“Earnest people are often people who habitually look on the serious side of things that have no serious side.” — Van Wyck Brooks, literary critic
There are folks in our hobby of Sherlockiana that love a footnote. Maybe their high school English teacher was especially comely on the day term papers were explained and their youthful hormones gave the lesson a bump. I dunno. Me, I don't need them unless they're their to make fun of footnotes. One early article I had in The Baker Street Journal did so with completely fake footnotes in it, as the editor asked for footnotes. Because I'm here to play.
A lot of people are here to play too, but their game has more rules than mine. And then there are the people who aren't here to play, those who write about the real lives of the real people who've been touched by a Sherlock Holmes. They get a pass. But I still think they could do without footnotes. End notes are fine, unless you're Baring-Gould or Les Klinger annotating something we've all, hopefully read once already in its raw state.
The point I'm getting at here isn't that one way or the other is wrong. We're all earnest people, we enthusiasts of the Great Detective (a.k.a. "fans," but some of the earnest are so earnest they'd rather not choose that as their . . . you know, we might want to put "fan," "afficionado," "enthusiast," etc. on name badges like they do with pronouns, so people can get their chosen noun). Where was I? Oh, yes, earnest. We're all earnest, dedicated folk, even those of us who are earnestly silly.
How silly is Sherlock Holmes, all in all? A character from an old mystery story who became iconic for detectivery?
Well, he's not serious enough for the bottom tier of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. He isn't food, water, or shelter serious. And he doesn't provide us safety, as in the next tier up. But them it gets a bit serious.
The middle tier of Maslow is the "Love and Belonging" tier. Sherlock Holmes gets us friendship, chosen family, and . . . for a few, I have heard, but not specifically, nor am I naming suspects . . . sex. But, sticking with friendship, that's kind of serious, kind of important. And something we should consider in our approach to Sherlock Holmes. Being a friend is more seriously a part of Sherlock Holmes than writing a pastiche or doing research, I think, unless you're doing those for a friend.
Level up from the friendship tier and you come to "self-esteem." A lot of us get self-esteem from our Sherlockian adventures, and if you try to tell me the desire for a BSI shilling isn't about self-esteem, I might wonder about you a bit. Sherlockiana has some friendly audiences for toast, presentations, writings, and ways to build up your self-esteem as you build your skills. I occasionally get asked to speak in non-Sherlockian venues, and any compliments I get on that ability are built on what this hobby gave me. So while not as serious as friendships, self-esteem can be a serious part of the hobby as well.
So, top of this perhaps arguable pyramid, self-actualization. I love the little graphic on Wikipedia because its top tier is crammed with "morality, creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, acceptance of facts." In other words, "Sherlock Holmes."
Am I being silly? Or self-actualized enough to see Sherlock Holmes for the top of our aspirational pyramid, which is the serious side of a silly fictional character?
There are a lot of reasons we're in this lovely little Sherlockian hobby. The very silly ones. The very serious ones. And the Sherlock Holmes ones.
So I guess you can have your footnotes. (Especially you chronologists.)
