Some readers of this weblog asked me to follow-up a little bit on my newfound Holmes fascination, and my attending the meeting of the Notorious Canary-Trainers on Sunday. Like I said in the earlier post, I had a great time and was very impressed with both the voluminous Holmes knowledge everyone had, as well as the very welcoming and generous attitude of the group toward a newcomer. I have a lot of catching up to do, but find myself currently motivated to work my way through the Canon again.

The meeting was rather low-key and convivial; more a relaxed, fun reading group than anything else. I found it really fascinating to see the wide variety of different Holmes volumes everyone brought with them to the meeting — one man brought the Klinger annotated edition, a few people brought the smaller Oxford editions, and a number of older “Complete Holmes” editions (I had the tiny Bantam editions, the man next to me had the Barnes & Noble editions, etc.) One thing I saw was missing and, I think, might have been helpful was that no one had the Baring-Gould edition with them, so I’ll try to bring that next time.

Is this terribly relevant to the way the meeting went, or what we did? Nah, but it’s interesting to see that in a small community of Holmes afficionados like this, that everyone comes at it from a slightly different direction. I’d love to find out more of what motivated people to join this group, and what motivates them to continue — how much they love Holmes? The community of the group? Family? Other concerns? I’m obviously interested in how fan communities work, and certainly don’t plan to study this group without their express consent, but I’d be lying if I said these kinds of questions weren’t interesting to me. So, yeah, what’s motivated me to join up with this group?

As often happens whenever I get obsessively interested in something, I start gobbling up other media related to it. In the earlier Holmes-related post, I mentioned the radio dramas I found on my hard drive, and I’ve also been Netflixing several Holmes films. I most recently watched Sherlock Holmes and The Case of the Silk Stockings, a very odd reimagining of Holmes and Watson, starring Rupert Everett as Holmes (yes, the Four Weddings and a Funeral guy), and Ian Hart as Watson (a.k.a. Professor Quirrell in Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone):

Not horrible by any means, it was also not particularly interesting either. Every age reimagines older stories through the lens of the times, and so it’s no surprise that someone would make a Holmes story set during the Victorian era, but with the sensibilities of the 21st century: Psychological profiling, sexual fetishism, serial killers, etc. Thus, it comes off as … odd. Everett and Hart are competent, even quite good at times, but ultimately this feels like it could have been an episode of “Wire in the Blood” or any other relatively-current British crime procedural.

I wish there were more creative reimaginings of the Holmes canon making it to film — next up for me is the 2007 BBC Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars, starring Jonathan Pryce as Holmes and, presumably, a bunch of kids as the Baker Street Irregulars. This seems a more promising approach to take, though still not quite as interesting as the heyday of film adaptations such as Billy Wilder’s Private Life of Sherlock Holmes and Herbert Ross’s The Seven Per-Cent Solution, based on the novel by Nicholas Meyer. Speaking of Holmes’s “seven per-cent solution” (the dilution of cocaine he’d inject himself with), here’s a kinda cool t-shirt I’m thinking of getting:

… based on Sidney Paget’s original illustration of Holmes, after shooting up. Available via this link.

Okay, enough rambling. I have to go clean my house, as my father and stepmother are coming to visit this afternoon!