Wittgenstein"s similarity argument notwithstanding, the field of "game studies" has emerged in recent decades to better understand these issues and try to refine our thought on what games are and games aren"t. As the role of games has risen in Western popular culture-from the predominance of card games in the suburban America of the 1950s to the pervasiveness of Facebook games in the 2010s-scholars have sought to better understand what these are, how they work, and what meanings players draw from them. This is at once a pragmatic issue as much as a theoretical one.
Distinct from the mathematical endeavor of "game theory," this field has taken a largely socio-cultural bent, meaning many of the dominant theorists rose out of traditions in the mid-twentieth century that led them to considering games as cultural artifacts and social systems. In particular, one of the foundational texts for the new Game Studies came in the form of Johan Huizinga"s h.o.m.o Ludens (or "Man, the Player"), originally published in 1938. Huizinga connected games to a much deeper cultural context than even Wittgenstein attempted-linking games to many other "high" and "low" culture activities. Huizinga stated: All play moves and has its being within a playground marked off beforehand materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course... The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc., are all in form and function play-grounds, i.e., forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed, within which special rules obtain.
Somewhat surprisingly, contemporary Game Studies scholars have taken Huizinga to task for one of those terms tucked away within the litany of forms or sites of play: The "magic circle." And it"s this very notion that brings us back to the Sherlockian "Game"-what are the borders between the play activities within a game and the "real world"?
. . . Real?
In h.o.m.o Ludens, Huizinga described games as firmly circ.u.mscribed, with a clear line between the s.p.a.ce of a game and the rest of human activity, which contemporary games scholars have now labeled "the magic circle" (though it is still unclear if this is exactly what Huizinga meant by the term; Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman"s 2003 book Rules of Play is often credited for reviving and perhaps misinterpreting Huizinga"s use of the term). Regardless, the "magic circle" notion has taken hold to describe a theorized separation between games and "the real world." But has this ever really been true? Can we delineate what counts as a game from what counts as the social and cultural world outside the game? Can we see such a firm line between the Sherlockian Game and the rest of the world?
The barrier between everyday life and the world of the game has come under question, and in books like World of Warcraft and Philosophy, The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy, and Halo and Philosophy, that barrier has been more-or-less knocked down. Games demonstrably matter in everyday life, can be used to ill.u.s.trate how humans make meaning, and provide an important lens by which we can understand not just the nature of media, but how we engage with them. Games, regardless of how we formally cla.s.sify or define them, are complex, multifaceted engagements with the real world and with cultural systems.
In the case of the Sherlockian Game, it turns out, a blurring of lines between the "real world" and the "Game world" has been there since the very beginning. The study of games helps us to understand the ways that Holmes"s admirers have been "playing" with the Holmes Canon, while at the same time, the example of "The Game" can help to better illuminate how and why hard declarations of a "magic circle" simply don"t work. So maybe it"s time to explore this idea a bit further, taking a look at the origins of The Game, as well as its role in defining a century"s worth of Holmes fandom.
. . . Serious Business!
The better we understand the history of "The Game," the better we might be able to make sense of the ways that Holmes fans have long blurred the lines between "play" and "serious, intellectual activity." Unlike many other moments in fandom around other media texts, the historical genesis of The Game is clear. The publication of this very book in 2011 is fortuitous timing, in fact-this year, Holmesians and Sherlockians celebrate the centenary of The Game, as initiated by the cla.s.sic essay "Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes" written by Ronald Knox, delivered in 1911. Monsignor Knox, a British theologian, intended to parody the literacy a.n.a.lysis of the era by taking the much-loved "low" text of the Holmes Canon, and giving it a royal treatment typically only afforded "serious" works of literature.
Knox began the essay with this pa.s.sage: If there is anything pleasant in life, it is doing what we aren"t meant to do. If there is anything pleasant in criticism, it is finding out what we aren"t meant to find out. It is the method by which we treat as significant what the author did not mean to be significant, by which we single out as essential what the author regarded as incidental. Thus, if one brings out a book on turnips, the modern scholar tries to discover from it whether the author was on good terms with his wife; if a poet writes on b.u.t.tercups, every word he says may be used as evidence against him at an inquest of his views on a future existence. On this fascinating principle, we delight to extort economic evidence from Aristophanes, because Aristophanes knew nothing of economics: we try to extract cryptograms from Shakespeare, because we are inwardly certain that Shakespeare never put them there: we sift and winnow the Gospel of St. Luke, in order to produce a Synoptic problem, because St. Luke, poor man, never knew the Synoptic problem to exist.
There is, however, a special fascination in applying this method to Sherlock Holmes, because it is, in a sense, Holmes"s own method. "It has long been an axiom of mine," he says, "that the little things are infinitely the most important." It might be the motto of his life"s work. And it is, is it not, as we clergymen say, by the little things, the apparently unimportant things, that we judge of a man"s character.
