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I'm still re-reading (in a very skim-y way) the Sherlock Holmes canon, although it seems I am destined never to finish The Valley of Fear, because (a) long looooong section in the U.S., which is not Doyle's specialist subject, (b) right-wing politics, (c) Moriarty retcon--Watson has never heard of Moriarty in "The Final Problem," but in VoF Holmes tells all about him. As I said last week, Doyle desperately needed a story bible. Or, you know, to give a damn about continuity. One of the late stories, "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge," is set in 1892! When Holmes is "dead"!
Anyway, I'm enjoying the Holmes-and-Watson despite wishing the continuity made sense. Often Holmes is a jackass to Watson (every time he's sarcastic about Watson's deductions I want to hit him), but other times he's all "Watson, let's go for a walk in the woods and look at the flowers!" (yes, really--it's in "Black Peter") or "oh, Watson, I knew you wouldn't let a minor issue like breaking the law prevent you from helping me!" or showing his affection in little ways like putting up the money for his relative to buy Watson's medical practice so Watson can move in with him again.
I wanted to note that the aforementioned "Wisteria Lodge" is very very gay, what with its three pairs of bachelors (Scott Eccles and Garcia, Henderson/Murillo and his inseparable secretary Lucas/Lopez, and of course Holmes and Watson). For your reading pleasure, here's Scott Eccles's description of Garcia and their friendship:
Unrelatedly, I note that in "The Adventure of Black Peter," Holmes has to pretend that he's organizing an Arctic expedition, and he later jokes to Inspector Hopkins that he and Watson will be somewhere in Norway if they're needed. Does anyone know of any pastiche or fanfic where they actually do go on an Arctic expedition? Because I would read the hell out of that.
Recently Read:
Alan Allport's Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War was a bit of a disappointment, especially after waiting for weeks to get it through interlibrary loan. For a scholarly book (it's published by Yale University Press and is based on the author's University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. dissertation) it's long on anecdote and short on analysis. There's a lot of "some people at the time said X, while others said Y," without much attempt to show even which viewpoint was more common, let alone to put those views into context or to figure out whether anybody was right. Obviously in some cases it'ss just a matter of differing viewpoints (for example, civilian grievances over the good food etc. that the forces--even those who were, say, clerks stationed in England and far from combat--got while civilians were thin and threadbare, or service people's resentment at some civilians' ingratitude), but some things (just how much unemployment/underemployment was there among ex-servicemen?) are at least somewhat measurable. Allport doesn't seem interested, though.
And I note with annoyance that the book, which contains a whole chapter about demobilisation's effects on romantic and sexual relationships, doesn't say a word about homosexuality. This is a subject it's notoriously hard to research, but other books (e.g. Adrian Gilbert's book on POWs, which cites Gordon Westwood's interviews with ex-POWs immediately after the war, or Paul Jackson's One of the Boys: Homosexuality in the Military During World War II) have at least established that both among POWs and among actively serving forces, some not-inconsiderable number of men had sex with other men. Many of those men considered themselves straight and/or were involved in heterosexual relationships or marriages at home, so it's not illogical to think that demobilisation would have been a big, complicated issue for them. But Allport doesn't even mention the possibility that anyone in the British forces might been queer or had any kind of same-sex contact. I think it's a rather shocking omission.
In other ways the book can be informative, though it often takes the form of factlets rather than sustained analysis. For example, Allport notes that the huge surge in divorce rates in the later 1940s was not only the continuation of a trend that had begun before the war, but also represented a backlog of divorce cases that had been filed during the war. And he points out that, while there was a severe labor shortage in Britain in the postwar years, there was simultaneously a lack of good jobs--well-paying, skilled jobs--for men of working-class origins who had learned technical skills in the military or in some cases had become officers with large responsibilities. Even middle class ex-officers sometimes had trouble finding professional work.
So, a mixed bag, and not what I was hoping it would be. His bibliography is promising, though, citing among other things a 1947 article about the Civil Resettlement scheme for ex-POWs that I hope I can get hold of.
What I'm reading next:
Don't know.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
halotolerant has started reading the Lord Peter Wimsey books, and I'm finding myself in a mood to re-read some of the early ones.
Tasty ETA: I made these cookies this afternoon, substituting chocolate chips and pecans for the raisins and walnuts. Om nom nom.
I'm still re-reading (in a very skim-y way) the Sherlock Holmes canon, although it seems I am destined never to finish The Valley of Fear, because (a) long looooong section in the U.S., which is not Doyle's specialist subject, (b) right-wing politics, (c) Moriarty retcon--Watson has never heard of Moriarty in "The Final Problem," but in VoF Holmes tells all about him. As I said last week, Doyle desperately needed a story bible. Or, you know, to give a damn about continuity. One of the late stories, "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge," is set in 1892! When Holmes is "dead"!
