About Sixty . . . let the combatants enter the arena!

When I first decided to read About Sixty:Why Every Sherlock Holmes Story Is the Best as a sort of tournament of champions, I was thinking I was going to have to stage all of the battles in my imagination. But then I came to the second essay of the book, in which Charles Prepolec plants his flag for The Sign of Four.

Now, I will admit to some bias here, as some many years ago, the good Carter and I spent a perfectly splendid and memorable evening with Charles and his wife having some of the best dinner conversation of my Sherlockian life. And I was, therefore, expecting something good on Sign.

What I didn't expect was this next entry into the arena of About Sixty coming in swinging directly at his sole opponent at this point, A Study in Scarlet. 

It was the perfect tactic, and I just didn't see it coming. The Sign of Four really does only have one competitor when most of us come to that second entry in the Canon, and that is its elder brother A Study in Scarlet. Charles Prepolec takes that as his cue and trains Sign's every strength against Study's weaknesses. Everything I remembered loving about A Study in Scarlet during Susan Smith-Josephy's essay was suddenly being topped by The Sign of the Four.

Bringing the warmth and humanity of Sign in may have sold be by itself, but Charles's touches upon the grotesque elements of the tale suddenly had me seeing The Sign of Four as a Victorian season of American Horror Story, with its striking visuals.

So early in, and The Sign of Four is already standing tall as a monster in the About Sixty arena. Who dares challenge it?  "A Scandal in Bohemia," of course. Back to the book . . . .

<(-:-)>

Angela Misri runs "A Scandal in Bohemia" into the ring like it's a ululating contender from Themyscira, full of girl power that should delight the Adlerians in the audience, but I came here Sherlockian, and remain Sherlockian when "The Red-Headed League" comes out of the fog, managed by Al Shaw.

Shaw brings a very old school sensibility to his appreciation of "Red-Headed League," putting forth not just winning bits of the story, but of the Sherlockian life itself: deductions, pipe-smoking, and Jay Finley Christ. There are definitely distinct personalities to these essays, and is taking very little effort of my imagination to see each coming in as characters as diverse as an old Wacky Races cartoon.

"A Case of Identity" steps in next, and from my past familiarity with the tale, I'm expecting a smaller contender, for as mystery cases go, "Identity" always seemed a bit of a shrimp. But Sonia Featherston has imbued the tale with mystical powers that enlarge it with the power of the entire sixty stories. It's a good work and an unexpected performance by an underdog, as stories go. If The Sign of Four wasn't such a monster, little "Case of Identity" might have done quite well for itself.

Clifford S. Goldfarb brings "The Five Orange Pips" out as a sports enthusiast might -- competitive and citing stats from past bouts. "The Five Orange Pips" gives many a reader many a reason to love the tale, but I fear its promoter ends his spiel on a note of disappointment rather than triumph, which bring "Pips" down when it might have been standing with fists raised.

The "fair play" combatant in this battle royale, according to Mark Alberstadt, is "The Man with the Twisted Lip." Cycling in like a classic pugilist of a mystery, ready for fisticuffs, confident of its place as the best, and getting down to business. Again, The Sign of Four just stands there as the monster of this arena . . . so far, nobody can take that thing down. Is it because it's so much larger than the rest, allowed more room to grow like a carp in a bigger tank, since it was about a novel?

Can anything take it down? So far all of the non-"Case of Identity" promoters in the arena have been Canadian, and maybe their stereotypical politeness won't allow them to bring the full-tilt aggression to this literary cage match needed to conquer Sign, which none knew they would be facing when they signed up. But I'm not that far in, and there's almost 90% of this event to go.

If you haven't read About Sixty,  I would recommend you quit reading the blog for the rest of this series, obtain a copy, read it for yourself and pick your own winner, then come back to see how my tournament came out. Plus, you never know! I'm a busy guy and could run off and leave you hanging here. Don't depend upon me to tell you how it comes out! Get your copy today!

About Sixty . . . or about one?

About Sixty: Why Every Sherlock Holmes Story Is The Best arrived in the mail a few weeks back, and I immediately did what I do with any collection that I have some little piece in . . . flip to my own bit and read that. It's what a writer has to do, like pinching yourself to make sure you're awake. You've got to make sure the whole "getting published" thing was real.

Then I went back and read editor Christopher Redmond's introduction, just to see how he set it up.

