The Hound of the Baskervilles and The House of Silk – December CC Book Club Selection

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<p>^^^ Good to know … Mary can not be bothered with explanations as she attempts world domination. (I’m not sure I believe her. I think she couldn’t resist. L-) )</p>

<p>I saw and liked this question on SparkNotes. I think it fits with our discussion:</p>

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<p>I like Gothic novels - mysteries in particular. It seems harder to find a good one these days. The Hound of the Baskervilles hits so many of the right Gothic notes:

Doesn’t Hound seem to have them all? And yet Holmes himself is the antithesis of all that’s Gothic. I would think that Doyle had fun writing this one.</p>

<p>(I’m not answering the question directly as I read SparkNotes answer and it remains in my mind.)</p>

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<p>I can’t believe Mary found the right name for the trope!</p>

<p>I don’t think Holmes was troubled for long - and since this book takes place somewhere in the middle of his career, you can’t really have him be more human, as it has to fit in with the general timeline. </p>

<p>I think it rather amusing that Doyle was a spiritualist, but is definitely having Holmes find the plausible explanations for the events. You wonder why Doyle didn’t realize there were plausible explanations for most of what happened in seances. Though I guess he felt a deep need to believe. I found this quite amusing. (From Wikipedia)</p>

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<p>I’ve always meant to read some of the classic gothic novels, but don’t have much patience for the genre. I’ve read some Poe, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and that’s about it. (No Dracula, Frankenstein or any of the modern masters either except one recent book by Neil Gaiman if it counts.) Oh and I’ve read Jane Austen’s parody of Gothic novels Northanger Abbey.</p>

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<p>^^^ Well, now add The Hound of the Baskervilles and books by the Brontes. And I bet you’ve read Rebecca.</p>

<p>What about some of the modern Gothics? Didn’t you read The Thirteenth Tale and The Forgotten Garden with the CC Book Club? I throw Shadow of the Wind into that Gothic-y mix also.</p>

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<p>Victoria Holt, anyone? Holt, aka Eleanor Hibbert, wrote gothic romance novels in the 1960’s, I believe. When I was around middle school age, I took my mother’s copies. I adored them!</p>

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<p>Victoria Holt and Mary Stewart :slight_smile: Many are being republished - look for Rediscovered Classics (Mary Stewart) or Casablanca Classics (Victoria Holt).</p>

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<p>^ I loved the Mary Stewart “novels of romantic suspense.” I think I read every one of them during my teen years. FYI, Mary Stewart died earlier this year at the age of 97. This is an interesting obit: <a href=“Mary Stewart obituary | Romance books | The Guardian”>http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/15/mary-stewart&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Although not a gothic title, another book that I loved as a young adult was The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy. I mention it because the hero was a master of disguise just like Sherlock Holmes, and like Holmes, he assumed those identities so brilliantly that he was not always recognized by those closest to him. Watson says in The House of Silk that Holmes “had a knack of metamorphosing into whatever character he wished to play and that if he believed it, you would believe it too, right up to the moment of revelation” (p. 229). This is also a good description of Orczy’s hero–although unlike Sherlock Holmes, the Scarlet Pimpernel was quite capable of love (be still my heart :x ).</p>

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<p>I read a ton of Mary Stewart, but I’d call most of them romances with a little bit of thriller/mystery - nothing supernatural. no ghosts. Ditto Rebecca and the Forgotten Garden. My friends were all big Victoria Holt fans, but I wasn’t.</p>

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<p>Rebecca and Turn of the Screw are great. I’ve read Rebecca twice andTurn of the Screw several times…and I’m not generally much of a re-reader.</p>

<p>One of my sons read Frankenstein for a project, and so I read it too. It’s a good book. I was glad I had read it when I saw the sublime National Theatre Live film of the stage play with Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller last month. That production was one of the best things I ever saw!</p>

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<p>^ And it starred not one but TWO Sherlocks!</p>

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<p>Interesting article about the various incarnations of Sherlock Holmes through the years (including some commentary on The House of Silk): <a href=“Book Review: The House of Silk - WSJ”>http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970204618704576642991907574016&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>^^^ Good article. I agree overall with the review of The House of Silk. I particularly like - and noted while reading -

I haven’t read all the Holmes short stories but I have read more than a few over the years. I’d catch a word or two (House of Silk) that referred to a past case (Holmes/Watson oeuvre) and know that I missed many others.</p>

<p>In both The Hound of the Baskervilles and The House of Silk, Watson is Holmes-less for a time. In both books everyone wants to know where Holmes can be found. Stapleton asks after Holmes in Hound and both Carstairs and the Reverend inquire after Holmes in *The House of Silk<a href=“after%20his%20escape%20from%20jail”>/i</a>. I read somewhere that the fact that Holmes remains apart from Watson in Hound allows the mystery to build unfettered by Holmes’ insight. In The House of Silk Holmes’ absence allows the villains to tip their hand. The visits to Watson by Catherine Carstairs and later the Reverend Charles Fitzsimmons seem too coincidental to actually be so. I immediately took a closer look at the good Reverend.</p>

