The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes
July 1, 2008 at 4:28 pm (Uncategorized) (19th century, detective fiction, mystery, short stories)
The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Ever since I discovered Sherlock Holmes back in December, I can’t seem to get enough of him! I haven’t been reading the stories in any particular order, as I began with the Adventures and Memoirs of Holmes (together in one volume), went back to A Study in Scarlet, where Holmes was first introduced, and finally came to this last collection of short stories that Conan Doyle published about Holmes a few years before his death.
I found that this particular collection had a completely different feel to it, especially compared to the Adventures and the Memoirs. Part of this can be explained by Conan Doyle’s experimentation with different narrative voices, as unlike the previous collections I read, the entirety of this collection was not narrated by Watson. A few were recounted by Holmes, and one was in the third person omniscient voice. While it was really interesting to read the unfolding mystery from Holmes’s perspective, it definitely gave a completely different feel to the stories (particularly because, unlike Watson, Holmes always knows what’s going on, and has to be careful not to reveal everything from the outset!).
But more than the different narrative style, I found that overall these stories seemed both more dark, and less like adventures. It seems a bit silly to remark that the Adventures has a more, well, adventurous, feel to it than the Case-Book, but that’s really the best way to describe it. Even though eleven out of the twelve stories are titled “adventures” rather than “problems”, they read more like puzzles to be solved. I’m not sure if I felt this way because I’m becoming accustomed to Holmes’s problem-solving style, or if they’re really objectively more like puzzles. I’m not sure how to determine this.
In any case, I still found the stories extremely enjoyable, but would again recommend starting your aquaintance with Sherlock Holmes by reading the Adventures or the Memoirs rather than the Case-Book or A Study in Scarlet.
The ideas of my friend Watson, though limited, are exceedingly pertinacious. For a long time he has worried me to write an experience of my own. Perhaps I have rather invited this persecution, since I have often had occasion to point out to him how superficial are his own accounts and to accuse him of pandering to popular taste instead of confining himself rigidly to fact and figures. “Try it yourself, Holmes!” he has retorted, and I am compelled to admit that, having taken my pen in my hand, I do begin to realise that the matter must be presented in such a way as may interest the reader.
The Garden-Party
June 4, 2008 at 12:41 pm (Uncategorized) (20th century, fiction, short stories)
The Garden-Party and other stories by Katherine Mansfield
I started reading Katherine Mansfield a few years ago because of Virginia Woolf. She once famously wrote: “I was jealous of her writing – the only writing I have ever been jealous of.” (This quotation appears in the mini-biography of Mansfield at the beginning of my Penguin edition of her Collected Stories.) I’m not sure where I first read this, but this was such an intriguing comment that I absolutely had to find out what Woolf was jealous of!
I think that whoever wrote the blurb on the back of my Penguin edition had it right when they called Mansfield’s stories “graceful, delicate, and quietly devastating, they observe apparently trivial incidents to create sensitive, often painful revelations of her characters’ inner lives.” I absolutely agree with this. Each story seems to recount some small, insignificant moment of everyday life that turns out to be a moment of clarity to the main character of the story, who then comes to a painful conclusion about society or their own life. I found this really surprising at first, because the stories really don’t start out with a sad feel to them at all. But there comes a turning point in almost each tale where you realize that things are not going to work out quite how you expected or hoped, and this is usually not for the better. In addition, I felt that these endings came somewhat abruptly, and left me wanting the story to continue because I wasn’t ready to part ways with the characters she introduced. In fact, when I was most of the way through this collection I was taken aback by a tale that had an indisputably happy ending, with no bittersweetness to it at all.
Even though these tales are quite sad, I still love them. Each story offers an intimate and detailed glimpse into a person’s life, almost as though you were given a window into someone’s mind that only lasted a few hours, or a day at most. I came to love them for their feeling of incompleteness, as though these stories were interesting people I had encountered on a train in another country, and would never meet again.
I agree with Woolf – this is writing to be jealous of! (But unlike Woolf, I must admit to a similar jealousy when it comes to many other writers!).
Very early morning. The sun was not yet risen, and the whole of Crescent Bay was hidden under a white sea-mist. The big bush-covered hills at the back were smothered. You could not see where they ended and the paddocks and bungalows began. The sandy road was gone and the paddocks and bungalows the other side of it; there were no white dunes covered with reddish grass beyond them; there was nothing to mark which was beach and where was the sea. A heavy dew had fallen. The grass was blue. Big drops hung on the bushes and just did not fall; the silvery, fluffy toi-toi was limp on its long stalks, and all the marigolds and the pinks in the bungalow gardens were bowed to the earth with wetness. Drenched were the cold fuchsias, round pearls of dew lay on the flat nasturtium leaves. It looked as though the sea had beaten up softly in the darkness, as though one immense wave had come rippling, rippling – how far? Perhaps if you had waked up in the middle of the night you might have seen a big fish flicking in at the window and gone again …
