The Rise of the Unreal and Sherlock Holmes

 As a few of you might have noticed, I sometimes play around with a podcast called Sherlock Holmes Is Real. The title itself comes from the longstanding game of Sherlock Holmes fandom approaching our favorite detective as if he were a real, historical personage. The rich, detailed original texts from Conan Doyle made this entirely possible, as he portrayed Holmes's era so elaborately. Sherlockians with a bit of whimsy in their soul have enjoyed amusing ourselves with this little game whilst the rest of the world clicked along doing real things and paying real attention to the real efforts of real people.

We used to be the odd ducks, didn't we? Maybe not so odd as the Society for Creative Anachronism, who actually got out there in the dirt and acted like they were in another time, but we held our own in our odd little duck pond. And then we'd go to work at our jobs, spend time with our families, and do all that stuff that needed doing, keeping our little fancy of Sherlock Holmes being a real person for the fun times.

I remember, back in the last century, when someone would say to me (as happened more than once), "If you pretend Watson wrote the stories, people will think he did and won't learn about Conan Doyle!"  My response, depending upon their level of intensity where it was spoken or not, was "People are not that stupid. They'll figure it out."

I mean, Conan Doyle's name is on the spine of the books. They'll figure it out. Right?

Since most folks' contact with Sherlock Holmes is no longer book-first, I don't think that's a problem. Movies, television -- if you don't put "Inspired by true events" at the beginning or the end, only a blessed handful of humans mistake the characters depicted as real. Especially when you're talking about the kind of movies Sherlock Holmes has been in lately. So I don't think the theory that Sherlock Holmes is a real person is going to gain even Flat Earth believer ranks.

But we do have a lot of Flat Earthers these days. And True Believers in, ironically, unbelievable numbers about all sorts of goofy, and often dangerous, stuff. (Thanks, internet!) It almost takes the fun out of pretending a silly thing like Sherlock Holmes being real.

And yet, and yet, and yet . . . here we are.

For pretending Sherlock Holmes is real builds up the belief in us that reason is real. That paying attention is important. That knowledge in all its flavors, is useful. And even that the true facts behind what might appear to be supernatural are usually pretty natural. 

He is a banner to raise in times when all that is in short supply.

And that, I think, is one reason Sherlock Holmes has been so very real to us for a very long time, and, hopefully, will continue to be so.