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<p>Ah, this answers one of the questions that had been running through my mind. When I read The Hound of the Baskervilles, I was struck by how it was really Watson’s story more than Holmes’. Holmes says good-bye to Watson on p. 48 and doesn’t reappear until p. 114. That’s over 40% of this short novel! </p>

<p>It’s sort of surprising that Arthur Conan Doyle’s story is so enduring (and endearing) when the rather plodding Watson has to carry the burden of so much of it. I guess the appeal is that he is supposed to be like us—an everyman character—an ordinary, intelligent, curious person, but not the genius needed to solve the mystery. </p>

<p>One of the points I found interesting in the WSJ article is this:</p>

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<p>The parts that we viewed as “over-the-top” (e.g., the preposterous double life of Mrs. Carstairs, Evil Gloating, Moriarty’s cameo, etc.), the author of the article sees as a deliberate and engaging technique used by Horowitz. Maybe I took the story too seriously, not attuned enough to the parts that were “rife with tongue-in-cheek references,” as the article puts it, because I didn’t get all the in-jokes. @PlantMom, your husband is a fan – did he read The House of Silk and perhaps “get it” better than a reader (like me) with only a passing familiarity with Holmes? </p>

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<p>Saw this in Ny times - museum display opening in London</p>

<p><a href=“In London, a Study in Sherlock - The New York Times”>In London, a Study in Sherlock - The New York Times;

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<p>^I was going to post that!</p>

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<p>What a cool-sounding exhibit. I know a couple of young people who are studying in London, and I’m going to alert them to it.</p>

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<p>^ Sign me up for “The Case of the Curious Cocktail” tour!</p>

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<p>One of the things I learned more about via this duet is the word “pastiche.” It wasn’t part of my active vocabulary, but I kept seeing it used in reviews of The House of Silk. Some descriptions:</p>

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<p>On a blog about literature vs. fan fiction (<a href=“Pastiche: Fan Fiction or Literature? | Geri Schear”>A Biased Judgement | Geri Schear), the writer asks the question, “Can a pastiche ever surpass the original inspiration in quality?” Any thoughts on that?</p>

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<p>That’s a good question, Mary. I think it would depend on the depth and subtlety…the artistic quality…of the original work. A good pastiche of a relatively shallow work by a gifted imitator could perhaps surpass the original.</p>

<p>Did anybody ever see Gus Van Sant’s pastiche of Psycho? Lots of people apparently hated it, but I thought it was quite intriguing and enjoyable. Of course, it in no way surpassed Hitchcock’s Psycho.</p>

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<p>I’m not a fan of fan fiction - at least, the fan fiction sites for popular novels as opposed to pastiche by an Anthony Horowitz or Laurie King.</p>

<p>Some authors encourage fan fiction. J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer do. Both have seen two popular series take off from their fan fiction sites: Cassandra Clare - The Mortal Instruments series (Harry Potter fan fiction) and E.L. James - Fifty Shades of Grey series (Twilight fan fiction). I don’t think of those series as pastiche though. </p>

<p>On the other hand, “George R.R. Martin, who was selected by Time magazine as one of the “2011 Time 100” and is most famous for his epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, is also strongly opposed to fan fiction, believing it to be copyright infringement and a bad exercise for aspiring writers.” Many authors feel the same way. <a href=“Fan fiction - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_fiction&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>Me … too much to read to bother with fan fiction in general.</p>

<p>I tried to think of literary characters written today that will stand the test of time like Holmes/Watson, Jekyll/Hyde, Anne of Green Gables. I’m drawing a blank, except for Harry Potter. Anyone?</p>

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<p>I’d forgotten about the Laurie King series. Has anyone read those? How does Sherlock Holmes come across in those books?</p>

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<p>Although it doesn’t surpass the original, a book like Wide Sargasso Sea is certainly of high quality. And one of the “pastiche sites” I was looking at also mentioned Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard, which received critical acclaim.</p>

<p>Here’s a list of fan fiction efforts across the board: <a href=“https://www.fanfiction.net/book/”>https://www.fanfiction.net/book/&lt;/a&gt; There’s something out there for everyone, I guess. You’ll even find fan fiction for some of our prior CC selections, if anyone is interested :). I avoid fan fiction. Most of it is just so horribly written. But I shouldn’t be such a snob – I guess there is merit in any project that gets people excited about either writing or reading, no matter the quality.</p>

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<p>I’d like to think Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call will stand the test of time, but I’m probably blinded by my own bias.</p>