Here, Knox explicitly makes a number of interesting connections-between "delight" and the pulling of unintended meaning out of Aristophanes"s texts, the contradiction of knowing that Shakespeare never considered cryptograms but that we still "extract" meaning regardless, and, of course, that this "method" applies most clearly to Holmes, for it is a variant of the character"s own. These are telling statements, and sets up Knox"s essay on exactly the right notes. For Knox, playing with texts is something to delight in, something that involves our own creative capacities, and one that may connect us meaningfully with the themes of the original texts. Playing a game with literature may reflect the silly overextensions that some scholars engage with in their readings of other texts, but with Holmes, it actually seems oddly appropriate.
Given that the players of The Game have taken Knox"s original, satirical essay as the starting point of their enterprise, we might then think of The Game and this form of gaming as an enterprise that"s somehow hermeneutic in nature-the blurring of the "magic circle" in the Holmesian Game is reminiscent of the ways many fields have treated the interpretation of their core texts, be it religion, history, or comparative literature. The Game is treading that line between interpretation of a text and creation of new meaning from a text that may have not been originally intended by the author. The Game is a means to make sense of the source text, sure, but Knox"s satire also points out that there"s a creative act involved with the "gaming" of these texts-engaged scholars (and, nowadays, everyday fans) can insert their own meaning when diving into the interpretation of a text. For some, this perhaps makes problematic where the meaning actually resides in something like the text of the Sherlock Holmes Canon (or Aristophanes"s plays or Shakespeare"s sonnets), while for others it may only be problematic if we a.s.sume a singular conception of meaning within these kinds of texts.
. . . Not Just a Magic Circle.
For Knox, his satire of Holmes scholarship seems to indicate that he might a.s.sume Game-players are inserting too much of their own will into the Holmes texts, but for his followers (players of the Sherlockian Game), it certainly doesn"t seem to be. Game-players in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have gone to great lengths to both illuminate and expand upon Conan Doyle"s original stories. The task of making meaning out of the Holmes texts is like the task of making meaning in any other textual interpretation. The "magic circle" between the game and the out-of-game activities is permeable, sharing common meaning-making practices with the rules of "The Game" being potentially shaped by out-of-game concerns.
As we consider the historical roots of The Game as well as challenges to Huizinga"s (or, at least, Salen and Zimmerman"s characterization of Huizinga"s) conception of games, we"re left considering how exactly the out-of-game desires, intents, and practices of Game-players impact the in-game activities, and vice versa. For some Game-players, playing The Game means adopting a role similar to Holmes himself, even going so far as to adopt a "Canonical name," as is done by the fan society Baker Street Irregulars and members of its scion organizations. In the spirit of full disclosure, my Canonical name is "Silver Blaze" as a member of the Madison, Wisconsin, scion society The Notorious Canary-Trainers-as Knox pointed out, one of the draws of such playful a.n.a.lysis of the Holmes texts was to put one"s self in Holmes"s shoes, and I can"t deny that doing this myself has been a lot of fun.
So, is that what this comes down to? A sense of belonging to a social group, a sense of connecting one"s self to the Canon, or developing an ident.i.ty as one who can walk in the same footsteps as Holmes? Perhaps, but we should note that this also is not without epistemological consequence. As with many contemporary fan communities, players of The Game see texts as malleable, open to interpretation, and available for them to insert their own agency into. Knowledge and meaning do not reside purely within the "text" of the Holmes Canon for Game-players; far from it, perhaps Game-players see their task as playfully shaping knowledge at the same time as uncovering it. In the grand scheme of things, this is still playing games with stories; the knowledge created and uncovered in The Game is of a relatively inconsequential sort, but one that has, for over a century, driven fans and scholars to pick apart texts, connect their meanings to the real world, and then also augment or reshape Doyle"s original stories.
. . . Blurring the Boundaries.
And yet, when stated like this, playing The Game again sounds quite a bit like some kind of academic exercise, or something that mirrors the kinds of work that academics (such as this author) often value. We"re left thinking again about The Game and its relationship to "games" in which the "magic circle" seems to be inapplicable: Players of The Game blur the line between work and play, between informal and formal knowledge construction activities, and between a.n.a.lyzing Holmes and emulating him. To understand the epistemological implications of The Game, we necessarily need to undertake an a.n.a.lysis of the adventures of those Baker Street flatmates and how they were "picked up," retooled, and re-interpreted by others.
Since the beginning, partaking in The Game has meant "flexing" intellectual muscles and epistemological stances that hadn"t seen much use in how everyday folks interacted with the popular literature of the era. But, beyond this, The Game shows us that the forms of knowledge, argumentation, and (most importantly) meaning made from popular texts helps us to understand that we can learn much from "gaming" the Holmes Canon. The Game is fun, it"s diverting, and it"s certainly a sign of devotion-but beyond that, it challenges us to rethink whether "magic circles" exist between authorship, texts, and knowledge. The "work" and "play" of Game-players" creative connection of the Holmes Canon to the real world means that as we attempt to understand the philosophical implications of media fandom, we need to wrestle with how meaning is made through playful communities such as these.
Chapter 33.
The Final Final Problem.
Magali Rennes.
