On this 154th birthday of Arthur Conan
Doyle, I'd like to salute the creator of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Professor
Challenger, and Brigadier Gerard for his ability as a writer.
When I took part in a panel on Holmes at
Bouchercon last October, I was shocked that two eminent mystery writers agreed
that ACD wasn't much of a writer. On the contrary, I would argue that he was
not only a great storyteller, but a great writer.
In July I am scheduled to present a talk
to a writers' group in Indiana titled "What Writers Can Learn from
Sherlock Holmes." In it, I will discuss the author's excellent writing,
character, plot, and setting in the Holmes stories.
The virtues of the writing in these 60 tales
include a simple but effective style, great
beginnings and endings, crackling dialogue, memorable epigrams, showing rather
than telling, and descriptions of weather that put you right there.
“It was a cold
morning of the early spring, and we sat after breakfast on either side of a
cheery fire in the old room at Baker Street. A thick fog rolled down between
the lines of dun-coloured houses, and the opposing windows loomed like dark,
shapeless blurs through the heavy yellow wreaths.”
That wonderfully evocative passage from
the beginning of "The Adventure of the Copper Beaches" is probably
the sort of fog-drenched Baker Street scene that most people would expect, even
those who have never read a Holmes story. But ACD was no one-trick pony. Listen
to this opening from a later story, "The Adventure of the Three
Garridebs":
"It may have been a comedy or it
may have been a tragedy. It cost one man his reason, it cost me a
blood-letting, and it cost another man the penalties of the law. Yet there was
certainly an element of comedy. Well, you shall judge for yourself."
Arthur Conan Doyle never considered
Sherlock Holmes to be his best work -- which just goes to show you that even a
literary genius can be drastically wrong.
Thanks for reminding us.
ReplyDelete