QUACK! QUACK! THE PRESSURE OF PUBLIC OPINION

"They always fill me with a certain horror."

'Pshaw, my dear fellow, what do the public, the great unobservant public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a compositor by his left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction!'

--Sherlock Holmes, "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"

Why should I not have a future before me in letters. Surely no one ever went through a more successful novitiate. It is seldom indeed that my yarns have come to grief. James Payn had 20 refused in a year—I hardly ever have one now. I am conscious too of a well marked style of my own which should single me out among the crowd for good or evil, could I only get my head above water & cry quack! quack! to the public.

 -- Arthur Conan Doyle, in a letter to his mother, circa 1883

I've found it difficult to focus on Arthur Conan Doyle's writing, and my own, over the past ten days or so. The world, with disturbing events close by and far flung, has left me feeling unsettled and somewhat anxious; doom scrolling has taken up too much of my attention and energy. While recently spending yet another hour reading Twitter, I came across this posting from Nancy Springer, author of the delightful Enola Holmes book series:

Fans who are enthusiastic about one aspect or another of the #EnolaHolmes MOVIE should not be allowed to drive me crazy. I did not do the casting. I had nothing to do with the costuming. I did not arrange for the props. While I am utterly charmed by the film, I did not make it!

Ms. Springer's dilemma is a clear example of how difficult it can be today for a writer to navigate the connected world of social media and avid consumers. I had to wonder how Doyle, with his many letter-writing and pamphlet-producing campaigns, would fare with the immediacy and stridency of the internet. 

He had back-and-forth tussles in the press, perhaps most notably with George Bernard Shaw, and many public fusses later in life with others concerning his Spiritualists beliefs. The man could be prickly but he learned to deal with the opinions of others. 

I am in awe of the grace he often publicly displayed. I still applaud any time I read his "To An Undiscerning Critic." He once said "I have learned never to ridicule any man's opinion, however strange it may seem." I doubt he managed this 100% but it is an admirable goal.

Doyle certainly understood the power of the press and its ability to sway people's opinions and its ability to entice them to read one's books. However he was also sometimes disdainful of authors who promoted their works. I had to smile when I read about one of those instances; his sentiments would find little traction now. Today's authors seemingly have no choice in the matter. They must cultivate followers and openly ask for starred reviews. Promotion of their work is absolutely necessary.

I'm currently working on two different books I've placed and I find internet promotion expectations to be, in Holmes's words, "...the nasty angular uncompromising bits..."; I have to learn to conduct myself (hopefully with grace) in that part of the work although I'm not exactly sure how to go about it.

My fiction to date has not cultivated any online negativity directed at me but then it is the exact opposite of voluminous, and is perhaps innocuous. I've been fortunate to receive nice comments on some of it but I think I might be too invisible to invite comment much beyond the Sherlockian strata nearest to me. 

That strata seems to be made up of generally very nice people who say very nice things.  I don't know if I will ever inspire anyone enough to complain at me. I realize that is not necessarily a good thing; it may mean invisibility more than it means strength of the work. I am a minnow in the vast ocean of Sherlockian fiction writers.

(I did receive some very public complaints from a blogger back in my days of writing the John H Watson Society Annual Treasure Hunt. The experience was instructive but it seems quite different from publishing fiction.)

When Nancy Holder and I published Sherlock Holmes of Baking Street, it was a labor of love concocted with forty of our friends and colleagues. That type of fun collaborative effort did not leave me feeling as vulnerable as a singular work does. In addition to Sherlockian pastiches, I'm now dipping a toe into the world of Gothic fiction. I might find those waters a little rougher to navigate than Sherlockian ones. It is too soon to tell.

Doyle managed to get his head above water and cry Quack! Quack! at the public. Maybe I'll sort it out as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 FINDING THE GENIUS LOCI

"I shall sit in that room and see if its atmosphere brings me inspiration. I'm a believer in the genius loci."

I admit I've mixed an illustration from "The Man with the Twisted Lip" and a quote from The Valley of Fear but the match was irresistible. Sherlock Holmes liked to sit and think and he did believe in the genius loci.  

The Oxford Reference defines the genius loci in this way:

Latin term meaning ‘the genius of the place’, referring to the presiding deity or spirit. Every place has its own unique qualities, not only in terms of its physical makeup, but of how it is perceived, so it ought to be (but far too often is not) the responsibilities of the architect or landscape-designer to be sensitive to those unique qualities, to enhance them rather than to destroy them. Alexander Pope, in Epistle IV (1731) of his Moral Essays, addressed to Lord Burlington, states in his Argument that, ‘instanced in architecture and gardening,… all must be adapted to the genius of the place, and… beauties not forced into it, but resulting from it’.