Anyway, I'm enjoying the Holmes-and-Watson despite wishing the continuity made sense. Often Holmes is a jackass to Watson (every time he's sarcastic about Watson's deductions I want to hit him), but other times he's all "Watson, let's go for a walk in the woods and look at the flowers!" (yes, really--it's in "Black Peter") or "oh, Watson, I knew you wouldn't let a minor issue like breaking the law prevent you from helping me!" or showing his affection in little ways like putting up the money for his relative to buy Watson's medical practice so Watson can move in with him again.
I wanted to note that the aforementioned "Wisteria Lodge" is very very gay, what with its three pairs of bachelors (Scott Eccles and Garcia, Henderson/Murillo and his inseparable secretary Lucas/Lopez, and of course Holmes and Watson). For your reading pleasure, here's Scott Eccles's description of Garcia and their friendship:
He spoke perfect English, was pleasing in his manners, and as good-looking a man as ever I saw in my life.One thing led to another, indeed! Somehow I suspect that Mr. Scott Eccles is not as conservative and orthodox as Watson claims. Later, Holmes helpfully describes the Scott Eccles-Garcia relationship as "unnatural," by which he explicitly means that it doesn't make sense that Garcia would pursue the friendship of a dull, aging, conventional man, but "unnatural" in this period, in reference to a same-sex attachment, has overtones. Really, Mr. Doyle, what did you mean us to read from this?
In some way we struck up quite a friendship, this young fellow and I. He seemed to take a fancy to me from the first, and within two days of our meeting he came to see me at Lee. One thing led to another, and it ended in his inviting me to spend a few days at his house.
Unrelatedly, I note that in "The Adventure of Black Peter," Holmes has to pretend that he's organizing an Arctic expedition, and he later jokes to Inspector Hopkins that he and Watson will be somewhere in Norway if they're needed. Does anyone know of any pastiche or fanfic where they actually do go on an Arctic expedition? Because I would read the hell out of that.
Recently Read:
Alan Allport's Demobbed: Coming Home After the Second World War was a bit of a disappointment, especially after waiting for weeks to get it through interlibrary loan. For a scholarly book (it's published by Yale University Press and is based on the author's University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. dissertation) it's long on anecdote and short on analysis. There's a lot of "some people at the time said X, while others said Y," without much attempt to show even which viewpoint was more common, let alone to put those views into context or to figure out whether anybody was right. Obviously in some cases it'ss just a matter of differing viewpoints (for example, civilian grievances over the good food etc. that the forces--even those who were, say, clerks stationed in England and far from combat--got while civilians were thin and threadbare, or service people's resentment at some civilians' ingratitude), but some things (just how much unemployment/underemployment was there among ex-servicemen?) are at least somewhat measurable. Allport doesn't seem interested, though.
And I note with annoyance that the book, which contains a whole chapter about demobilisation's effects on romantic and sexual relationships, doesn't say a word about homosexuality. This is a subject it's notoriously hard to research, but other books (e.g. Adrian Gilbert's book on POWs, which cites Gordon Westwood's interviews with ex-POWs immediately after the war, or Paul Jackson's One of the Boys: Homosexuality in the Military During World War II) have at least established that both among POWs and among actively serving forces, some not-inconsiderable number of men had sex with other men. Many of those men considered themselves straight and/or were involved in heterosexual relationships or marriages at home, so it's not illogical to think that demobilisation would have been a big, complicated issue for them. But Allport doesn't even mention the possibility that anyone in the British forces might been queer or had any kind of same-sex contact. I think it's a rather shocking omission.
In other ways the book can be informative, though it often takes the form of factlets rather than sustained analysis. For example, Allport notes that the huge surge in divorce rates in the later 1940s was not only the continuation of a trend that had begun before the war, but also represented a backlog of divorce cases that had been filed during the war. And he points out that, while there was a severe labor shortage in Britain in the postwar years, there was simultaneously a lack of good jobs--well-paying, skilled jobs--for men of working-class origins who had learned technical skills in the military or in some cases had become officers with large responsibilities. Even middle class ex-officers sometimes had trouble finding professional work.
So, a mixed bag, and not what I was hoping it would be. His bibliography is promising, though, citing among other things a 1947 article about the Civil Resettlement scheme for ex-POWs that I hope I can get hold of.
What I'm reading next:
Don't know.
halotolerant has started reading the Lord Peter Wimsey books, and I'm finding myself in a mood to re-read some of the early ones.Tasty ETA: I made these cookies this afternoon, substituting chocolate chips and pecans for the raisins and walnuts. Om nom nom.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-30 01:53 am (UTC)I loved the Granada version of this story - Mr Scott Eccles had such quivering outrage.