Minneapolis and Sherlock Holmes @ 50: Friday Morning and Earl Afternoon

 One of the things I love about a big Sherlockian weekend is the random encounters that turn into long conversations. Case in point, around seven AM this Friday, I was feeling a bit hungry, and not wanting a full hotel breakfast, went across the street to a coffee shop for some tea and any pastry they happened to have. There I saw the editors of Canadian Holmes, Mark and JoAnn Alberstat, said hello and asked if I could sit with them, which resulted in some lovely talk about Conan Doyle and things Sherlockian. Since we were all in a mood for a walk, we navigated over to the Elmer L. Anderson Library, where the displays and the day’s talks were to take place. None of that would open until 9 AM, of course, so eventually we wandered back to the hotel and took a break before heading to that opening.

In the meantime, of course, many Sherlockian friends had organized a breakfast outing, and were going to be a bit in coming back, so when the displays and 221B recreation opened at nine, I got to get in and photograph everything before anyone was really looking at it. (See previous blog post.) After that, I started to head back to the hotel, but ran into Charles and Kris Prepolec and Mike McSwiggin and just had to see Charles looking over the array of old books that were in the 221B sitting room, so I went back in.

Eventually when I did head back to the hotel, I found my bull pup podcast crew, Madeline and Heather, and set about plotting our recording session in a nice outdoor spot on the way back to the library. We got to that spot, got out the laptop and prepared to record, but found I hadn’t brought the adapter I needed for the microphone, having left it back in the hotel room. It was a little warm out in the sun, so we postponed the recording and headed back to the library, where registration was about to start.

Joe Eckrich stopped me, as he was collecting autographs for the new Holmes in Heartland collection, and somehow that put me into the middle of the growing registration line. Is it cutting if a line seems to grow around you? I don’t know, but Sherlockians are kindly folk and didn’t kick me to the back. Many of us had picked up our name badges the night before, so registration was picking up programs, the big red hardback book that was a part of the conference goodies. yet another book on the display, still another book (a pastiche, I think -- haven’t looked yet) and more. The folks at the registration table nicely bagged all this up in a clear plastic bag with handles.

The University of Minnesota Special Collections had a table of some of their duplicates and donations for sale, and . . . well, I don’t want to get into how much I spent on an impulse buy, but I was helping Kristin Mertz avoid overspending of her own by taking that bullet so to speak. (That’s the story as I’m telling it now. Kristin might tell you something a little different.) In any case, have loaded up with books and needing lunch, the four block walk back to the hotel was necessary once again. I met my old friend Don Hobbs, who was walking with Tim Kline, and we agreed to have lunch together when we got back to the lobby. As I waited for Don, I was talking to Gayle Pugh, who was thinking the walk to the library might be a bit much, so I offered to grab my car and drive her to the library door -- which was actually possible to do. So my fourth trip from hotel to library and back was a little quicker.

Back at the hotel, we headed out for lunch to the pub next door only to find some Sherlockians coming out of said pub with news that the place was too crowded to get us lunch and out in time for the afternoon program. Across the street to the Corner Bar we went, where we were still concerned about eating and making it out on time. Enter Crystal Noll, one of our 221B Con queen bees, and someone I’ll nominate for captain of our starship if we suddenly find ourselves on a starship. She gave the server a series of simple instructions and our willingness to cooperate to speed things along. She not only got eight of us in and our of the Corner Bar as quickly as possible, she also pulled out a Tide stain removal wipe when I dropped ketchup on myself. 

And we made it back to the Elmer L. Andersen Library in time for Dick Sveum’s opening remarks and Rebecca Romney’s opening talk on collectors and collecting, past, present, and future. (During which I’ve been writing this blog.) Rebecca’s talk was a great opener, looking forward in ways Sherlockian talks often miss in looking to the past. Jim Hawkins is going to come up next to talk about John Bennett Shaw, but for now, I’ll  post this much.

Minneapolis and Sherlock Holmes @ 50: The Displays

Pics from Saturday morning!

Minneapolis and Sherlock Holmes @ 50: Thursday Night

In the past fifty years, the University of Minnesota based Sherlock Holmes collection has made a lot of friends. So when its golden anniversary needs to be celebrated, like any golden anniversary, you're going to see a lot of that family and friends showing up from all over the place. The initial limit was set at one hundred and sixty attendees, and that number of spots sold out months ago. So if a person was to sit in the lobby of the Courtyard Minneapolis Downtown all day today, they would be apt to see an array of notable Sherlockians from across the decades.

The Courtyard was a Holiday Inn the last time it was held here, I think. I missed at least one of the prior conferences held here, so I'm not sure, and I'm hoping the next few days fills in some of my memory gaps in what's gone on here in the last fifty years.

Tonight was a nice welcome reception at the hotel, where folks got to say hello, pick up a handy name badge to help with those names you might have forgotten, maybe have a slice of pizza and get something to drink. A charades game was organized and played, but with well over a hundred people re-connecting at the same time, we weren't entirely focused on it. Winners got a nice "SHERades" badge, and eventually we all had the chance to pick one up.

