Why Sherlock Holmes is Relevant (and not just because the TV show is new)

 
I love Victorian fiction because it’s classy, it’s elegant, and there’s something to it that is timeless. Okay, that something may not be the attire, or the etiquette, or the fact that the post came twice a day because of prolific letter-writing. But my love for Victorian fiction includes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. It's witty, the stories are good, and Sherlock acts like he has a secret from even the reader until the end when he oh-so-casually strolls around his parlor with a pipe and reveals all to John Watson -who, by the way, is not always as stupid as the old movies make him seem.  I am a huge fan of Sherlock in general, but especially BBC’s Sherlock, not because it’s contemporary and has omitted obsolete vernacular (though I love it), but because the shows are surprisingly loyal to the stories they’re based on. Benedict Cumberbatch has a name that’s fun to say, and Martin Freeman is not only Bilbo Baggins but a unique Watson that feels so true to Conan Doyle’s vision that sometimes I think he needs a handlebar mustache and a bourgeoisie laugh.

But the best part about BBC’s Sherlock being contemporary is that sometimes I believe he exists in real life. Why? Because he’s got something that CSI could never pull off, and because sometimes I actually think Sherlock is teaching me how to navigate the real world. Here are some lessons I’ve learned just this week.

1. The Science of Deduction.

If you’re writing an essay as, say, a final, be sure that what you’re using 3-5 pages of Times New Roman double-spaced to say something that will truly be different –but don’t try too hard to be different. Use the Science of Deduction (or your brain). 

While grading yesterday, I learned a few things (and, yes, these are all direct lines):

-Superhero movies bring sadness to the home.

-American Pie is pretty much the greatest movie of all time.

-Our country was founded on hemp.

-Women have been having babies since the beginning of time.

-Justin Beiber is detrimental to teen ears.

-“A woman, named anonymous, said…”

2. “Smart is the new sexy.”

                        After reading these, I’ve never been so enchanted by a well-written paper before.

3. Sherlock-vision

            The BBC show and the Guy Ritche/Robert Downey Jr. versions alike do a fantastic job of portraying Sherlock as a high-functioning sociopath. Of course, literature's first superhero needs a flaw. He’s rude, socially inept, and self-absorbed, and someone once described his level of Asperger’s as akin to being in a room with two TVs and the radio on, listening to them while participating in a conversation and attempting to compose an essay. Unfathomable.

            During the last week of our Aerobic Kickboxing class, our instructor brought in a police officer from campus security, a woman taller than my 6’2’’ brother and built like a viking. Among several tips she had about not attracting any crimes (locking doors, putting lamps on timers, watching what you put on Facebook *ahem), she showed us some moves that attackers might attempt and how to defend yourself.

            Her best advice: “Be observant.” Watch people around you, know where the exits are at all times, know what you have that you could use defensively, and think about what if’s before they happen. She, then, exemplified how she was driving, heard sirens behind her, moved out of the way for the firetruck, and then looked ahead to a semi that was rounding the corner. She thought, “What if he flips over? How would I react?” A few minutes later, it did and she knew exactly what to do.

            I think many writers have what-if-vision: that moment when you think, okay, what if while I’m standing in line at the bank, someone holds it up (and then the subsequent thoughts unfold like the episode of Castle when the writer becomes the hero. Hah. Take that, James Bond). Or maybe you’re hanging up Christmas lights, walking on the roof at your house and a board squeaks. The next think you know, you’re in a scene in your mind and you’ve lassoed the nearest feature of architecture before everything nearby caved in beneath you, and now you've used that string of Christmas lights like Tarzan.

            Wait- what?

            My point is that Sherlock-vision may, in fact, end up saving your life (if you don’t get too carried away with saving the people in the bank or swinging from the edge of your porch). By being observant and by looking at all loiterers as ne’er-do-wells, you may have just enough time to put your keys between the knuckles of one hand and be ready with your stiletto in the other just in time for someone to ask…

            “Do you know what time it is?”

            Okay, maybe that sounds more like paranoia than Sherlock-vision. My point is the same though.

4. “A Scandal in Belgravia”

            Sherlock is taken to Buckingham Palace in a sheet because he refuses to get dressed. Yeah, um, this may or may not be happening when I’m done administering English finals. Jus’ sayin.

