One thing I really enjoy about the Sherlockian world of 2023 is less insistence that one must read all of the rare old collectable works before doing one's own analysis of the Holmes Canon. Suggesting that anyone go on a never-ending quest to study the history of the field before being able to contribute is more than gate-keeping -- it's throwing a fresh soul into a maze of ever-increasing complexity and going "When you get out, only then will your ideas be worthy."
The downside, however, is that when anyone gets out of that maze, they will be so imprinted and so worn into the shape demanded by the maze, that any fresh ideas they might have had are gone. "Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people," some wag once said, and there's a grain of truth to that.
Now, I'm not saying I'm happy past Sherlockians passed. And I'm not saying there's nothing to be learned from older works. But the thing about Sherlockiana is, so much of it lies in our own discovery of what's around each corner. A lot of the older works are just compiling the facts that exist in the original Canon itself, wherein the writer was just documenting their own journey through the lore, cataloging and compiling. A good share of our reference works are just that -- someone who took notes as they read and then was able to publish them.
This really became clear as some of us started to focus in on the order of Holmes's cases as they occurred in Holmes and Watson's lives. There's a natural desire by folks to line the sixty accounts up to form a natural biography of Sherlock Holmes, and almost every person who attempts to line them up does it before reading the ever-increasing number of books on the subject. We've been discussing that topic a bit in the past few years, and no single must-read work had risen to the surface. The original stories are all we appear to expect anyone to have read, and fresh reactions to that data is what seems most desired.
Old Sherlockian works are fun to find and dig into once one has fully embraced the hobby of Holmes, but outside of actual historical studies, biographies, and the like that collect extra-Canonical facts related to our favorite subject, Sherlockiana is always about someone's enjoyment of pondering the classic works and their stars captured for us to enhance our own enjoyment. And the thing we tend. to enjoy most is seeing someone new to the hobby exuding their own love of Holmes -- especially when they've got a fresh take.
Even Sherlock Holmes had his "There's nothing new under the sun" moments. His study of crime both helped him solve new cases AND bored him to tears once he had been around the track enough that criminal originality started seeming rarer and rarer to him. But he had to actually solve crimes for people, we don't have to solve Sherlockiana. It's the journey that we're all here for.
And a great journey it is, whether one was doing in early in the twentieth century or now.
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