Essay on Panache

Last week, I wrote about the plethora of Sherlock Holmes stories currently flooding the bookshelves (and there are many others besides the ones I wrote about). I didn’t get to say everything I wanted to, though, about the appeal of the detective’s character. Although Mr. Holmes does represent an archetype, it’s not enough just to say that. I wonder, in fact, if he doesn’t represent the appearance of a new archetype that arose with the development of science, technology, and other aspects of modernity. I remember having a conversation with someone about whether new archetypes ever appear. I believe they do, in response to changing conditions. Maybe Sherlock Holmes is an instance of an archetypal character that appeared in response to the times and couldn’t have appeared sooner.

I was taught that the multiplicity of gods in the Greek and Roman pantheons represents various conditions and forces that affect all aspects of human life. In other words, there should be a god for every occasion. Sherlock Holmes probably has the most in common with Athena (or Minerva), but it’s not an exact match. Athena, who sprang from the head of her father, is the goddess of wisdom, but she is also a warrior goddess and often appears in the capacity of aiding or advising her favorites in matters of war and strategy. Holmes is a logician who combines finely honed powers of observation with an ability to draw conclusions from the evidence, which is perhaps not quite the same thing as wisdom, Athena-style. He solves puzzles and unravels mysteries, something the Greek gods were not necessarily wont to do, being more expert at creating mysteries and expecting mortals to accept things as they were.

There’s a chapter in my book on the nature of the labyrinth in the literature of the 19th century, and I discuss the detective novels that appeared at that period. I wrote at length about Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White and about the way the plot of that novel resembles a labyrinth in which the characters are caught and out of which they escape only by following the threads that have ensnared them. They get very little assistance from anyone else and have to be their own detectives. The mood of the novel is somber, and although they succeed in rescuing a loved one, they prevail in spite of a largely uncaring world. Their triumph, however, is very real. Unlike the Greek story of Orpheus and Eurydice, The Woman in White features a return from the underworld. The protagonists barely escape the labyrinth, but escape they do—their determination and detective work carry the day.

Sherlock Holmes is the professional embodiment of these characteristics. Doing what comes naturally to him, he makes a science of solving mysteries for other people. In his time, scientific inventiveness and technological advances were rapidly changing ways of life that had been settled, in some cases, for centuries. Much was gained, but much that had seemed certain, like Christianity and man’s place in the universe, didn’t seem as rock solid as it had been. I always think of Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” as the expression of this sense of the loss of certitude: one lover exhorts the other to remain true in the face of a growing feeling that nothing—not the institutions of society nor the universe itself—offers security in an atmosphere of gathering darkness.

Behold, then, the entrance of Sherlock Holmes upon this somewhat chilling scene. While it may be true that the modern world really has “neither joy, nor love, nor light/nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain,” damn it, Sherlock Holmes is on the case, and you can bet he’ll give satisfaction, let the forces of darkness do what they will. He represents the triumph of mind over matter, and while I would agree that it’s quite possible to take the ascent of thought too far (in separating ourselves from nature, for instance, when we are always and ever a part of it, merely), Mr. Holmes does something the Greek heroes were rarely able to do, and that is to snatch people back from the edge of a precipice the Fates have prepared for them, and to do it without turning a whisker. Not only is he preternaturally effective, he also has style. I think style is vastly underrated.

By the way, I am not arguing that God is dead, or never lived, or that life has no meaning. I never said that. (Personally, I believe in God, by whatever name you call him/her.) I’m only describing the conditions in the 19th century in which people had reason to question a lot of what had been accepted as gospel for a long time. It’s necessary, in my opinion, to do this, to question things you’ve been told, but it can be quite uncomfortable. I don’t think the appearance of the archetype of the Great Detective means that man is in charge of all he surveys; it is more, perhaps, that he is taking his destiny into his own hands and fighting back against the joylessness, darkness, and pain that have, after all, been with humankind from the beginning and that religions were designed, in some measure, to deal with. Rather than opposing or replacing God, Sherlock Holmes rises to meet him, you might say, which is perhaps what God intended all along.