A lot of catching up went on, a lot of "Oh, I brought something for you!" things passed back and forth, some organizing of outings like some carloads headed for a local speakeasy for the more ambitious or a simple "We're headed over to the bar next door" for the less energetic (along with a few "I have to rest after a full day of travel"s). Since most of us just got here today from various distances and modes of travel, motivations varied. Me, I had fought afternoon traffic to get to an early screening of Deadpool & Wolverine at a local multiplex, so I wasn't as up for getting back in a car.

Tomorrow the serious program begins, but as one quickly learns going to Sherlockian events, the best part is just hanging out with other Sherlock Holmes fans, and we're definitely there already. I have a feeling that Facebook is going to be getting an influx of photos of actual Sherlockians, but for tonight, i'll just leave you with a photo of a badge and a button. The weekend doesn't start until Friday, does it?

Sherlock & Co. -- A Textbook in Friendship

 "You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces the same effect as if you worked a love story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid."

-- Sherlock Holmes on Watson's fanfic

Following a Sherlock & Co. meetup for those lucky enough to be close to London or have travel time and funds available, the podcast's writer, Joel Emery put out a very thoughtful Twitter thread. It became obvious that the question we all knew was out there got asked: Are Sherlock Holmes and John Watson going to be a full-on couple? It may have been seven years and our bodies might have possibly regenerated all of their cells, according to some, but you can't stop the Johnlock. Someone plainly asked, and seems to have asked in the manner of "Why aren't you doing this thing you plainly should be doing?"

"We want listeners to feel like they're best friends with Sherlock, Watson, & Mariana," Joel Emery wrote. "The way we do that is by having them build a loving, powerful friendship between all three of them. A physical relationship between any of them changes that dynamic. (imo)"

I kinda loved that. It's what the podcast was actually giving us, the feelings that I was getting from the show's primary trio. Their Mrs. Hudson brings so much to the Holmes/Watson dynamic that we were already comparing them to Kirk, Spock, and McCoy from Star Trek. And it's a big part of what makes this new adaptation great.

It's interestingly ironic that adding a woman to the traditional male partnership formula makes it more friendship-oriented, almost like she's a talisman against Johnlock or a chaperone. But Marianna has grown into such a fully formed part of the 221 Baker Street team in this adaptation and so much more than any previous "Mrs. Hudson" that trying to define her as anything so small is impossible. (And for those of you who still haven't gotten into the show -- since Marianna was representing a realty firm called "Hudson's" when Holmes and Watson first met her, Sherlock started their whole relationship by constantly calling her "Mrs. Hudson" instead of her full name, Marianna Ametxazurra.)

Marianna has become such a key part of the team that a recent episode actually included the fact she wouldn't be in the episode as a trigger warning. And suddenly it was interesting to see how Sherlock and John were without her. John, for example, suddenly feels comfortable making allusions to an old girlfriends' bra size in that sort of "guy talk" that is a foreign language to Sherlock Holmes. But it isn't what Marianna keeps from coming out in their Baker Street agency that makes her great, it's what she brings to the table.

With Marianna serving as the practical, common sense part of the team, we get to see much more personality from John Watson. At the same time, she mediates the rough edges of the John/Sherlock contrast we saw in BBC Sherlock, and allows Sherlock to be a bit more Sherlock without John getting quite so peeved at him. But there's more to it than that, and will be still more as the podcast goes on -- this is a story of evolving characters, not static cut-outs who reset each week.

Sherlock & Co. is wonderful about bringing other characters along for the ride without hurting the stories. Stamford showing up every now and again as he did in "Dancing Men." Wiggins proving useful when things get a little more criminal-oriented. Relationships continue on, as they do in life. And Mariana "Mrs. Hudson" Ametxazurra being a regular part of the boys' lives and friendship brings so much to these new adaptations of the original sixty stories in ways that shipping any two of them (or all three, as happens in fic) would undoubtedly spoil.

And it all keeps its listeners coming back for more each week, even though some of us have these stories printed on our souls at this point. The show seems to have found its groove and gone from really good to REALLY really good. as we approach the end of the Canonical sixty's first quarter.

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End Note: I based the title of this post on Christopher Morley's Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: A Textbook of Friendship, which really didn't give lessons in friendship either, just told you how good the stories were and then reprinted the stories.

Was He A Greek Interpreter or a Greek Interpreter?

 Sometimes I am vexing to more people than just the good Carter, my partner of so many years.

Take tonight at our local library Sherlockian discussion group, discussing "The Greek Interpreter," for example. A lot of questions where posed and discussed. Was Mycroft involved with MI-6? When did Holmes learn about the obliquity of the ecliptic when he had earlier professed ignorance of Copernican theory? What rights did Sophy Kratides have in the Victorian age? And why is it only non-British girls seem capable of violence in these stories?

All fine questions. And then there's the question I wonder about.

Does the title of the story "The Greek Interpreter" refer to Mr. Melas being from Greece or interpreting Greek?

Everyone seemed to agree that it could mean both, but I still had to ask: Which way did Conan Doyle intend it to mean when he wrote it?

"BOTH!" came the answer from the rest of our jury-sized group.

"But when I say something, I usually mean it one way, not two ways at once," I protested.