A few days later, I think I did go back and read one friend's essay, just out of curiosity, but time was dear that week, so I set it back on the "to read" pile. Where it stayed until tonight, when a little friendly back-and-forth on Twitter about which story is truly was the best made me wonder: Just who was the most convincing salesperson of all the About Sixty writers?

Yes, yes, About Sixty was not a competition. Growing up in a house with three siblings, however, about anything can be a competition to me if I let it. And the basic premise of this collection was sixty writers each writing that a particular Sherlock Holmes story is the best, so one can hardly blame me if I decided to take it that way. And what better way to review a collection of essays than to make it a competition? (But, really, we're all winners, my fellow About Sixty writers, aren't we? There, now that I've been token nice for a second on to the jugular!)

So this weekend, I'm going to read . . . and blog . . . About Sixty and see just who sells me on their tale. I'm a strong favorite of course, because I most alway agree with me, but you never know. And I think I may have already changed my mind.

I read the first essay before starting this post, Susan Smith-Josephy writing on A Study in Scarlet. And A Study in Scarlet does seem like it could very well be the best Sherlock Holmes story. It's the origin story, and I do love an origin story. Reading Susan's piece reminded me of just how much I've always loved A Study in Scarlet, and even though she makes a good case for the no-Sherlock parts of the novel, Holmes and Watson's first weeks and months together are definitely what carry that tale to the top of the heap.

Well, the top of the heap, for now . . .  I've got fifty-nine more essays to read this weekend, as we find out if About Sixty is really about sixty accounts of our friend Sherlock Holmes or just one . . . the best one.

Let the games begin! (Afoot! Oh, yeah, afoot! The game is . . . awww, on to it!)

Mandatory comparison of Dr. Strange and Sherlock Holmes.

Since Benedict Cumberbatch is going to be best known for two roles at this point,  Doylean consulting detective Sherlock Holmes and Marvel Comics superhero Dr. Stephen Strange, it only follows that Sherlockians are going to have to compare the two.

And, really, it's a pretty easy task.

Both Sherlock Holmes and Stephen Strange are hard-driven professionals.

Both are aware of just how good they are at what they do.

Both wear a distinctive cloak.

Both are great practitioners of that rare art form known as "studying."

Both have a rival whose name begins with "Mor."

Both have a companion whose name starts with a "Wah" sound.

And both now look a lot like Benedict Cumberbatch.

On the flip side of the coin, Stephen Strange is almost more like Sherlock Holmes in his pre-superhero phase of life, when he's a very skilled surgeon at the top of his field. When he turns to the mystic arts, he's no longer at the top of his field . . . yet . . . and is struggling to learn an entirely new profession. With that change, he becomes a lot more altruistic, even though he was saving lives to start with, and altruism is a factor that's hard to gauge in Sherlock Holmes. Does he help people because he's a good guy or just to keep himself from being bored? With Strange, we know, once his origin tale is done.

Of course, Sherlock Holmes is all about science and the limits of the real world, while Dr. Strange is a character of fantasy, which is where their biggest, hardest contrast occurs. For Sherlock Holmes to undergo the transformation that Stephen Strange undergoes to become a master of the mystic arts, there would be a real risk of ruining the character who has been championing basic, down-to-earth skills for a century and a quarter, and getting very woo-hoo silly to boot.

But they do make an interesting pair to compare, which, thanks to Benedict Cumberbatch, is something to do this week.

Benedict Cumberbatch Week!

The fact that BBC Sherlock finally got an Honest Trailer treatment was just another sign that this is truly Benedict Cumberbatch's week. He seems to be appearing everywhere, in every media outlet that can get a piece of him, including some of my favorite Twitter folk feeds, and, really, why the hell not?

I mean, he's Benedict Cumberbatch.

At this point, one has to be a truly determined curmudgeon not to appreciate what the lightning-strike combination of this actor and this role have brought to Sherlock Holmes. Could another actor have been cast and done the same? We may never know, but if you look at the Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movies, which ran fairly parallel in time to Cumberbatch in the role, it's apparent that even Downey did not bring the excitement and fans to the Sherlockian community that Cumberbatch did. There is something about the guy that just works in the part. And works wonderfully.