L"homme c"est rien. L"oeuvre c"est tout. ("The man is nothing; his work, everything.") -Gustave Flaubert to George Sand, misquoted by Holmes in "The Red-Headed League"
A last unresolved mystery involving Sherlock Holmes? Ah, yes, dear Reader, despite our long and intimate acquaintance with this incomparable consulting detective, a single, all-important proposition lingers in the air like the smell of fetid ash from an Indian lunkah: Holmes is the greatest detective of all time. The question-and our final mystery-is why?
First responses praise him as the father of forensic science, the prince of personalized methods, the king of observation and deduction.
Indeed he is.
And yet many detectives who have followed in his wake have rivaled his abilities. Modern television and popular fiction have hijacked and proliferated the detective and crime drama genres-brandishing more precise forensics (CSI), more advanced reasoning (Numb3rs), and more stylized-and even more idiosyncratic-supersleuths (Poirot, Sam Spade, Columbo, Monk, Brenda Lee Johnson), all without producing anyone to rival our dear Holmes.
So why, more than a century later, does Sherlock still reign as king? Perhaps there"s more to Sherlock"s method than his hawk-like eyes and razor-sharp mind. Yes, dear Reader, perhaps Sherlock reigns not simply because of his abilities to observe and deduce, but (indulge here my methods and invoke your imagination) precisely because of another, overlooked, more important talent-his ability to play. If we examine Mr. Holmes through the eyes of theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, we see that Sherlock transcends official convention by claiming the timeless, universal, unofficial spirit of the folk.
Sherlock crowns himself King of the Carnivalesque.
Two Bodies-or Two Corpses?
To be true to Holmes, let"s start with the bodies. Sherlock appears on the scene in an England steeped in centuries of royal tradition. Queen Victoria continues the English political fiction-just as the reigning monarchs before her did-of having "two bodies." The monarch"s "natural" (physical) body is single, mortal, material, and subject to infirmities, such as decay. It requires care, grooming, dress, modesty, and veneration-the royal treatment. The monarch"s other body-the "body politic"-is collective, immaterial, consists of laws, policies, government, and includes the English people-subjects to the far ends of Empire. It also demands service, loyalty, patriotism, and the deepest veneration. When the Queen"s natural body goes the way of all flesh, the office of Queen continues on in perpetuity through the body politic. The state and its inst.i.tutions remain a fixed, protected collective-which explains the contradictory shout: "the Queen is dead. Long live the Queen" (Ernst Kantorowicz, The King"s Two Bodies, p. 7).
Mikhail Bakhtin, a one-legged, Russian theorist writing under Stalinist rule, also talks about two bodies-not of the monarch, but of the folk. Inspired by the medieval traditions of popular feasts, pageants, fairs, and carnival, Bakhtin identifies what he calls "grotesque realism" in the two folk bodies (Rabelais and His World). A commoner has a "fleeting" mortal body as well as a "collective, ancestral body." Images of the folk mortal body include anything that degrades, that lowers the "high, spiritual, ideal, and abstract and transfers to the material level." In other words, the holes, the dips, the jiggling parts: "the open mouth, the genital organs, the b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the phallus, the potbelly, the nose." So celebrations (both live and literary) revolve around-what else?-the best things in life (or allusions to them): eating, speech acts, sweating, sneezing, blowing noses, lovemaking, urination, defecation, birth, and death. The line between man and earthly being blurs-orifices are the life of the party. In short, expect a complete liberation of the body.
Unlike the Queen"s natural body and the body politic, the two folk bodies-mortal and collective-are "indivisible." The mortal body isn"t a "private, egoistic form," but an integral part of the whole. Which means that any bodily function of the mortal body, including death, unites the individual to the "universal folk body, representing all the people." So the folk collective "has a cosmic and an all-people"s character," and is "growing and renewed" until it becomes "immeasurable . . . in fertility, growth, and a br.i.m.m.i.n.g over abundance." The whole is more than the sum of its (ahem!) holes. This br.i.m.m.i.n.g folk collective body revels outside of the Queen"s rule-it thrives in Nature, in the "biocosmic circle of cyclic changes, the phases of nature"s and man"s reproductive life." Its G.o.ds are the changing seasons: sowing, conception, growth, death. The essence of this kind of grotesque realism sports a "double-faced fullness of life"-negation (the death of something old) and affirmation (the birth of something new and better). So the collective romps as a "phenomenon in transformation, a yet unfinished metamorphosis of death and birth, growth and becoming." The lines between the "body and the world are overcome": the individual becomes the collective who communes with the cosmos. The folk"s "growing and ever-victorious collective" is the cosmos"s own "flesh and blood."
The folk are alive, then dead-but then undead, reborn, always living, always a collective. All for one, one for all. Long live the folk.
The Body Count Rises So how does this apply to our dear Holmes?
Sherlock Holmes"s London-and England, even to the ends of the Empire-groans in the struggle between the Queen"s royal bodies and the folk"s natural ones. On the one hand are the "serious, unconditional, and indisputable" inst.i.tutions of the Queen that regulate the body politic. On the other hand are the real lives of the folk-the rising middle cla.s.s corseted in bourgeois mores, the body"s inborn connection to nature and seasons, the innate desire for liberation, humorous relief, and cosmic expansiveness. The Queen maintains order and decorum by cloaking her physical body in neck to toe modesty-and her body politic in progress, industrialization, and expansion, ensuring that the sun "never sets" on her Empire.