            Also, you never know when the Queen may be reading your blog.

            ‘ello, Mum.

The Quotability of Aphorisms

Today I taught seniors in high school what an aphorism is. (I taught the juniors a few weeks ago, but the seniors don't need to know.)


Aphorism [af-uh-riz-uh m]:

a terse saying embodying a general truth, or astute observation. Could be a commonly used phrase, or an original phrase that is a universal truth.
 

Examples: 

An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

Your children need your presence more than they need your presents. (Jesse Jackson)

You are what you eat.

We are what we pretend to be so we must be careful what we pretend to be. (Kurt Vonnegut) 

The early bird gets the worm.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Don't store all your eggs in one-

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you get it. In creative writing, we call these cliches, and you're not supposed to use them. 

But in English, aphorisms -like quotes- are useful for writing essays and focusing on a thesis. 

But in creative writing, to recycle an overused phrase is disappointing at best.

But in English, a universal truth could be the only thing out of the whole book you underline.

But in creative writing, if all you write are universal truths, your book won't be specific enough to say anything worthwhile. 

What is a writer to do? 

Some young writers struggle with this.  We see Mark Twain and William Shakespeare quotes everywhere -and, of course, we all say we didn't like reading their stories when what we really mean is that in school we procrastinated, we crammed five extensive chapters into one night, and then was surprised when we didn't do well on the quiz the next day. We want to be like Twain, Hawthorne, or Bronte without having to read them. We want to have the mythological glamor of being a successful, published author, someone whose works will be  read  quoted by schoolchildren in a hundred years.

But you have to say something worth saying. 

Parallelism and extended metaphor are more fun to teach. There's more art to a story when the specific details around, say, a fish are really talking about youth. Do we always underline those sentences? No, but does that make their meaning any less powerful? And should you write phrases only to have people underline them? 

Write something meaningful, and do it because you're an artist, not because you want to be immortal or because you have a romanticized notion of what writing truly means. Use your own words, not someone else's. Find what you want to say instead of writing something so universal that it's vague, overused, or confusing.

 You can't make a silk purse out of sewing words that don't fit. 

Wait, what?

  

 

Dear Sylvia, I'm Sorry.

Writers work hard.

Yet we get rejection letters. Usually replies come in the form of "Thanks, but no thanks," but some of them are uncharacteristically harsh. So Writer's Digest started a new prompt for their writers. It's called "Reject a Hit" and the idea is to write a "clueless" and humorous rejection letter for a favorite hit or classic. Others that I've seen have been for The Godfather, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Befitting the requirement, they're crass, clueless, attacking, and, well, funny.

So here's mine: to Sylvia Plath regarding The Bell Jar.
(I'm sorry, Sylvia.)

January 29^th, 1963

Dear Mrs. Hughes,

Sorry –is it Mrs. Hughes, or Miss Plath, or Miss Lucas?

Unfortunately, Prescott Publishers is unable to accept The Bell Jar at this time. 

Just as we don’t know which name to use for you, it likewise seems to be a problem with your main character. We don’t know that her name is Esther until thirty pages into the book, after you’ve already told the reader that even her roommate acts like her name is Elly. She lies about her name again later. If we don’t even know what her name is, how can the reader attach to her as a protagonist –or care that she’s in New York? In fact, the only thing we do know about Esther are her strange tendencies to eat. (At least avocados in her grandfather’s suitcase are interesting.) She is more believable as an adolescent male teenager than as a woman starting a career.

What’s this mantra, “I am I am I am I am”? If she knows who she is so well, how come we don’t?

The protagonist’s identity crisis is not the only crisis this novel has: it has no plot. From what I can tell, the only driving question is whether Esther will kill herself –something that doesn’t appear to have much risk for the reader.

You have one thing going for you: the writing voice. Even though what Esther says is bafflingly inconsistent, at least her curiosity remains. This would be much more powerful for a story that actually had plot. We may be willing to look at the manuscript a second time -once you create real structure. This winter is said to be the coldest in 100 years: stay indoors and rewrite.

Sincerely,

Kristen Kauffman

Senior Editor

Prescott Publishers