Wither Baker Street?

If I remember right, my first reading of Sherlock Holmes occurred in the summer after my first year of college. I’ve read and re-read several incarnations of the detective’s exploits over the years and have also enjoyed nearly all of the filmed versions I’ve seen. If we aren’t currently experiencing a Sherlock Holmes revival, we’re at least experiencing the proof that he never really goes out of style. Authors as diverse as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (writing with Anna Waterhouse) and Anthony Horowitz have created their own versions of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in recent years, approaching the characters from various angles that add something new to the material while remaining faithful to the original in spirit.

I came across Mr. Abdul-Jabbar’s Mycroft Holmes two years ago and recently read the follow-up novel, Mycroft and Sherlock. The authors make Sherlock’s older brother, Mycroft, the main character, with the emerging detective (introduced as a teenager in this series) playing a co-starring role; there are also endearing new characters, such as Mycroft’s friend Cyrus Douglas, a merchant and philanthropist. While still within familiar territory, these stories reveal new aspects of Sherlock’s character by not only portraying him as a younger and more vulnerable brother but also by depicting him in relationships with characters other than Dr. Watson. The third novel in this series, Mycroft and Sherlock: The Empty Birdcage, will be released this fall and is already on my reading list.

Bonnie MacBird’s novels, Unquiet Spirits and Art in the Blood, are close in atmosphere and tone to the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories. Unquiet Spirits, in particular, with its Scottish setting, well-developed characters, and bizarre set of plot circumstances, is an impressive and uncanny evocation of the Holmesian universe; Art in the Blood weaves a series of disparate plot threads together in a tale of murder and a stolen artifact that stretches from London to Paris and the Northwest of Britain. I’m looking forward to reading Miss MacBird’s third novel in the series, The Devil’s Due, which is due to be released later this year.

Theodora Goss’s “Monstrous Gentlewomen” novels, while focused on a set of female characters, include Holmes and Watson as friends of the Athena Club. With their light-hearted tone (despite some underlying seriousness), her books go the furthest in placing a new twist on the characters of the two men, depicting both as more romantic characters than they are in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s originals. In Miss Goss’s hands, the well-intentioned protection offered by Holmes and Watson to a group of young females clashes with the determination of the young women to fend for themselves, sometimes to comic effect. And I don’t know how to break this to you, lest you think the universe is playing tricks on us with synchronicity (maybe it is), but Miss Goss also is releasing a third novel in her series this fall, The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl. My reading list is growing—maybe yours is, too.

And then there is Anthony Horowitz’s The House of Silk, which has Holmes and Watson investigating a mysterious and terrifying series of events to uncover the scandalous truth behind the titular house, whose true nature is concealed until nearly the end. I read this book almost two years ago, when I had just arrived in L.A. and had neither a dime to my name or a library card, so that I had to keep returning to the library to read it. In fact, I started reading it in one L.A. County Library and ended up finishing it in the library of another town. Though steeped in sadness (a widowed Dr. Watson is recalling the events of an earlier time when Holmes was still alive), the book is a page turner. Like the other Sherlock Holmes authors named here, Mr. Horowitz has created a series; his Moriarty was published in 2014.

So what is the import, Dr. Watson, of all this Holmesiness? Why are all these great minds thinking in the same direction? I think it’s quite simply the appeal of a great archetypal character. No matter the circumstances, Holmes always keeps his head and always gets his man. In a world of confusion, pain, sorrow, and injustice, his powers of deduction inevitably lead him to the truth in the end. He is a person in whom you can place confidence—no considerations make him waver from his search for facts. His world is not so very different from ours, so it’s no wonder that Conan Doyle’s readers have refused to let the great detective die, even in the 21st century. We could all use someone like that in our lives.