Not to discount his partner in crime, Martin Freeman, the writers, directors, the rest of the amazing cast, etc., but Sherlock is the flagship role of any Sherlock Holmes production, and that actor will be center-stage for either the standing ovation or the rotten tomatoes and eggs that will follow. When we speak of the Holmes movies that Matt Frewer starred in, we don't reference them by the director, writer, or anyone else in their failure. We say "the Matt Frewer Hound," etc. Life could have been entirely different for a less-able Benedict Cumberbatch.

But here we are, with those who are only catching on to him with Dr. Strange looking back and going, "Hmm, what's this Sherlock Holmes thing?" And the most common response to that question is going to be something along the lines of: "It's great! You have to watch it!"

So with all the P.R. hoopla and all the appearances this week, including Saturday Night Live coming up quickly, it has to be the biggest week of Benedict Cumberbatch ever, and it's real hard not to just be a fan . . . that thing that many a crank accused our newest generation of Sherlockians of being, but you know what?

Those early fans of the man were pretty much on target. There's a lot to enjoy about Benedict Cumberbatch, and like Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett, and so many others, we have Sherlock Holmes to thank for pointing our attention at their talents.

We owe that guy a lot. So, with a tip of the hat to Holmes, back to enjoying the Cumberbatch.

A culture of writers.

There's an obvious side to Sherlockiana . . . that we tend to be readers.

The basic bar to clear in considering one's self truly knowledgeable about Sherlock Holmes is simple: the reading of four novels and fifty-six short stories. Not a high bar, but it does require a certain basic level of commitment that separates the readers from the non-readers. Not every Sherlockian is a reader, to be sure, and there are those who are a benefit to our community without having finished reading The Complete Sherlock Holmes, but by and large . . . readers.

And when gets far enough into taking in the words, the words tend to come out of you as well.

Today, November 1, Nanowrimo begins.

That's short for "National Novel Writing Month," if you haven't encountered the phrase before. Nanowrimo is a personal challenge, a literary mountain to climb with the simple goal of putting down 50,000 words before November is out. You don't even have to sign up at the official site, but like Weight Watchers and dieting, it's just a tool to help you commit and track your progress.

More is being written about Sherlock Holmes today than at any point in our favorite detective's nearly one hundred and thirty year existence. And during this November, even more will be written about him as Sherlockian writers take to their keyboards along with the rest of the Nanowrimo marathoners. Not all of it will see publication, and not all of it will get finished, but the mere fact that it's happening and Sherlock is a part of it adds to our world.

Sherlockiana has never been just a culture of readers. We're a culture of writers, too.

And have always been, from Knox to Morley to Stout to Klinger to Faye. Even this silly blog, as much as my occasional critic considers it to be solely about ego, is really just about putting out some portion of the words I've taken in during my life. Even if nobody ever read this, I'd still write it. Diaries have existed through time for a reason . . . writing helps us order our thoughts.

So with Nanowrimo beginning today, it's a good time to think about writing. About those brave soles who are taking up the verbal marathon. About those who are hard at work in other areas of Sherlockian verbiage. And about your own abilities in that area, and what you're capable of.

Writing is, even in the electronic age of video and gaming, still one of the coolest things out there. So much of the rest of it depends upon writers.

Thanks and congratulations to all of you taking up the keyboard, for whatever reason today. And good luck to all you novelists. Even if you're just a few sentences in, your goals make that word "novelist" applies to you now, as long as you're writing that novel-yet-to-be.

E:5. 4. Fact-checking the Elementary.

EDITOR'S NOTE: At his request, Don Murillo, the "Tiger of San Pedro" and "the most Canonical man in the Canon, has been reviewing CBS's Elementary for Sherlock Peoria this season. As the rest of the staff at Sherlock Peoria quit watching the show last season, we could not help but take advantage of his generous offer, but certain questions with Don Murillo's reportage have emerged. This week, Murillo's review will continue, but Sherlock Peoria is adding one of the popular "fact check" features to his work.


It is I, Don Murillo, here to discuss another week of the Elementary! And the one hundredth week at that!

This week, we learn that when Joan Watson updates her list of El Sherlocko's limits, she should put "13. Knowledge of Emoji: Nil!" El Sherlocko makes the classic mistake of calling the emoji for poop "ice cream." Ha-ha! An excellent comic start to the show, before a quantitative analyst named Russell Cole is pinned to the wall like a bug on a card with a fireplace poker.

