A Sherlockian at True Crime Pottery Night

 It seems like whenever I get pulled into a trivia night, it seems to be as the wild card in the deck.

Usually, I avoid themed trivia nights, being a more "random info" sort of guy, but some of my friends from work needed a sub, and it wasn't just a trivia night -- it was a True Crime Pottery Night. Having not done a pottery night, which has been a common social outing for years now, and intrigued by the blood-spattered examples of what could be done, it seemed like an interesting diversion for an evening.

But here is the first dilemma with any sort of pottery-painting night -- first you have to pick an item to turn into your masterpiece. Themes abound on the shelves of a place like Art At The Bodega, across the river from Peoria. Highland cows, dragons, toadstools, and the like, scattered among the mugs, plates, planters, and more functional pieces. But something in a Sherlockian theme? 

Not all dogs can be a demon hound of the Baskervilles. (Missed opportunity, now that I think about it -- Watson's bull pup! They had young bulldogs!) Gasogenes, tantaluses, pipes, deerstalkers, cyanea capillata . . . nope . . . and what I thought was a snake turned out to be curled up primitive swan. A treasure chest looked more piratical than Agra. So I finally went with an object that wasn't just a plate, but still offered flat surfaces to create upon . . . a dresser that you could plant small plants in. A dresser from Bart's.

With that first problem solve and my compatriots joining me at the table to start painting, the true crime trivia began. 

"I'm afraid all of my true crime knowledge is well over a century old," I apologized, before things took off

We named our team "The Saints of Bloody Gulch Road," combining our employer with an actual road from a hotel we once stayed at for work. And round one started with a seeming mandatory Dahmer question, which most folks knew. Followed by our first mis-step, which was all my fault: "Name the platform where true crime rose to prominence in popular culture."

Well, it's podcasting, of course, a true crime podcaster (or someone who plays a true crime podcaster, if that character believes Sherlock Holmes Is Real), will immediately tell you. But, sadly, apparently the desired answer was "Netflix."

The very next question was right in my wheelhouse, however. So much in my wheelhouse that I rolled my eyes so hard they about left my head. "What city did Jack the Ripper commit his crimes in?"

"Do we get extra points if we can name all of the victims?" I asked. Sadly, no. 

Living in downstate Illinois, our state killer clown was easy to identify, but everyone in the room was from downstate Illinois. The name of the car OJ Simpson tried to escape in? If you lived through that year, Ford Broncos are etched in your mind. But then we got to the nitty gritty: The Zodiac Killer's unsolved clue. The BTK Killer's name. The state where some more recent murders that I never even heard of occurred. Ed Gein trivia. 

But thank goodness for the play "Arsenic and Old Lace," when it came to "What is the most common poison used in murders?" Well, arsenic had a play written about it and strychnine and cyanide don't, soooo arsenic? Correct!

No Palmer and Pritchard questions. No Jonathan Wild questions. Nothing about Oscar Slater.

It appears that a knowledgable Sherlockians can be a bit weak on a subject that a current day Sherlock Holmes might be well versed in -- no great surprise there, of course. My chemistry knowledge is probably worse. But such an evening, even dipping lightly into that topic as we did painting pottery, gives one pause to wonder how many true crime devotees possess a Holmes-level knowledge of the annals of crime?

We might want to add one or two of them to our social circles.

Pastiche, More Than Fanfic, Can Be A Battlefield

 A friend brought up the topic of folks vocally hating pastiche the other night, talking about fanfic as well, and it was interesting to me how close and yet how far apart the terms "pastiche" and "fanfic" can be. And why one fuels the flames a bit more than the other.

Fanfic, of course, is simply that fiction written by fans, both extending and deep-diving into some existing intellectual property with their own creations.  Pastiche, however, while often written by fans for the same reasons, can more easily tread on holy ground. A true pastiche is actually trying to replicate an experience anew, to catch a creator's voice and give us that one thing we so desire: That new tale the original creator did not tell. Fanfic so often is used to write stories from other mediums, so it raises less hackles. Pastiche dares to work in the same medium as the original, where direct comparison is possible and charges of blasphemy or fraud can be levied by the self-appointed judges of said works.

Loving something so much you want to try to replicate it, make something like it all your own, is really the next level in being a fan. It's also the exact opposite of that other next level of being a fan -- the sort of love where you want to put your beloved text in a box, protect it, and keep it a sacred and special part of your life. And with two next levels of the same fandom, we suddenly have the sheepmen and the cattlemen of the Old West, ready to go to war.