But Holmes shows us a different view.
Holmes parades us through tales of one-legged men, poisoned dart-spitting pygmies, ears sent in cardboard boxes, aging fathers who ingest ape serum, snakes that kill daughters, women chained in zoos, beggars with twisted lips, geese that lay blue carbuncles, men who keep court with corpses, pygmysniffing dogs, disfigured women, deranged opium addicts . . . crooked men in every sense of the term. "The more outre and grotesque an incident is," Sherlock says, "the more carefully it deserves to be examined" (The Hound of the Baskervilles). In an age when the Queen says "light or dark meat" so that no one will have to speak of a fowl"s "breast" or "thigh" in polite company, Sherlock lifts the Victorian petticoat (oh!) and plunges us into the teeming underbelly of the Empire"s grotesque.
So Who"s the Victim?
The last time you staged a fake murder (April Fool"s!), dressed up as Lady Irene Adler for Halloween, or crowned yourself King from a trinket found in a Mardi Gras cake, you probably didn"t realize that you, dear Reader, were celebrating centuries-old relics of the carnivalesque-when folk escape from being subjects of authority into a time and s.p.a.ce of sheer liberation. The carnivalesque "destroys seriousness, frees human consciousness, thought, and imagination for new potentialities" (Rabelais, p. 49). So this carnival spirit is deeply ambivalent-even subversive-towards official power structures. It defines itself, and invites individuals to define themselves, by unofficial means: laughter.
For Bakhtin, carnivalesque laughter is "an essential form of truth concerning the world," and the only power strong enough to oppose the "official tone" of inst.i.tution. But folk laughter isn"t a giggle, chortle, snort, or guffaw-although these are good starts, and Holmes has his fair share (poor Watson). Rather, it"s a cosmic laughter rooted in a profound celebration of life. Consider it, dear Reader, a deep belly laugh with the cosmos about life itself. Not laughing at or near, but laughing with the order inst.i.tutions try to put on a life cycle beyond their control.
The carnivalesque consecrates "inventive freedom"-it liberates from "conventions and established truths, cliches, and all that is humdrum and universally accepted." In the broadest sense, carnivalesque laughter includes: communal gatherings in the marketplace-where life and art become one ritual spectacles-pageants, comic shows, parodies of sacred inst.i.tutions comic verbal compositions-parodies of the extracarnival life, oral and written verbal abuses-curses, oaths, derision, mocking hierarchies turned upside down-kings debased, clowns crowned a spirit of disguise-shifting ident.i.ties, literal or figurative masks a sense of play-games, riddles, dice, cards, chess, prophecies, soothsaying timelessness-cosmic temporality, revolutions, seasons But it"s difficult to pinpoint the carnivalesque-carnival spirit not only expands into the cosmos, but naturally transgresses boundaries. To define it smells suspiciously of official-ness. How can we contain the uncontainable?
To consider the carnivalesque, dear Reader, we must be of the carnivalesque spirit. Which means we may set aside reason momentarily (oh!) because we are offered the chance "to have a new outlook on the world, to realize the relative nature of all that exists, and to enter a completely new order of things." When we enter the carnivalesque, we embrace a never-ending process of "becoming and growth"-recognizing that the very nature of being is always and forever incomplete, unfinished, and in a state of change. We must be open to "uncrown" the "prevailing concepts of the world"-the ones the earth itself might shirk off, in a fit of cosmic, collective folk laughter, in another revolution or two.
Are you, dear Reader, prepared to topple (or is it tickle) a reigning Queen? Her body politic? Victorian mores? Industrialized time?
Is Holmes?
The Adventure of the New Marketplace Where do the folk go to escape in Sherlock Holmes"s London?
For Bakhtin, the center of the carnivalesque is the communal "marketplace"-the town fair, the festival center, the carnival square. Barkers, vendors, hawkers, actors, and clowns shout in cacophony. Speech that sells, speech that tells stories, speech that derides are indistinguishable in the din. All is performance, all a "show." The marketplace acts as the fulcrum of centripetal and centrifugal forces-it draws everyone in as a "world in itself, the center of everything unofficial," but also expands out into cosmic, cyclical time by corresponding to feast days, harvests, changes of season, revolutions of the earth. It combines the two folk bodies-mortal and collective, earthly and cosmic. And everyone partic.i.p.ates: in the marketplace, actor and spectator are one and the same. It"s not a spectacle seen by the people: the folk "live in it."
But Bakhtin"s medieval marketplace is a far, hawking cry from London"s. During Victoria"s reign (18301901), London"s population increases from two to six and a half million-the capital of the world"s first industrialized nation and the British Empire. In 1811, the first high-speed press appears; by 1814, The Times is printed on it, inaugurating the age of ma.s.s media. Print material-countless newspapers and more than 170 new periodicals by 1860-proliferates through London and sails out through the globe. In it, hawkers, barkers, vendors-in the form of advertis.e.m.e.nts-sell their wares next to a cacophony of printed personal notices, news reports, society gossip, monographs, and literary and popular fiction. Absent a gathering place for six million people, a new festival is born. Where Victorian industrialization already competes with seasonal time-forcing a five- to six-day work week, with no medieval option of weeks off for seasonal festivals, white-collar Londoners now gather in s.p.a.ce and time. They are drawn into a communal, "unofficial," abstract marketplace-the printed word.
