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sherlock60Welcome back, everyone! Let's have some canon Sherlock Holmes discussion, shall we? What did you all think of The Norwood Builder? As always, I've written up a few of my own random thoughts and questions, which are behind the jump. Add your own in the comments!
Discussion about the Granada adaptation of The Norwood Builder is available in this week's Granada discussion post.
- I have rather a fondness for this story for its treatment of Holmes as a man, a friend, a seeker of justice, and a protector of the innocent. Much of what happens is Holmes avoiding credit and attention for his actions. He's stopped allowing Watson to tell his stories, saying his "zealous historian" may continue at some later undetermined day. He pays for the purchase of the doctor's practice surreptitiously so he can have his dear Watson back full-time at his side while keeping his involvement a secret. (I wonder how and when Watson found out all those years later and how he reacted.) The detective is devoted to helping McFarlane and when he believes he may not be able to save his client from the gallows, he is despondent. Holmes's work, his art, is his identity, and that is something he struggles with here. What place does a great hero have in a world with no great villain remaining? That is the question Holmes is struggling with at the beginning of the story. He finds his place saving the life of an innocent man and giving away the credit.
- For all its quality with emotion, NORW struggles with logical problems:
1. If it's unlikely for McFarlane to have been stupid enough to kill Oldacre the same night the will was written up, it's just as unlikely Oldacre would have been dumb enough to try to frame McFarlane for killing him then.
2. McFarlane wasn't suspicious at all of this stranger who suddenly wanted to give him his life's assets, but didn't want anyone to know about it?
3. The forensics are terrible. Killing a man by bludgeoning and then dragging his body through a house would be an awful, gory affair. Yet there's only a tiny amount of blood found. And the idea that rabbit bones could ever be passed off as a human skeleton, no matter how charred, is ridiculous. What looks like a femur or a human pelvis in a rabbit?
- I'm very interested in the side stories involved here. The Friesland, a case where Holmes and Watson both nearly died? And we don't get to hear anything more about it? Agony. And what happened with Bert Stevens, the murderer who tried to use Holmes and Watson to escape justice in 1887?
- This entire decades-long inter-generational revenge scheme stems directly from a housecat set loose one day in an aviary. Mrs. McFarlane called it "brutal cruelty", but from the cat's perspective, it was the ultimate vacation to the hunting grounds of her dreams.
- I have GOT to start using "Capital!" as an exclamation of happiness.
- "That supreme gift of the artist, the knowledge of when to stop." When to stop, my lovely artist friends? At 60 words precisely.
Comment away, and join us next Sunday for The Bruce-Partington Plans!
Discussion about the Granada adaptation of The Norwood Builder is available in this week's Granada discussion post.
- I have rather a fondness for this story for its treatment of Holmes as a man, a friend, a seeker of justice, and a protector of the innocent. Much of what happens is Holmes avoiding credit and attention for his actions. He's stopped allowing Watson to tell his stories, saying his "zealous historian" may continue at some later undetermined day. He pays for the purchase of the doctor's practice surreptitiously so he can have his dear Watson back full-time at his side while keeping his involvement a secret. (I wonder how and when Watson found out all those years later and how he reacted.) The detective is devoted to helping McFarlane and when he believes he may not be able to save his client from the gallows, he is despondent. Holmes's work, his art, is his identity, and that is something he struggles with here. What place does a great hero have in a world with no great villain remaining? That is the question Holmes is struggling with at the beginning of the story. He finds his place saving the life of an innocent man and giving away the credit.
- For all its quality with emotion, NORW struggles with logical problems:
1. If it's unlikely for McFarlane to have been stupid enough to kill Oldacre the same night the will was written up, it's just as unlikely Oldacre would have been dumb enough to try to frame McFarlane for killing him then.
2. McFarlane wasn't suspicious at all of this stranger who suddenly wanted to give him his life's assets, but didn't want anyone to know about it?
3. The forensics are terrible. Killing a man by bludgeoning and then dragging his body through a house would be an awful, gory affair. Yet there's only a tiny amount of blood found. And the idea that rabbit bones could ever be passed off as a human skeleton, no matter how charred, is ridiculous. What looks like a femur or a human pelvis in a rabbit?
- I'm very interested in the side stories involved here. The Friesland, a case where Holmes and Watson both nearly died? And we don't get to hear anything more about it? Agony. And what happened with Bert Stevens, the murderer who tried to use Holmes and Watson to escape justice in 1887?
- This entire decades-long inter-generational revenge scheme stems directly from a housecat set loose one day in an aviary. Mrs. McFarlane called it "brutal cruelty", but from the cat's perspective, it was the ultimate vacation to the hunting grounds of her dreams.
- I have GOT to start using "Capital!" as an exclamation of happiness.
- "That supreme gift of the artist, the knowledge of when to stop." When to stop, my lovely artist friends? At 60 words precisely.
Comment away, and join us next Sunday for The Bruce-Partington Plans!
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