Books: A Study in Scarlet

So, I am a huge fan of House (which was based on Sherlock Holmes) and am devastated that it has finished.  I have also recently watched the Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock and the modern BBC adaptation, all of which I found to be very entertaining but very post-modern and skewed towards a particular fashion in their creation.

So, my expectation was when I read a study in Scarlet that Holmes would be very little like the sarcastic, short, brilliant and frankly very Aspie character that he is depicted as on screen, and would likely be much more like the be-deerstalkered aristocratic sleuth of the films of the 1950's.

And I was wrong.

 Holmes is all of that and more. He is very judgemental, quick-witted and scathingly condescending to John Watson, (whom he had not met at the start of this book) focused to the point of obsessive on what he deems to be important, and utterly ignorant of anything he deems irrelevant.

A Study in Scarlet is the first of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries and jumps midway through from a case in the heart of London involving the deaths of two gentlemen with a note left in blood in German to the American Wild West where a band of pioneers are at death's door until they are saved by a group of spiritual pioneers.  Tying these two disparate stories together is the heart of this tale, and it was as unexpected as it was well-written.

For me as a new Aspie, Holmes is someone I find both completely alien and yet utterly relate-able.  His obsessions with what he feels is worthwhile and his rejection of the expectations of others (such as Watson's astonished insistence that Holmes must learn of the make-up of the cosmos, while Holmes argues he would happily forget the names of all the planets if it gave him extra space for relevant details) reminds me very much of my view of the world: what i think is important matters. Everything else is someone else's issue to deal with.

I have now started on the Hound of the Baskervilles, mainly due to it being the only other Holmes I have available, but A Study in Scarlet is certainly an entertaining and worthwhile read for anyone new to Holmes or wishing to brush up on references from its current incarnations, and it will certainly encourage me to read more Conan-Doyle

Books: Tarzan of the Apes

I've just finished reading Tarzan of the Apes, and for a naive, racist, misogynistic tome very much created by the age of the British Empire it is surprisingly touching and deep.

The story is now such a wonderful cliche: the child of an English nobleman brought up ignorant of his origin by a tribe of Apes rises above his savage upbringing to become a fine gentleman.

The main complaint I have about this book is its stereotypical view of the world from a very white middle class perspective of the day. All of the white characters are very noble and Honourable, unless they are sailors in which case they are ruffians, thugs and mutineers.  There is only 1 black character with any depth who is, unsurprisingly, a servant, and is prone to hysterical fainting. Most of The Blacks are natives of the African Jungle and are portrayed as primitive, superstitious, stupid, cannibalistic savages. Tarzan himself is a clean-limbed, tanned Adonis of a man, referred to often as a forest god.  For all of the above I should hate this book.

However, watching the white ape struggle to fit with the apes he believed were his people and then struggle to master the social etiquette of modern society made Tarzan a much more empathetic figure than I would have expected. Maybe its my new found appreciation for what it is to be different in a society that expects conformity but i found myself warming to him and understanding the bittersweet finale that gave him the opportunity to escape the gilded cage he found himself drawn towards.

Taken as a book of its time and accepting its rather un-PC nature I'd recommend it to someone looking for something a little different from standard fare, but i would probably direct them to Kipling first.