Consider, dear Reader, how newspapers, journals, periodicals, and other print material litter the floor and the sideboard of 221B (Mrs. Hudson!). Holmes keeps an eye on London, often incognito, from within this print marketplace-watching for crimes (stolen blue carbuncles) and potential clues (monkey thefts). He stays in London even when he"s abroad through print-warning Watson that Lady Frances Carfax is in danger, or knowing it"s safe to return when Colonel Sebastian Moran finally fires his air gun ("The Empty House"). And Holmes decodes secret messages through print-he deciphers what Gennaro signals to Emilia ("The Red Circle") and outfoxes Valentine Walter"s communications with his accomplice ("The Bruce-Partington Plans"). Sherlock"s anonymous invitations invoke an endless parade through his drawing room, such as when adverts in the evening papers-"Globe, Star, Pall Mall, St. James"s, Evening News, Standard, Echo"-inspire Henry Baker to claim his goose. And, in one telling incident that shows how the new marketplace is life itself, Mr. Horace Harker of the Central Press Syndicate finds himself an almost-victim and reporter of the same crime ("The Six Napoleons"). Holmes himself complains when the newspapers are "sterile"-when his corner of London"s marketplace isn"t bustling ("Silver Blaze"). It"s as if the sun rises and sets on Holmes"s marketplace-so often a case begins with a printed notice of a large pearl or a Red-Headed League, and ends with-EXTRA!-Lestrade or Scotland Yard receiving the credit. And yet it is Holmes, all along, drawing us in and through the new vital media, connecting the unseen dots behind the pica.
And Watson actively beckons us in to this marketplace-as readers. Against Sherlock"s wishes, Watson publishes the adventures, birthing them into print. Watson uses direct address, "laying facts" before us, the reader. He writes for us, in spite of Sherlock"s perpetual grumblings. Where Holmes (at first) favors "scientific exercise," Watson gives us "point of view." Where Holmes prefers "cla.s.sical demonstration," Watson shows us "sensational details" that "excite." Where Holmes would press Watson to "instruct," Watson clearly chooses to entertain, pitting Holmes as the star ("The Abbey Grange"). Watson draws us in with the intrigue, the excitement, the chase, the riddle, the fun. Perhaps because of Watson"s clever enticements-and the inevitable readership the adventures create-even Holmes has a change of heart. He ends up encouraging Watson to write-and then also uses direct address to pen his own adventure, calling the reader "astute" ("The Blanched Soldier"). So we-along with the original Victorian audience-are not only invited guests to be told a story, but detectives who are challenged to solve the case. Elementary, dear Reader-we are fully-fledged actors in a partic.i.p.atory drama. In this marketplace, we, too, live what we read.
But Sherlock doesn"t just star in this new marketplace, he revolutionizes it. In 1891, Conan Doyle publishes Sherlock"s Adventures in The Strand-not as serial novels, but as single short stories to be read in "one sitting." Amidst proliferating periodicals with disconnected stories, for the first time in print history, Doyle focuses on one strong character-our dear Holmes-driving a new, self-contained story written for that particular issue. And The Strand"s circulation increases. This "one-sitting," cyclical romp at the end of the industrial work day or week quickly becomes festival-like-the new "season" of carnivalesque into which folk escape.
Because they can, just as easily, leave it to re-enter official, industrial time and s.p.a.ce. Another adventure, another "one-sitting" escape, will soon return.
Extra! Extra!
Come, Watson! The Game Is Afoot!
When Holmes tugs at the sleeping Watson"s shoulder-candle shining in his face-to wake the doctor up, to what game does he refer?
A spirit of play drives the carnivalesque. So, in Bakhtin"s marketplace, games are a high priority-they pull players out of official, man-made time and s.p.a.ce and into the timeless, cosmic world of play. Cards and sports, "forms of fortune-telling, wishes, and predictions," and metaphors of play abound. Games represent the life cycle-moving through "fortune, misfortune, gain and loss, crowning and uncrowning." Life itself becomes nothing more than a "miniature play," not to be taken (cosmic laugh) seriously! Games draw "players out of the bonds of everyday life, liberate them from usual laws and regulations, and replace established conventions by lighter conventionalities." So play "renews" time and player alike (Rabelais, pp. 23039).
This spirit of play drives Holmes. He laments, on the fourth, crime-free day of fog in a row, how the "London criminal is certainly a dull fellow." Does Holmes want Londoners robbed, injured, or dead?
No.
And yes, if it means he can keep playing. What is a Chess Master without an opponent?
