it's elementary, my dear Watson...

I just finished reading the Barnes & Noble's edition of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Volume 1. It includes "A Study in Scarlet", "The Sign of Four", "The Hound of the Baskervilles", and an assortment of shorter cases that I could knock out before getting too sleepy at night. (The title of my posting is a famous misquotation of Holmes who only once said "Elementary" to Dr. Watson-- in "The Crooked Man". One other ironic surprise: Doyle's most famous story, "The Hound of the Baskervilles" features Dr. Watson much more prominently than Holmes.)

The anthology was a light but pleasant read. I enjoyed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's writing style, with its long but readable sentences.

Doyle also had quite a vocabulary. I had to hit the dictionary a few times, for such words as minatory, portmanteau, and atavism. And it was fun to read obscure words/phrases that I knew but rarely see in print-- such as "Parthian shot" (from my studies of Revelation). Other times, he used foreign phrases and the B&N edition was kind to provide the translation in a footnote (e.g., "Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire." is French for the proverb that a "A fool can always find a bigger fool to admire him.") On occasion, he made surprising cultural references-- for example, the key role of Mormonism in "A Study in Scarlet".

The overarching premise is the power of observation-- not just seeing but absorbing the information around us. At one point, Holmes tells Watson, "You see, but you do not observe." And beyond observation, Holmes and Watson point to the value of thorough thought-- in critical and creative thinking, forming theories and drawing inferences from facts and studies of human behavior.

Sometimes, the resulting observations are trivial. (For example, looking in the mirror in the midst of reading the book, I realized that Holmes would infer that I'm left-handed by observing what was left of my mustache after I shaved.) Other times, the observations are more profound. (For example, in politics, how can we tell the difference between what people say and what they believe?)

It was interesting that Holmes was a drug fiend who enjoyed his cocaine as a diversion from boredom. Holmes was also a sexist ("women are never to be entirely trusted") who saw women as a distraction to the more glorious pursuit of knowledge.

In addition to the importance of observation and despite his dalliance with recreational drugs, Doyle emphasized the frenetic pace by which Holmes worked. This is most obvious in the contrast Doyle draws with Holmes' nearly-anonymous older brother Mycroft in "The Greek Interpreter". Mycroft was even more brilliant than Sherlock, but much lazier and thus nearly a non-entity. In Doyle's account, Holmes is blessed with a great mind, but it is a resource that he develops with discipline and exercises with passion and justice.