FACT CHECK: in "The Adventure of Black Peter," sea captain Peter Carey is "pinned like a beetle on a card' to the wall with a harpoon. Sir Eustace Brackenstall of "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange" is killed with a fireplace poker, but by having his head smashed in.

As a part of NYPD "Medal Day," Captain Gregson's department is getting a commendation and Gregson wants civilian employees Joan and El Sherlocko put on the list. There is, Gregson admits, "some resistance" in the department to that thought.

FACT CHECK: Sherlock Holmes was on the list for a knighthood in 1902 and the only resistance was on the part of Sherlock himself, who refused it.

Not so fast, man of fact checking! El Sherlocko, we discover after he leaves NYPD, is trying to refuse the certificate of honor! And America has no knighthoods!

The story turns to asteroids and the possibility that Bruce Willis's skills might be needed, and Gregson thinks Joan and her partner should consult an asteroid expert in case all life on Earth is going to end. This is truly a story of much importance!

FACT CHECK: The only asteroid expert in the original Sherlock Holmes stories was Professor Moriarty, writer of The Dynamics of an Asteroid, criminal mastermind, and Holmes's arch-nemesis. Elementary's Moriarty, Irene Adler, will not appear in this episode.

The asteroid expert that Joan and El Sherlocko must see is celebrity astronomer Julius Kent, called "ambassador to the stars," who went to boarding school with El Sherlocko. El is resisting consulting Kent due to his overly arrogant personality. (That is Kent's personality that Don Murillo speaks of, and not El Sherlocko's!)

FACT CHECK: The only schoolmate of Sherlock Holmes or John H. Watson to be involved in one of their investigations was Percy Phelps of "The Adventure of the Naval Treaty." Phelps went to school with Watson, and Watson admits to bullying the boy in those much younger days.

Upon their meeting Julius, El Sherlocko's old schoolmate tells Joan that he taught El that the Earth revolved around the sun when they were eight years old. 

FACT CHECK: In the second chapter of A Study in Scarlet, Sherlock Holmes toys with Dr. Watson by pretending ignorance of a popular Scottish philosopher and basic solar system function in order to make a point about his professional focus. Sherlock Holmes is an adult at the time, and basically trolling his new room-mate just a bit. 

Detective Bell and Joan Watson accuse the murder victim's employer of murder while El Sherlocko sits quietly, indicating that the boss may not be guilty. And innocent is what the boss claims to be.

FACT CHECK: Scotland Yard arrested many innocents whom Sherlock Holmes would later clear. Sherlock Holmes did not follow the Yardmen down to their holding cells to talk to those arrested.

Wrong! This man of fact checking has not evidence this did not happen! Don Murillo thinks this checker of facts is showing his media bias!

Luckily, El Sherlocko takes back the spotlight by giving a speech about how accepting awards will inevitably cause him to get more and more credit for solving NYPD's cases and then they will get jealous. And then, when he is done, and Joan Watson has toddled off to bed, he sneaks in and checks Joan Watson for poison ivy in her sleep as he solves the case.

FACT CHECK: In "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier," Sherlock Holmes calls in Sir James Saunders for an appropriate diagnosis of a skin ailment on Godfrey Emsworth.

Don Murillo very much enjoyed the scene of El Sherlock and Joan sitting on a couch in front of a staircase, and would hang a painting of it over his fireplace. Joan is in her pajamas and El Sherlocko has his top collar button perfectly in place, and it is the perfect "Elementarican Gothic."

In the end, Captain Gregson gives all the officers and detectives of his squad a speech about how bad the world is, but how they make his job worthwhile. Joan is present, but El Sherlocko comes in late and does not clap when Gregson asks that they all give themselves a hand. And the show is over.

FACT CHECK: "To his sombre and cynical spirit all popular applause was always abhorrent . . ." Dr. Watson wrote in "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot."

That Canonical fact still does not make El Sherlocko as Canonical as Don Murillo, whom it will be remembered is widely known as the most Canonical man in the Canon! And where was our friend Shinwell Johnson?

FACT CHECK: Urban dictionary defines "Canon" as "another word for official. Used quite often in fan fiction to differentiate between the official storyline in which the fan fiction is based on." Elementary's own Canon makes its characters entirely Canonical in the Elementary Canon.

PFUI! Don Murillo shall call the head office of Sherlock Peoria and demand that this fact check personage be fired from his job immediately for using the Urban Dictionary to try to say such nasty things about Don Murillo's place of importance!