Holmes craves an equal, someone to rival his abilities so that he is not bored. Even if that nemesis is "pure evil." Sherlock sings Professor Moriarty"s praises as his arch rival, the "Napoleon of crime": "he combines science with evil, organization with precision, vision with perception." Moriarty is his only criminal "intellectual equal" and Holmes, depressed, bemoans his loss. "Without him," laments Holmes, "I have to deal with distressed children, pygmies of triviality" (The Eligible Bachelor).5 It is as if Holmes himself has died: "London has become a singularly uninteresting city. . . . The community is certainly the gainer, and no one the loser, save the poor out-of-work specialist, whose occupation has gone." Moriarty opens the field of play-"with that man in the field," Holmes says, "one"s morning paper presented infinite possibilities" ("The Norwood Builder"). Most lawmen would welcome the idea of justice being served. But not Holmes: his rival gone means game over.
Holmes"s craft also suggests a field of play-and he makes the rules. As a self-t.i.tled "unofficial consulting detective," Holmes keeps himself at arm"s length from royal authority and Scotland Yard (established just as Victoria a.s.sumes her reign). "I follow my own methods," he says, "and tell as much or as little as I choose. That is the advantage of being unofficial" ("Silver Blaze"). And Sherlock operates outside of the law, regularly picking locks, forcing safes, and burgling homes-even risking being a "felon" and time in a "cell" (The Master Blackmailer). And who can ignore Holmes"s beloved "unofficial force"-the Baker Street Irregulars? They "go everywhere and see anything." Anyone who gets in Sherlock"s way, if not met on his terms-including (pardon, your Majesty!) the Queen"s authority-are as much of an opponent to Holmes as are the criminals on the other side of the chess board. What matters most is not the law but the game.
And Holmes openly jests-with the police, his clients, Watson. When Lestrade arrogantly taunts Holmes with fresh evidence about Jonas Oldacre"s timber house fire, Holmes fires back. Literally. Holmes stages a fire of his own, smoking out the real culprit-the living Mr. Oldacre. "I owed you a little mystification," Holmes tells Lestrade, "for your chaff in the morning." And when Colonel Ross denigrates Holmes one too many times, Sherlock delights at having "a little amus.e.m.e.nt" at his expense. Holmes brings back a disguised Silver Blaze right before the bewildered Colonel"s eyes, but only unveils the horse after tormenting its owner. Similarly, Sherlock plants the Mazarin stone in Lord Cantlemere"s pocket, then calls outrageously for his arrest. And Sherlock prods Watson with a carnivalesque derision that can only show how warm-hearted he feels towards his friend-Holmes jabs at Watson both for writing adventures as well as for developing his own "powers of deduction." For all of his grand protestations of science, our dear Holmes surely enjoys having a bit o" fun at others" expense.
And, dear Reader, we rarely speak of (ahem, come closer as I whisper) how often, in defiance of his grand reputation, our dear Holmes doesn"t solve the case. Holmes dissuades Violet de Merville from marrying Baron Gruner, yes-but there is no mystery per se. The scarred Mrs. Ronder reveals the murderous plot behind the "veiled lodger." But, again-no mystery to solve. And Holmes himself confesses his many blunders to Watson-"a more common occurrence than anyone would think"-such as when he mistakenly a.s.sumes that Silver Blaze has returned or when he diagnoses a case as "blackmail" only to find it a cover-up of an innocent child. And, despite Holmes"s best efforts, (shhhhhhh!) criminals elude him-John Openshaw is murdered and the masterminds of "The Five Orange Pips" escape by boat (though they drown). Those who smash the engineer"s thumb also get away. Sherlock, in self-deprecation at one of his blunders, tells Watson to remind him of his failures when he feels "overconfident" ("The Yellow Face").
So it"s not the particulars of a case-the motive, the outcome, or the moral issue at stake-that drives Holmes.
What matters most is that there"s a game, that it"s afoot, and that he"s afoot in it.
Come, Watson!
The Adventure of the King"s Crown.
Jeremy Brett-as Holmes-holds Henry Baker"s large, beat-up hat and challenges Watson to deduce why its owner has a large "intellectual capacity." Watson can"t. So Holmes playfully flips the large hat onto his head. Its brim sinks low on Holmes"s brow.
Why does Holmes do this?
The mask takes center stage in the carnivalesque. Disguise encourages not only play, but the joy of "change and reincarnation, relativity, and the merry negation of uniformity and similarity" (Rabelais, p. 39). Masks fuel new ident.i.ties-folk can travel in and out of social spheres beyond their "real" station-even to an outright "reversal of hierarchic levels." In one cla.s.sic carnival celebration called the "feast of fools," a fool is elected king. The real king (old authority and truth) is brought down-metaphorically killed-so that the king of fools (a new authority, a new truth) can emerge. When the fool"s reign is over at carnival"s end, his kingly disguise is removed and he retakes his place as a clown. But the fool doesn"t "die" in vain-he has led the hierarchy and the folk through metamorphosis. Dying brings change and rebirth.
