mrv3000 | (no subject)

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sherlock

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Okay, a question for anyone who knows. I think it's established that ACD killed off (or tried to) Sherlock Holmes because he wanted to work on other things. I've seen something to that effect.

But what I'm not clear on is that people say he hated the character. It's one thing to want to do other stuff, but it's something else to actually hate doing something.

Does anyone have anything textual they can point to that shows his hatred for Holmes? All I can find is him simply wanting to work on things he thought were more important, which isn't the same thing, really.

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I don't have the quoted text on me, but I think he just got tired of writing the stories and, like you said, wanted to work on greater things. He thought that his stories wouldn't survive, I know that. Because so many people got upset with him and demanded Sherlock's return he did revive the series, but he never really thought it was 'important'.

That's basically what I've been able to find as well.

My bother is a huge Holmes fan and from what he used to tell me, ACD only wrote SH to make some money and never considered it his real literary work. When he killed Holmes off, he used to get accosted by people on the street and was constantly attacked for killing Holmes. Under all that pressure, he brought him back but hated him because he felt his other work was overlooked and his career became about Holmes.

That's what I've heard as well, but I'm wondering how much is fact and how much is legend.

Well, there's that quote about how if in 100 years he's only known as the man who created Sherlock Holmes then he'd consider himself a failure, and the quote about not caring what people do to Sherlock in adaptations. That + the killing + subsequent peer-pressure retcon don't suggest to me that he was particularly proud of or overly fond of the stories.

He might not have HATED Sherlock Holmes, but I think it's probably a safe bet that by the end of his life/career he was at least resentful of the fact that it had overshadowed anything else he did and that he hadn't even been able to walk away from it when intended. I assume it's a bit like when you write a fic you think is so-so in an hour and it gets a billion reviews but the 50,000-word novel-length you slaved over for months gets like one comment.

Yeah, that makes sense.

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It's funny that his mother was a fangirl. XD

MAYBE HE REALIZED WHAT HE HAD WROUGHT

*SNORTS*

To really answer, I would have to pull out the huge Leslie Klinger Annotated books (which are fantastic, fyi.) But essentially what everyone else has said. I'm not sure he hated the character, but he definitely resented that Holmes was all he was known for and he was forced to constantly write about him.

I think you could argue with good reason that the stories decrease in quality as time goes on, and ACD obviously is bored with it. Especially after Holmes is resurrected and the very late stores, with the exception of "His Last Bow", are really pretty crappy. They were written pretty much just for a check.

Of course, you also have to take into consideration that ACD got progressively more crazy and delusional towards the end of his life. If you really read about his involvement with spiritualism, the man was missing a few screws. He would have preferred to be remembered for his spiritualist work, like discovering photos of ~~fairies~~ girls holding cut out pictures of fairies.

Oh, and the other thing I meant to say. The stories are RIFE with contradictions and inconsistencies and plotholes and things that plain don't make any sense or are just WRONG. But ACD never cared to check any of that stuff because he thought he was just writing trash fiction that no one would ever pay close attention to.

Of course, without all those errors, Sherlockians would have had nothing to do for the last 100+ years.

It's sort of like Doctor Who in that way. MWAH.

I didn't know that the quality went downhill. It does sound like he was phoning it in. Or the crazy thing. XD

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