30 Days of Sherlock Holmes
Apr. 2nd, 2011 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capt_facepalmDay 02 – Your Favorite Canon Story
I read the complete canon early in my life. That was many years ago and with all the maturity and wisdom a 10th grader could hope to have. Only recently have I returned to the canon and, so far, my reading is incomplete. That being said, A Study in Scarlet and the Hound of the Baskervilles figure highly among my favourites, but for this exercise, I will focus my attention on The Yellow Face.
Sure, this story contains the unabashed romanticism the Mr. Holmes so vehemently despises, yet it does provide some interesting departures. It shows Holmes to be fallible and to possess a modicum of humility. It also gives us the famous "Norbury" reference. Most importantly, however, is the treatment of racial issues, and the example of Mr Grant Munro.
"I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being."
Grant Munro is awesome. And for writing this, I take back many of my derisions of Arthur Conan Doyle as a hack.
I have nothing more to add that would not be "spoilerific", so I will end with this link to The Yellow Face at Project Gutenberg. Please read it.
I read the complete canon early in my life. That was many years ago and with all the maturity and wisdom a 10th grader could hope to have. Only recently have I returned to the canon and, so far, my reading is incomplete. That being said, A Study in Scarlet and the Hound of the Baskervilles figure highly among my favourites, but for this exercise, I will focus my attention on The Yellow Face.
Sure, this story contains the unabashed romanticism the Mr. Holmes so vehemently despises, yet it does provide some interesting departures. It shows Holmes to be fallible and to possess a modicum of humility. It also gives us the famous "Norbury" reference. Most importantly, however, is the treatment of racial issues, and the example of Mr Grant Munro.
"I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being."
Grant Munro is awesome. And for writing this, I take back many of my derisions of Arthur Conan Doyle as a hack.
I have nothing more to add that would not be "spoilerific", so I will end with this link to The Yellow Face at Project Gutenberg. Please read it.
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no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 10:28 pm (UTC)He was still a hack.
:-P
no subject
Date: 2011-04-02 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-03 12:14 pm (UTC)Also, he might have remembered Watson's first name... ;)
BTW, "The Yellow Face" is certainly interesting regarding racial issues, if one considers that Doyle lived in the time where the British Empire was at its hight...
no subject
Date: 2011-04-03 07:51 pm (UTC)Crack an atlas! Read a map! Sheesh!
(But he did give us Watson, and Grant Munro, so almost all is forgiven!)