Our dear Holmes is a master of masks. He travels, disguised, up and down the social ladder to find the truth of his latest riddle. We wonder which act he enjoys more-the rector, the b.u.m, the bookseller, the stable groom, the tramp, the plumber, the old sailor, the opium addict. Maybe it"s when he tricks poor Agatha into becoming his fiancee (The Master Blackmailer). Perhaps it"s the many times he fools poor Watson, even feigning sickness unto death (oh!). And Holmes sees through masks as if they aren"t there-he identifies John Clay, recognizes Joe Barnes under the dress, discerns Flora Millar as playing a lunatic, catches the Resident Patient lying, and gets behind the deceptions of most other criminals. It takes a mask to know a mask: shape-shifting defines Holmes"s methods (small wonder that the only one to fool him retains his highest affections-Irene Adler). Sherlock dons the hat-walks in the shoes-of others, becoming them. Watson explains: Sherlock "puts himself in the man"s place, having first gauged his intelligence. Then he tries to imagine how he himself would have proceeded in similar circ.u.mstances" ("The Musgrave Ritual"). Our dear Holmes can become-literally or figuratively-anyone he chooses.
But Sherlock"s greatest disguise is hiding in plain sight, when his chameleon-like abilities vaunt him upon a fool"s throne. The body politic bows to Holmes when the monarch entrusts him with matters of state. Holmes acts as a royal agent when the monarch cannot (the "Ill.u.s.trious Client" is none other than Edward VII). Holmes secretly resolves many cases that threaten Empire-he restores the lost Naval Treaty, recovers the Bruce-Partington plans, regains the Mazarin Stone, and retrieves the letter from the "ruffled foreign potentate" that would mean certain war ("The Second Stain"). So Holmes, in effect, becomes the surrogate embodiment of a royal authority. But Holmes also usurps royal authority without permission when he takes justice into his own hands. He pardons murderers: he burns John Turner"s confession, letting him go free, and sends Dr. Leon Sterndale-"a law to himself "-back to Africa without reporting the doctor"s devilish crime ("The Bos...o...b.. Valley Mystery," "The Devil"s Foot"). And Holmes and Watson watch, from behind a curtain, the blackmailer Charles Milverton"s murder-without stopping or reporting it. Here Holmes brandishes a kind of fool"s justice beyond any royal decree. The fool as king independently creates and enforces a new law: his own.
But our dear Holmes shows his truest mettle when he defies all official protocol and crowns himself. Holmes unflinchingly dictates his terms to any client, to Prime Ministers, government Secretaries, n.o.bility, and even kings. He levels patronizing n.o.bility-Holmes tells Lord St. Simon he is "descending" by taking the Lord"s case (his last client was a king). And Holmes refuses to bow to or shake hands with the King of Bohemia, exalting Lady Adler"s character over his: "she seems indeed to be on a very different level to your Majesty." But Sherlock"s most revealing and mystical self-crowning involves the divine right of kings, interrupted by Charles I"s beheading in 1649. When Holmes helps school chum Reginald find the missing butler Brunton, he also recovers the sacred crown of Charles II. For more than two hundred years, none of the n.o.ble Musgraves has understood the family Ritual-and yet Holmes deciphers it in short order. Only Holmes recognizes the "battered and shapeless diadem" as fragments of the ancient crown. And only Holmes, of all the n.o.bility in England, can metaphorically put the crown back together-as if, like Excalibur, it were rightfully his. As if Holmes, having recovered the divine right, is the real king of England.
And yet, game over, Holmes just as quickly steps off his throne. He faithfully returns Charles"s diadem to the monarch. Holmes doesn"t need a crown-sovereign authority seems to emanate from within him, from an independent source (dare we say a cosmic divine right?) that he can invoke at his choosing. His next adventure, perhaps.
So Holmes gives full credit to Scotland Yard and defers to royal authority, even when he"s the mastermind. And outside of cases, Holmes upholds the Crown and lives as a respectful, lawabiding subject of the monarch. He keeps none of the vestiges of the throne for himself.
Only the thrill of the match-and the occasional satisfaction of checkmate.
Oh, and the spirit of rebirth after every new adventure.
All the Queen"s Horses So we return, dear Reader, to our final problem. Why is Sherlock the greatest detective of all time? Perhaps we might pose a different question.
Does Holmes serve the Queen or the folk?
Even amidst bodies piling up in Sherlock Holmes"s Adventures, play for him means play for us. As readers, we don"t feel the sting of death, the seriousness of crime, or rejoice in "official" justice in any meaningful, moral way. We know that the bodies (spoiler!) aren"t really injured or dead anyway. What matters most is the puzzle, the chess match, the solution to the riddle. Will Holmes prevail? When it"s all wrapped up, we don"t remember victims or punishments, but how Holmes did it. It"s all just a game. A game that continues to redefine modern entertainment.
Consider, dear Reader, how Holmes"s "one character, one sitting" model still resonates in television media. Most sit-coms, dramas, detective shows, and crime dramas follow characters through half-hour or hour "sittings" of contained episodes. Who knew that the strength of Holmes"s character would redefine carnivalesque time and s.p.a.ce for the industrialized world? In effect, Holmes inaugurates "prime time."