Both sides have their point. Creativity and the freedom to explore the world that exists in a great work is a grand concept. Trying to recreate, to inspire that feeling we felt before, is a basic human urge. And we have seen those who seem to succeed. Yet all creativity has its failures, and Frankensteining parts of a great beauty into a monster can also bring the villagers with torches. While most try to be kind and not call out the uglier specimens wandering into our fandom village, there will be those, through choice or habit, just have to be a little too honest. 

I've been on both sides of this great divide in fandom, and after decades of being a Sherlock Holmes fan, I've learned there are no winners in fighting that fight. (And some other fights.) Sherlockiana is not that big a pond, and sometimes we have to accept that the opposite of our opinion exists in this big tent, to mix my metaphors. The divide is not a chasm, there is no real canyon that separate us from the other side. Just a spectrum of fans in between us and our opposite numbers, sharing our views to a degree and their views to a degree, friends who can bridge that gap and occasionally call us out when we might be verging upon unkind or treat our wounds when we're cut to the quick by a sharp comment.

And few things bring out the cutting comments more than a new attempt to make new Sherlock Holmes, be it TV, movies, or that story you wrote last week. The best wisdom that exists in this internet age has long been "never read the comments." Being careful where you swing your own sharp objects, however, is a wisdom that goes back to when humans first used tools, so maybe we need to give that one even more consideration.

Walp, this palaver went a lot of places I didn't expect, so I'll step away for now. Take care out there.

Sherlockian Periodicals: The Baker Street Chronicle

  

The Baker Street Chronicle 

Duration: July 1981 to July 1985, twenty-three issues, four years
Frequency: Bimonthly
Editor: Pattie Brunner
Club Affiliation: See below

Sometimes things happen in the Sherlockian world in reaction to other things in the Sherlockian world. Clubs splinter off from other clubs. Articles are written in reaction to other articles. And in some cases, journals come out of dissatifaction from other journals. Such was the case of The Baker Street Chronicle, originally called John Clayton's Underground Newspaper, its first issue announcing that it was being published in reaction to the silence of The Morning Post, the newsletter of St. Louis's Noble Bachelors. Of course, this sort of rambunctiousness caused all sorts of friction in St. Louis, but it also produced a really fun little journal that appeared more often than most. With art by Jeff Huddlestone (a great Sherlockian artist of the day) and articles by regulars like Kelvin Jones and Brad Keefauver, The Baker Street Chronicle was a fun journal that made attempts at graphic design few would attempt with a typewriter, border tape, and paste. If I'm going to get sentimental about any Sherlockian period, its going to be the early 1980s, so I'm not the most objective where this one is concerned -- a great, fun journal of its time!

Sherlockian Periodicals: The Air-Gun

  

The Air-Gun

Duration: January 1985 to May 1991, seventeen issues, six years
Frequency: Monthly
Editor:Wally Conger
Club Affiliation: The Blind German Mechanics of Monrovia, CA

Here's a slim little number that was especially fun. Irreverent, arcane, with a touch of anarchy, yet as perfectly written and edited as one would hope from someone who made his living in the writing trade. Wally wrote about all the current Sherlockian bits like many another newsletter of the day, but he did it in a way that's still fascinating to read, even now. The Air-Gun featured articles some of the usual prolific writers of the day, but it was mostly the editor's baby and he did make it interesting. The ongoing series, "Sherlock's Secret War," spotlighted the very strange secret's behind the Canon, involving Holmes and the Illuminati, Holmes and things Lovecraftian, Holmes and all sorts of Things with a capital T. Wally also had a habit of pulling interesting quotes from his correspondence -- stuff that would get you tut-tutted on any internet chat for bashing Brett or the BSI in these non-1980s times. (But in reading these old issues one gets reminded that our current Sherlockian gripes have been with us a lot longer than anyone thinks about.)

There's the Sherlockian mainstream, and then there are those bits of the hobby that are the wild frontiers of the borderlands and beyond, which is where  The Air-Gun set up shop during its run.

Sherlockian Periodicals: Afghanistanzas

Twenty-first issue

 Afghanistanzas

Duration: October 31, 1976 to Summer 1986, fifty-six issues, eleven years
Frequency: Monthly
Editor:George Scheetz (1976, un-named), Mike Clark (1976-1980), Doug Highsmith (1980-1982), Jack Nordheden (1983-1985) 
Club Affiliation: The Double-Barrelled Tiger Cubs of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois 

I'll admit it: I'm probably a little prejudiced when it comes to this particular newsletter. It was the first one to which I ever subscribed. Maybe that's why it's one of my favorites, or maybe it was the enthusiastic mix of articles, news, pastiches, humor, movie stuff . . . basically, anything and everything about Sherlock Holmes and his legacy. 

