Conan Doyle is Still Cool

Perhaps I should apologize to the group that we haven't gotten onto the band wagon with this family book club as much as we had hoped to do. I am shocked to discover - again - that life is busy and sometimes even hectic.

But I noticed that the Sherlock Holmes stories are coming up soon on the family reading list, and Sheryl and I have gotten a head start. We've read three of the stories in about 4 days. I've read many of the stories before, but I don't recall whether I've ever read them aloud to someone else. It's great fun. We've started with A Scandal in Bohemia, The Read Headed League, and A Case of Identity. We're going great guns and hope to have many of them read by the time the family starts chatting them up. I've always loved them, anyway.

BBC's series based on the stories starred Jeremy Brett in the title role. I've seen others do well in the part, but, to me, Jeremy Brett WAS Sherlock Holmes. That's remarkable when you consider what an artless, harmless, romantic he played in the film version of My Fair Lady. I wonder whether he did his own singing in that part. I know that Audrey didn't.

Some pretty good Holmes movies have been made out of books which were written by others, long after the death of Sir Arthur. Nicole Williamson, who played Merlin in the 1980 (or thereabouts) version of Excalibur does a bang-up job as Holmes the cocaine addict in The Seven Percent Solution. Robert Duvall fakes a pretty good British accent as Dr. John Watson, and Alan Arkin plays Sigmund Freud as one might wish he had been. Besides, you can't go wrong with a movie which features a sword duel on top of a train that is sprinting along the Danube. ( I took a train along the Danube in '92, but it didn't sprint, and we never got to go up on top for a breather and a sword fight, because all the trains over there are electric now, and the pick-ups are on top, a situation which could be shocking for someone with 36" of steel in his hand.) The movie is deliberately and deliciously melodramatic and features some very fine music, not to mention some glorious east-European scenery.

Holmes is great. I look forward to chatting with you all about the stories.