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Sat Apr 8th, 2017
 | 08:49 pm - Gakkari again
Internet has been wonky to non-existent since Thursday, when I rashly printed my chiropractor's receipt for tax purposes. Printing always kicks me offline, but this time a reboot was only partially successful in bringing me back. Finicky reinstall of ethernet gizmo gets me back tonight, but may be gone tomorrow. Thus I post when I can, since typing on a cell screen is beyond frustration.
The Whole Art of Detection is... odd. Holmes pastiche is always just a little wonky but one ignores the slight shifts in this direction or that. Faye's shifts, however, stand out uncomfortably. The recurring instances of Holmes helping a downtrodden woman who wishes to be free of male encumbrances, and Watson tying himself into knots over Holmes' cocaine habit and stating his determination to wean him from it, just isn't ACD as I read him. The Watson bit is much more Laurie R. King and her felt need to make Mycroft lose weight because fat is a sign of moral torpor so terrible for the health. (She's only thinking of him. Note the English happily write fat people without worrying about them having strokes or heart attacks.)
It's still a fun read and the cases no more feeble than other pastichers, but it's not quite the second coming of ACD that reviews led me to expect.
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Fingers crossed that your internet stays behaving.
Is the "recurring instances" partly an obvious issue because the Whole Art of Detection is a compilation of separate short stories by the author, do you think? Personal notes in a pastiche may be less obvious in a single story but become more forceful and unavoidable when repeated in several short stories in close succession. It might well be. I didn't check to see if the stories were written at varying times, simply assuming Faye wanted to write her book as a collection of sketches rather than as a novel. I'd still expect a writer to check how often she used a particular theme, especially if it touched on the delicate territory of Holmes and women. Where a woman writer must tread very carefully indeed in case she's making Holmes into what she thinks he ought to be. (Male writers do it too, but my fanfic-honed instincts aren't as sensitive there.) |
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