And Sherlock Holmes will not die. When Holmes says "all the Queen"s horses and all the Queen"s men can"t avail," he suggests he holds a power beyond the crown. The Queen"s mortal body dies. But Holmes returns from Reichenbach Falls-inspired in part by Londoners wearing black arm bands in protest-and resurrects his adventures. With every daily revolution of the Earth, every yearly orbit around the sun, Holmes continues to appear across the hurtling globe-crowning and uncrowning himself as he puts Humpty Dumpty together again-in old and new media: comics, video games, novels, animation, television programs, and film. He"s the man who protects the public, sports secret ident.i.ties, wears a distinct costume, has a supporting cast, and cheats death because of special powers unique to him-powers not born just of reason, but of "imagination" and cosmic connection ("Silver Blaze"). It"s no wonder that Superman appears in 1938-only a few short years after the last of Doyle"s short stories is published. Holmes is his prototype: the first superhero.
So, does our dear Holmes "uncrown" the prevailing concepts of the world? Topple a monarch? Out with the old, in with the new? Perhaps, dear Reader, our mystery is best left for you to solve.
Your move.
In the meantime, in a cacophony of cosmic laughter, Holmes has left the building.
Holmes lives. Long live the King.
HE IS A MAN OF HABITS AND I AM ONE OF THEM.
The Very Smartest of Our Detective Officers.
For Whose Future Holmes Had High Hopes.
ANATOLIA BESSEMER has been spotted in Chicago despite being equally at home in London. Knowing where she is at any given moment is difficult because Anatolia often travels under a.s.sumed names, disguises, and false pa.s.sports, much like her hero Sherlock Holmes. Though for her, it"s less about catching criminals and more about never quite being pinned down in terms of her a.n.a.lysis of religious, cognitive, Marxist or philosophical evidence. She likes to keep all options open.
JEF BURNHAM denies this reality. Only that which appears on television seems real to him. Indeed, he considers Egon Spengler, Crow T. Robot, and The Doctor among his closest friends and, to the horror of his wife and family, has gone through many a television set desperately trying to claw his way in. In spite of this debilitating perceptual handicap, Jef somehow managed to earn a degree in Film & Video from Columbia College Chicago and secure a position as Editor of FilmMonthly.com.
CARI CALLIS practices bare attention in her garden as she plucks drunken bees from grapevines, rescues the tomatoes from bindweed and investigates the death of eighty-six goldfish from an unexpected January thaw. She makes no claims that Holmes was a practicing Buddhist, but she"s convinced that his creator intentionally cultivated that truth seeker with one foot poised upon the divine path. Houdini"s pranayamic breathing lessons stayed with her and became a lifetime ritual on the yoga mat. But despite her invocations to the spirit of Holmes"s genius, she still grapples with how to see things as they really are. In the cla.s.sroom at Columbia College Chicago where she"s an a.s.sociate Professor, she provokes her students to do the same. Oh, and if anyone has a copy of "The Origin of Tree Worship" she"d really like to borrow it.
JONATHAN CLEMENTS is the author of Schoolgirl Milky Crisis: Adventures in the Anime and Manga Trade and co-author of the Dorama Encyclopedia: A Guide to j.a.panese TV Drama Since 1953. As a contributing editor to the forthcoming new edition of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, he has been a.s.sembling details of Sherlock Holmes"s many appearances in anime, manga and j.a.panese literature. He is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Applied Design and Engineering, Swansea Metropolitan University, writing his thesis on the industrial history of j.a.panese animation.
TAMaS DEMETER has long been struggling with making people"s behavior coherent. That"s why he ended up with writing a thesis on the philosophy of psychology in Cambridge. There he argued that we are pretty much lore-abiding people who create rea.s.suring narratives for making coherent otherwise unintelligible behavior. That"s why he admires Holmes"s immense capacity for creating coherence among divergent facts in various possible ways and deploying the resulting narratives while solving all those mysterious cases These days he is a Senior Fellow at the Inst.i.tute for Philosophical Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and he has been acting as guest editor for special issues on similar problems for Monist and European Journal of a.n.a.lytic Philosophy.
Frequently accused of sharing Holmes"s hyper-rationality, BRIAN DOMINO is an a.s.sociate professor of philosophy at Miami University where, alas, he solves no crimes. He agrees with Holmes that "education never ends. It is a series of lessons with the greatest for the last." Unlike Mrs. Ronder, he is not contemplating finishing that lesson early, but is hoping for an extension of the due date. He would like the extra time to finish working on an essay on the meaning of life, and perhaps his monograph on Friedrich Nietzsche"s Ecce h.o.m.o.
TOM DOWD spends way too much time as people other than himself. One of the co-creators of the table-top roleplaying game Shadowrun he has decades of credits in the role-playing and computer game industries, including the best-selling Xbox t.i.tle Mecha.s.sault. Currently, he teaches game development and interactive and transmedia narrative at Columbia College Chicago where he oversees curriculum development as well as the large-team senior capstone cla.s.s in game production. He also has a garage full of costumes and props from years of live-action role-playing and hard-disks full of computer adventure and narrative games that fill a similar purpose. Tom also currently oversees the text-based high-fantasy role-playing game Castle Marrach at www.skotos.net that blends mystery, intrigue, romance, and fantasy in an original narrative environment. With the exception of a few court orders, his fascination with costuming and personas-virtual or otherwise-hasn"t gotten him into trouble... yet.