FACT CHECK: Don Murillo cannot have anyone fired from the staff of Sherlock Peoria due to there being no employees of the blog site (that anyone can prove). And, in any case, I quit. 

Don Murillo, the most Canonical man in the Canon, bids you not to let the door hit you on the way out, and a splendid Sunday night and Monday morning to everyone who was not fact checking Don Murillo tonight!

Surveying the future.

New ground seems to be broken daily in Sherlockiana of late. And every time a phrase like "of late," "these days," or "modern" slips into my blogging, I sigh and feel the years. Because I know that anyone who is truly in the Sherlockian world of the moment doesn't use those lines -- to them, this Sherlockiana of the here and now is Sherlockiana. My use of those qualifying phrases place me as a Sherlockian who still has one foot in a world gone by . . . and not 1895 . . . 1985.

So I enjoy the occasional splash of water that wakes me again just as my head nods into a nap of nostalgia. And I got a good splash today . . . it's one thing to know the ocean is there, but another when the wave washes over you. That splash?

The survey results from the Three Patch Podcast's Fandom and Sexuality Survey are in, and even from a quick overview, one can see we're talking about a Sherlockian world of 2016 that is nowhere near that of 1985. While survey respondents were self-selected and were most often reached through fannish channels quite unlike those of the old-fashioned telephone pollsters, their response numbers were definitely high enough to be worth consideration.

Right off the top, the 3.8% of survey respondents who claim to be male-identifying out of 2195 participants should tell you something. That's a little over eighty members of the gender identity that completely ruled America's main Sherlock Holmes fan club thirty years ago . . . 80 out of 2195. Many a male looking at those results is apt to exclaim, "That doesn't represent me!" and the appropriate answer to that is, most certainly, "No, it doesn't." But it represents well over two thousand fans. And that's a number with some weight in fan world -- in 1985, the total number of copies of a single issue of The Baker Street Journal published was 2155, and that was probably the biggest thing in our fandom at that time.

The survey also shows a rise in the acceptance of the "multi-fan." Local Sherlock Holmes society meetings have long had conversations that wandered off on to Star Trek, Dr. Who, or some other fandom, but as Sherlock was the elder, more respected fandom, the polite Sherlock-focussed article about Gandalf or Batman was about as far out of the closet as a Lord of the Rings or comic book fan who was also a Sherlockian was going to come. A crossover fanzine like Holmesian Federation existed more in Trek's fandom that Sherlock's. Perhaps it has to do with Trek being a more dominant fandom in those days, but Three Patch's own "Potterlocktober" episode seems to demonstrate that things are a little different now.

The main thrust of the survey (pun intended) that will certainly give rise to an "us and them" feeling in a old school Sherlockian is its focus on sexuality. "What does sex have to do with Sherlock Holmes?" one might cry . . . if one hasn't been paying attention to the Sherlockian world of 2016.

Sherlockians have always had a game to play, to focus their fan-love when reading the sixty stories were done. The first game of any fandom is creating copies, fan fiction if you will, and Sherlock fans were there right off the bat. (Published writers are, of course, the only ones whose work survived.) The second game was operating on the premise that Watson wrote history and researching story details from there. As distance made Conan Doyle more of a historical figure than a current celebrity, Doylean scholarship became a game Holmes fans played as well. Now, the wheel has turned, we're back to fan fiction, and more sexually-charged, relational fan fiction is the newest game that Sherlock Holmes fans are openly playing. (I say "openly," because yes, yes, a handful were doing it back in the day, but nowhere close to as prominently as now.)

The Sherlockians of 2016 aren't the Sherlockians of 1985, and when someone tries to differentiate between "Sherlockian" and "Sherlock fan," it often feels like they really mean "1985" versus "2016." It's a little like saying millennials aren't true people because they don't act like baby boomers. Things were always better in the good old days, but every era is someone's future "good old days."

Nothing delights me more than thinking of 221B Con 2056 and the older fans there bitching about "these kids today" not doing things properly 2016 . . . trust me, that day's going to come. The best we can all do is just keep fighting to keep an open mind, no matter our age, and see if we can enjoy the world as it is and not how it was. So I'm very glad for Three Patch's survey and all of the interesting points it makes just by existing.

On Sherlockiana goes . . . in whatever direction it heads next.