The Double-Barrelled Tiger Cubs were (and are? I'm never sure.) a college-based group at the University of Illinois. Their membership turned over constantly as students enrolled at and graduated from the university, and they were (are?) consistently one of the youngest Sherlockian groups, and that youthful energy was always present in Afghanistanzas. Whether it was Doug Highsmith's Hornblower Holmes parodies, or the pastiches written by Toby Sherman (yes, that's Toby the dog), Julie Maynard's cover art, the comprehensive Christmas gift guides, or John Wyman's movie stills with word balloons added, Afghanistanzas showed off that energy with every monthly issue.

The Passing of a Paper Generation

 I had seen the signs. I knew things were changing. But now that I've seen it confirmed, I feel like I've lost an old friend.

The mass market paperback is dead.

Cheap, lightweight, and so common we thought they'd be around forever, the just under 4.25" by 7" standard paperback on cheap paper is going the way of all things historical. Sure, trade paperbacks will still exist, twice the size and mostly on better paper, but damn . . . I cut my teeth on the mass market paperback. My Sherlockian teeth.

Every Sherlock Holmes pastiche stocked by my junior college bookstore -- Farmer, Wellman, Boyer, Mitchelson & Utechin, and, of course, Meyer -- were gobbled up like M&Ms in my early days as a Sherlockian. 

Paperbacks were where I met Solar Pons and Vincent Starrett, and I can remember the exact location where I found each, a Walden Books and a Walgreens, in two different local malls.

The reasons for the demise of the mass market paperback are many, all of them eating away at the sales numbers that made them mass market.  Reading books on screens for one, but also that larger cultural shift we've seen since the internet started giving us near-unlimited options for entertainment: We're not all reading the same things any more. More writers are being published than ever before. A simple trip to Barnes & Noble can be a mind-boggling experience at the array of choices. Where Nicholas Meyer's Sherlockian pastichery was plentiful in the days of paperback bestsellers, his latest was just one among many Sherlockian works in today's trip to Barnes and Noble.

Books still exist, yes, and so do readers. And when you reach a certain age, for better or worse, you get to watch as previous eras slip through your fingers and fade. Moments of grief are natural. But then we turn back to the current world as it exists right now and get on with enjoying the people and things that are still with us, and plan for the days ahead.

But for today . . . alas, poor paperbacks. I knew them, Horatio . . .

Sherlock's Cousin Carl

 When you're a lifelong fan of something, you tend to see the world through fan-colored glasses.

When Harry Potter blew up, there was something about the phenomenon that felt very familiar to me, much like when Sherlock Holmes blew up in the late 1800s and early 1900s. 

Sherlock Holmes was helping his readers transition to a new world of using logic and science to solve mysteries. Technology was built on math, physics, chemistry, all those reason-based fields that said, "Hey, if we think about things hard enough, we can solve mystifying problems." Sherlock Holmes foreshadowed a new age rolling in.

Harry Potter helped readers deal with a new age as well. His magic-based reality, to my mind, was a transitional metaphor for a level of technology that was beyond our understanding. Instead of a two-way mirror, we say a magic word like "Siri-call-mom!" into a screen and another person's face can even appear if we're using the proper phone app. We're pretty sure it's not magic, but can most of us build, or even fully explain, all the tech that goes into making that happen? Working in IT, I've seen more and more people become accustomed to having their wishes become true that they think this magic can make anything available to them. And a lot of times, it does.

So, flying to and from 221B Con, I had picked up a very popular book called Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman. Well-written, and with the feeling of a Harry Potter level fan favorite, the story of dungeon crawler Carl hit me with one of the feelings of transitional echoes that Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter gave me.

The planet Earth, as we know it, has basically been strip-mined for elements, and the surviving millions of residents are placed in a reality-TV D&D sort of game show of survival, where just getting by through the next day is the best achievement one can hope for. Getting fans, the attention of an TV show host or the patronage of the ultra-wealthy aliens that run the galaxy-wide streaming service is how one best places one's self for survival.

Now, one could see this as Jonathan Swift level parody, and it is, somewhat. But as I read the book, it lowered my stress levels about all those stupid, stupid things we see in the news. Not just due to the escapism, but because, like Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter, I could relate to Carl. And in relating to Carl, it seemed like, yes, there is a way to get through all this. One day at a time. One confrontation at a time. One moment at a time. 

Good fictional characters are there, not just to entertain, but to inspire and to make the day-to-day more manageable. And I was glad to find another one who does the job.