"That might just be you." This is probably not an exact quote. It's been an hour.

"I am Greek by birth and with a Grecian name, it is with that particular tongue that I am principally associated," Mr. Melas says in the story.

But in the title, is it saying that he's Greek or that he interprets Greek language? Conan Doyle had to mean one, didn't he? Or was he consciously and purposefully letting it stand for both?

What I did not say at the meeting, as we'd already discussed the xenophobic tendencies of the stories, with the Greek girl getting her stabby revenge in the postscript, was that I was kind of wondering because if Doyle felt the need to specify that the interpreter was Greek in the title, it has a whole different feeling than if he was just a guy who spoke Greek.

Since our friend Mary had mentioned the 1955 Ronald Howard adaptation, titled "The French Interpreter" (which curiously includes the Diogenes Club while leaving out Mycroft), I thought I would check it out to see how they treated Melas's French version. In the 1955 edition, filmed in France, they made Melas into a Claude Dubec. But he, like Melas, says he is French by birth and translates his native language in Britain, even though, like Melas, he knows other languages as well. So both Dubec and Melas are interpreters even when not conversing in their native tongue, but are both placed in situations when their home language is the interpreting need.

So now I have to also wonder: Was Claude Debuc a French interpreter or a French interpreter, just like I wondered if Melas was a Greek interpreter or a Greek Interpreter?

So I shall toss this question to the internet: What does the title "The Greek Interpreter" really mean? Greek or Greek? (I shall accept that the same answer applies to the 1955 "French" adaptation, as well.)

The Ghost in the Pastiche Machine

 You have to think there's an AI-generated Sherlock Holmes book on Amazon, even now.

I don't know how many of us shop for random Sherlock Holmes books by names we don't know, so perhaps nobody has stumbled on it yet, but I have to think that somewhere out there one of those non-writers with big ideas and big desires has used the digital beastie to put together something that looks vaguely like the writings of Watson and put it on the web to sell.

We know folks have dabbled with the demon for toasts and art "just to see what it will do." We're also being sold on how it can improve your writing, not write things for you. But there's the slippery slope. At what point does the composition become the work of the AI and not your own, if you're using it to rework your words into something more palatable?

And here's the other thing we have yet to learn: Will a writer who leans on AI early on get better at writing? Will the old "thousand hours" proposed by goofy Malcom Gladwell result in expertise? Or will that writer be just as bad -- or worse -- at writing without the AI's help? Will they ever develop their own style?

Or will they simply annoy us by flooding the market with AI work that's pretty much like the AI work of other folks who decide to press the big AI "Easy" button?

The Sherlockian communities can be smaller, where people know each other and their work, so we might be buffered against the beastie somewhat. But with generational change, and the prevalence of the thing coming along, Sherlockiana may not be proof against it. It's gonna be a sneaky bastard.

In decades past, hardcore Sherlockians really crapped on pastiches in their love of the original Canon. As markets opened up, and opportunities for us to have our own pastiches published, whether online or in a collection, all except the worst of us have developed at least a surface tolerance for the pastiche. What will AI bring to that mix? Hard to say.

But it's coming, if it's not here already. So we shall see.

I Like This Watson Better.

 Okay, it's heresy time. Or blasphemy. At least to a few of you (who are probably not the ones reading this), as there has long been a section of our traditional Sherlockian world that finds new ideas abhorent. So let's get it out of the way.

I like Sherlock & Co. John Watson better than Canon John Watson.

It's not just that Paul Waggott is a terrific voice actor who takes all the good things Martin Freeman brought to a modern Watson to the next level, hits the goofiness of a Nigel Bruce without the rampant idiocy, and still manages to be completely charming -- of course the scripts by Joel Emery are a large part of that. Teamwork makes the dream work, as they say.

No, it's the one thing that Canon Watson never gave us, that Sherlock & Co. is giving us in spades.

This week began their adaptation of "Shoscombe Old Place." (They're adapting all sixty stories, if you haven't been paying attention.) And how did they get to Shoscombe in this version of the tale?

They are taking a little vacation in Watson's home town. At the house he was born in. The town where he lost his virginity. The town where he had that one relationship that he'd rather not talk about. And we get the details, even if it takes Sherlock to drag them out of him at points.

This Watson is forthcoming, written by a writer who knows we want to know these things and seems to actually love his characters. We get to learn things we want to know.

True, this won't result in a hundred years of speculative writings trying to fill in the gaps, as kept Sherlockiana running all these decades, but, good lord, is it refreshing and enjoyable!

So, yeah, I'm really liking this Watson. Could be my favorite Watson ever. Is that heresy, blasphemy, or the statement of the sort of fool who loves the movie Holmes & Watson far more than is prudent in polite society? Could be. I'm not going to put on the airs of anyone who claims to be a Sherlock Holmes authority as we occasionally see on the web these days. But if you've not listened to Sherlock & Co., give it a shot. Figure out how to listen to podcasts if you haven't already. It'll be worth it.

And if it's not, well, shout "Heretic!" at me when next we meet. I'll enjoy the attention, I'm sure, and have one more thing to blog about.