Get out the cherry wood: it is time to be disputatious

 

"You have erred, perhaps,' he observed, taking up a glowing cinder with the tongs, and lighting with it the long cherry wood pipe which was wont to replace his clay when he was in a disputatious rather than a meditative mood - "you have erred, perhaps, in attempting to put colour and life into each of your statements, instead of confining yourself to the task of placing upon record that severe reasoning from cause to effect which is really the only notable feature about the thing."

I always feel a lot of empathy for Watson when Sherlock Holmes decides to be "disputatious" mostly by being critical of Watson's writings. I can imagine Holmes's tone and diction. As one who struggles to write stories with "colour and life," I can also imagine Watson's chagrin. He had not erred, of course, and, as we know, Holmes came to appreciate Watson's words, going so far as to admit Watson had "some power of selection" and that we must look upon him  "as a man of letters" who, as a chronicler, was "always of use."

Holmes's words have been on my mind of late as I do some of the first editing work for the new anthology. It is not always easy to know where to draw the lines. How does one know how much is too much "colour and life" and how much is too little "severe reasoning?" A good Sherlockian tale must have a balance.  Defining the balance is subjective as hell. 

It was quite easy this week for me to feel disputatious when I read a Sherlock Holmes story within the covers of a major magazine that included something I would heartily discourage in any story I edited: Sherlock Holmes was in an Inverness coat and deerstalker while on a case in the heart of London. Now, I hear the people who will say "And what is wrong with that?" and I'm sure they are correct; it is a vision a modern reader likely accepts without question. 

But this disputatious editor can't see including those words in a traditional Sherlock Holmes adventure. In fact this narrow-minded editor doesn't like to include words that Doyle never used in the Canon. I read a pastiche recently wherein Watson said something about "Holmesian reasoning." There is nothing inherently wrong with those words but I would have recommended removing them from the text. I can't imagine Watson saying "Holmesian" anymore than I can imagine him referring (as I read recently in a supposedly traditional story collection) to Mycroft Holmes as "Sherlock's brother." Canon Watson does not call Holmes by his first name. A search at the Arthur Conan Doyle encyclopaedia tells me that "Sherlock's" does not appear anywhere in Doyle's Sherlock Holmes fiction. It tells me Inverness, Holmesian and deerstalker are not found either. (And don't get me started on Irene Adler being around all the time.)

I realize, however, that a good writer can use those words and still write an excellent story. My task becomes how to be like Watson. I need "some power of selection" as I attempt shape a book readers will enjoy. Sometimes it as Watson answered another one of Holmes's criticisms: "But the romance was there" and "I could not tamper with the facts."

I must not, disputatiously or otherwise, tamper too much.