Sherlock Holmes understood how to be sensitive to the unique qualities of his surroundings and how those qualities might be perceived. It is one of the first things we and John Watson learn about him: "You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive."

I have mulled over this idea of Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle and genius loci for months now since reading this part of Pope's argument:

Consult the genius of the place in all;
That tells the waters to rise, or fall;
Or helps th' ambitious hill the heav'ns to scale,
Or scoops in circling theatres the vale;
Calls in the country, catches opening glades,
Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades,
Now breaks, or now directs, th' intending lines;
Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.

In fact, it is the inspiration for a book I'm working on. The time I've spent this year immersed in Doyle's work, his letters, and biography has led me to think of him as the genius loci in the literature of the late Victorian era, the Edwardian era, and a bit beyond.

As I've worked this week on a fiction piece inspired by Doyle's "The Story of B 24," the idea of genius loci has been very much on my mind. Each piece of Doyle's writing has "...its own unique qualities, not only in terms of its physical makeup, but of how it is perceived..." and it is my duty to be like Pope's architect and honor those qualities. 

The inspiration piece must not be a sad imitation; it must not be an oddly shaped narrative without an echo of the unique qualities of Doyle's text; it must be beautiful in its own right but yet have a beauty that results from the piece that inspired it. It is a lot to think about for a simple 6,000 word short story. Many a writer can easily knock out 6,000 words.

It doesn't come easily for me. I have to follow Holmes's example. I have to sit and think. I have to sort out how to "Consult the genius of the place in all."

I'm fortunate to have a comfortable chair and a good teacher.

 WHEN ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

"Between ourselves, the recent cases in which I have been of assistance to the Royal Family of Scandinavia, and to the french republic, have left me in such a position that I could continue to live in the quiet fashion which is most congenial to me, and to concentrate my attention upon my chemical researches."

In an adventure dated in the spring of 1891 Sherlock Holmes tells Watson about his match of wits with Professor Moriarty and the resulting dangers. As we all know, "The Adventure of the Final Problem" ends with Holmes's supposed death. When I first read the story many years ago I found it interesting that Holmes mentions  he is now financially set to the point he could retire if he wished.  In just a few years he had advanced from needing someone to split the rent to being able to make what ever choices he wanted as to where, how, and if he would work.  

In the early years I spent with Holmes, knowing very little of Arthur Conan Doyle, I presumed this point in time in Holmes's life was equal to the point in time with Doyle's life. In my mind, when Holmes had enough funds accumulated to decide if he would work that meant Conan Doyle had enough funds accumulated to decide if he would work. It was a while before I learned to be a Sherlockian and understood the dates in the adventures did not match the dates in real life.

I naively thought everything Holmes ultimately decided everything Doyle. [Full disclosure: I was such a newbie I thought the sixty original Sherlock Holmes stories were written in chronological order, and, even beyond that, I thought that order aligned closely with the Granada episodes. Insert face palm to the head here.]

Later on I believed the one liners I read (and heard):

"Doyle hated Holmes."

"Doyle made enough money from Holmes that he could quit medicine."

 "Doyle made so much money from Holmes he could quit writing Holmes and write other things, things no one read."

"Dole only made money from the Holmes short stories in The Strand Magazine"

"Doyle only made money with Holmes so he had to revive Holmes."

We all know the spiel. None of these things were totally true of course. Life is rarely so absolute.

Doyle did make the decision to leave medicine in 1891 like I thought but that decision had nothing to do with FINA. I finally got it into my memory that although FINA is dated in April-May 1891 (perhaps Doyle's nod to his decision in August 1891), it does not appear in the world until freshly penned and published in 1893.

I looked hard at that old idea that Holmes made it possible for Doyle to leave medicine in 1891 and I had to laugh at my former self.  When Doyle left medicine, exactly three Holmes adventures had seen print: A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, and "A Scandal in Bohemia." STUD and SIGN had not done particularly well in sales, and SCAN had only been published the month before. One month before.

I've learned that Doyle had severe financial woes as a student and a young doctor and he worked hard to earn a living; he worked hard at doctoring and at writing. By the time SCAN published, he had more than 45 publishing credits to his name, of which at least six were novels. (The output is so great my counting gets sketchy.) By the time SCAN appeared, his hard work was paying off. He could realistically leave medicine and realistically trust he would make enough by writing to support his growing family.

Sorting this out in my mind will be good for me as I approach his other works. I need to stop looking at his work as Holmes-or-Not-Holmes. There is a wealth of work to be mined. Will I like it all? Of course not but I'm going to have fun finding what I do like. And that is enough for me right now.