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First of all, let me say how much I love and admire this book, in all its insane, obsessive glory. It is truly a labor of fannish love, in the best sense of all those words, and it offers, among other things, a window into a non-sf fandom which behaves in ways comfortingly and fannishly familiar. These are people who love Holmes, write about Holmes, sometimes in essays, sometimes in pastiches, and who above all have devoted incredible amounts of delighted energy to the great Sherlockian Game of pretending that Watson is real, Holmes is real, and that therefore, if you are ingenious and painstaking enough, you can fit all the stories into a chronology of exact dates, matched against the actual weather and historical events. In fact, so taken for granted is this game (what I think we would now call "fanon"--fan-generated canon) that the stories are arranged in "chronological" order.
I admire this crazy fannishness; I love Baring-Gould and all the Irregulars for their unapologetic devotion to their cause. But I have to say that this supremacy of fanon--not over canon, for the Sherlockian canon is sacred as scripture in this game--but over reality, makes the apparatus as frustrating as it is delightful.
Conan Doyle barely exists in Baring-Gould's annotations. Most, though not all, stories have a brief bibliographical note which details the history, insofar as it is known, of the original manuscript. The dates and order of publication of the stories are completely ignored. Not even a tiny note allowing for cross-referencing. Baring-Gould happily talks about the disputes among Sherlockian chronologists (should "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor" be dated to 1886? 1887? 1888?), but not a word about the actual dating of the actual stories.
The problem with this methodology is that Conan Doyle was not playing the Game.
It takes only a very cursory acquaintance with Sherlock Holmes to know that his creator did not like him very much. Reichenbach Falls is a byword. Moreover, Conan Doyle wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories at tremendous speed and with little or no interest in continuity. One of the many introductory essays to the ASH even quotes Conan Doyle dismissing continuity as unnecessary: "In short stories it has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter if I hold my readers?" Conan Doyle, in other words, was a slovenly writer. Dr. Watson's wandering wound is an example of this, as is the fact that in "The Man with the Twisted Lip," John H. Watson is called James by his wife. (Watson's wife or wives is herself--or themselves--another shining example.) And many of the stories are not even consistent with themselves. Conan Doyle never checked a fact if he didn't have to.
So the spectacle of Sherlockians standing on their heads trying to make a chronology out of straw is charming and entertaining, but I am finding that, more and more, it gets in the way of trying to figure out how the stories fit together. Once you've trapped yourself into trying to explain why Sherlock Holmes, or Mycroft, for that matter, is referring to Watson's published accounts of his cases before they've been published in the fan-generated chronology, you are beginning to do a great disservice, as much to yourself as to your material. In the historical chronology, and clearly in Conan Doyle's own mind, when Holmes mentions Watson's stories, it's because Holmes, Watson, Conan Doyle, and all their readers know that the stories have been published. For example, in "The Greek Interpreter," Mycroft tells Watson, "I hear of Sherlock everywhere since you became his chronicler." Baring-Gould admits this means the adventure has to be dated after the publication of A Study in Scarlet in 1887. He dates it in 1888, which means that A Study in Scarlet would be the only story Watson had published, making the word "chronicler" seem more than a little ridiculous. But "The Greek Interpreter" was published in September 1893, the twenty-fourth Sherlock Holmes story to see print. Suddenly Mycroft's comment doesn't look ridiculous at all.
Though I adore the ASH, I think the aggressiveness with which it locks itself and its readers into its self-chosen chronology makes it almost as problematic as helpful. Which is a great pity, because in so many ways, it is the most marvelous of books.
I admire this crazy fannishness; I love Baring-Gould and all the Irregulars for their unapologetic devotion to their cause. But I have to say that this supremacy of fanon--not over canon, for the Sherlockian canon is sacred as scripture in this game--but over reality, makes the apparatus as frustrating as it is delightful.
Conan Doyle barely exists in Baring-Gould's annotations. Most, though not all, stories have a brief bibliographical note which details the history, insofar as it is known, of the original manuscript. The dates and order of publication of the stories are completely ignored. Not even a tiny note allowing for cross-referencing. Baring-Gould happily talks about the disputes among Sherlockian chronologists (should "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor" be dated to 1886? 1887? 1888?), but not a word about the actual dating of the actual stories.
The problem with this methodology is that Conan Doyle was not playing the Game.
It takes only a very cursory acquaintance with Sherlock Holmes to know that his creator did not like him very much. Reichenbach Falls is a byword. Moreover, Conan Doyle wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories at tremendous speed and with little or no interest in continuity. One of the many introductory essays to the ASH even quotes Conan Doyle dismissing continuity as unnecessary: "In short stories it has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter if I hold my readers?" Conan Doyle, in other words, was a slovenly writer. Dr. Watson's wandering wound is an example of this, as is the fact that in "The Man with the Twisted Lip," John H. Watson is called James by his wife. (Watson's wife or wives is herself--or themselves--another shining example.) And many of the stories are not even consistent with themselves. Conan Doyle never checked a fact if he didn't have to.
So the spectacle of Sherlockians standing on their heads trying to make a chronology out of straw is charming and entertaining, but I am finding that, more and more, it gets in the way of trying to figure out how the stories fit together. Once you've trapped yourself into trying to explain why Sherlock Holmes, or Mycroft, for that matter, is referring to Watson's published accounts of his cases before they've been published in the fan-generated chronology, you are beginning to do a great disservice, as much to yourself as to your material. In the historical chronology, and clearly in Conan Doyle's own mind, when Holmes mentions Watson's stories, it's because Holmes, Watson, Conan Doyle, and all their readers know that the stories have been published. For example, in "The Greek Interpreter," Mycroft tells Watson, "I hear of Sherlock everywhere since you became his chronicler." Baring-Gould admits this means the adventure has to be dated after the publication of A Study in Scarlet in 1887. He dates it in 1888, which means that A Study in Scarlet would be the only story Watson had published, making the word "chronicler" seem more than a little ridiculous. But "The Greek Interpreter" was published in September 1893, the twenty-fourth Sherlock Holmes story to see print. Suddenly Mycroft's comment doesn't look ridiculous at all.
Though I adore the ASH, I think the aggressiveness with which it locks itself and its readers into its self-chosen chronology makes it almost as problematic as helpful. Which is a great pity, because in so many ways, it is the most marvelous of books.
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