Ok! Finished reading "The Hound of the Baskervilles", arguably the best Sherlock Holmes story written. I started to re-read it after hearing a song on Filk Radio by Brenda Sutton about the story. I had read the story a long time ago. I think I must have been in elementary school from my odd recollections of how the story went. I didn't remember any of the resolution at all. The major thing that stuck with me was Watson's description of Grimpen Mire, and how it swallowed a pony.
On this re-reading, I read it out of Eric's copy of the Annotated Sherlock Holmes, a HUGE book with all the Holmes stories and lots of notes. I'm afraid that this book did Baskervilles a small disservice, though. The notes refer to a theory about one of the other characters in the story, and reading them distracted me a bit from the main storyline. While most of the notes were pretty interesting, those notes definitely changed the tone of the story.
Anyway, I enjoyed the re-read, and I'm certain I got a lot more out of it this time 'round than I did when I first read it. I did realize while reading it that I really don't like Holmes. The stories are interesting, but the character himself is... I guess "trying" would be the best word. It's quite toned down in this story, but I went and read "A Scandal in Bohemia" right after finishing Baskervilles, and suddenly realized that I don't like Holmes much at all. He's a drug-addled, self-important twit who relies almost too much on his own frames of reference to make sense of the world. Throw him into a situation without the constraints of the society he lives in, like, oh, our own current reality, and his careful observations wouldn't hold up. But that's also the appeal of Holmes. He is a creature of his time and place. He knows everything important about his world. He is not meant to be thrown into a different situation, and he can handle everything in his own world quite well, thank you very much.
And, truth to tell, it wouldn't take Holmes too long to adapt even if he were thrown into an unexpected situation. At one point in Baskervilles, Holmes sums up his own philosophy quite well: "The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes." He's constantly observing, checking out things, comparing them to his store of known facts. But he's annoyingly superior, and secretive to the point of being a danger to his friends. It's a good thing Watson is an intelligent and strong man of action, who also seems to have an infinite supply of patience. Holmes is only tolerable in Watson's presence.
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