to the (unusual) opinion that homosexuality was not mental illness or perversion, but an anomaly you were born with.
"Indeed, he was to contribute three cases to later studies by Dr Havelock Ellis,"
Havelock Ellis was another sexologist, this one British, with unusally liberal thoughts on homosexuality, and his book Sexual Inversion was the first English text on the subject. Also, he had a sort of unconventional marriage with his wife, who was openly lesbian, and they lived apart. Is it bad that I already knew who both Krafft-Ebing and Ellis were before this? Anyway.
"...as well as making avilable to him findings based on his own privately published monograph, 'The Mechanism of Emotional Deviation.'"
Wait.
Wait.
What?
Wait, Mr. Thomas. What... are you trying to tell me that of all the monographs Holmes published, in amongst the essays on identifying cigarette ash and fingerprints and god-only-knows what else, he wrote a monograph on, uh, 'emotional deviation'?
On the mechanism of it?
Mr Sherlock Holmes, he of the cold, analytical mind, and only speaking of the softer emotions with a gibe and a sneer, and the "I should never marry myself, Watson"?
Writing... a monograph...
... on gay love.
Right, fuck this, I give up. There is nothing further I can say about this.
no subject
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no subject