Review: How Holmes did it – and we can too!

Review of: Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes

Author: Maria Konnikova

Publisher: Viking Penguin

Source: Dallas Public Library

Grade: A

If your literary heroes include Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s masterly creation, Sherlock Holmes, or even if you just drool over Holmes’s latest incarnation as portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch, you’ll love psychologist Maria Konnikova’s Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes.  

Brilliant thinking, she assures us, is not a talent we’re born with, but one we can cultivate – “improving our faculty of mindful thought . . . in order to accomplish more, think better, and decide more optimally.” 

 

Sounds daunting, but Konnikova lays out the steps as clearly as Holmes explained his in elucidating to Dr. Watson how he surmised at first glance that the good doctor had recently arrived from Afghanistan, from observation to imagination, to deduction, to making sure our minds remain youthful and resilient for life.

Along the way she provides illustrations from the Holmes canon, particularly lesser known stories such as “The Stockbroker’s Clerk,” “The Adventure of the Abbey Grange,” and “The Adventure of the Priory School,” that sent me in search of the master detective’s complete works. As enticingly as an accomplished fiction writer – after all, she learned from one of the best – Konnikova withholds any story spoilers. 

She traces her own fascination with Sherlock Holmes to childhood, when her father read the stories to his children before bedtime. Through her own book, she drops small clues to a personal mystery she will reveal at the end – unless we’ve paid enough attention to the Holmesian method to winkle it out for ourselves.

What is that Holmesian method? Perhaps we remember (but she’s kind enough to remind us) that Holmes early own described his mind as an attic, which he was careful to stock with only the best materials. 

The concept of the brain as an attic may sound outdated, but Konnikova notes, “Subsequent research on memory formation, retention, and retrieval has . . . proven itself to be highly amenable to the attic analogy,” as she explores “how its structure and content work at every point – and what we can do to improve that working on a regular basis.”

But while singing the praises of mindful, purposeful thought, Konnikova doesn’t forget that the brain behind both Holmes and his lovably doofus sidekick, Dr. Watson, was Doyle himself. As she reminds us in her late chapter, “We’re Only Human,” if Holmes sometimes went astray, how much more likely it was for Doyle to do so also? Hence, his flip in later life from stories about the rationalist detective to obsessions with such paranormal phenomena as ghosts and fairies. She puts Doyle’s fascinations with the irrational in the context of his time, reminding readers of our own fallibility as well. 

I can’t resist adding an additional discussion of Holmesian (and Doylesian) fallibility, in recommending literary professor Pierre Bayard’s reexamination of a classic Holmes tale. In Sherlock Holmes Got it Wrong, Bayard reexamines the great detective’s reasoning in The Hound of the Baskervilles. And I add my deductions about the reasons behind Doyle’s possible blunder in “Look to the femme, not the chien,” at this site. It could be quite a three-pipe problem. 

Adventure classics -- Look to the femme, not the chien

The Hound of the Baskervilles

by Arthur Conan Doyle

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“From the chamber where she has been locked for hours, the young woman hears shouts and laughter rising from the great dining hall below. . . Her anxiety mounts at the thought of the fate intended for her,” Pierre Bayard writes in his retelling of the legend underlying Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1902 gothic detective tale, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

In desperation, the woman climbs out the window of her prison and flees across the moor. Her attacker, Hugo Baskerville, sets his hounds on her track. As she lies dying of fear and exhaustion, her attacker reaches her. Now he becomes the prey, his throat torn out by “a great black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon.”

“The thoughts of characters in literature are not forever locked up inside their creators. More alive than many living people, these characters spread themselves through those who read their authors’ work,” Bayard writes.

image: Wikimedia commons

So, with moxie worthy of Sherlock Holmes himself, University of Paris literature professor and psychoanalyst Bayard undertakes to reconstruct the dying woman’s thoughts and trace their influence through Doyle’s book. “There is every reason to suppose that the generally acknowledged solution of the atrocious crimes that bloodied the Devonshire moors simply does not hold up, and that the real murderer escaped justice,” he writes in Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong.

Every Holmes fan knows Doyle killed Holmes in 1893, plunging him over the Reichenbach Falls. But when a friend of Doyle’s told him a corking good story about the legendary Devonshire hound, he realized Holmes was the perfect vehicle for the story. Except that he was dead. Doyle’s solution: set the story in 1888, before Holmes’ death. The idea worked so well Doyle resurrected his legendary detective for real in 1903, when Holmes explained away his supposed suicidal plunge to old pal Dr. Watson.

In the canonical version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, the heir to the Baskerville
estate and baronetcy has died under mysterious circumstances. A friend enlists Sherlock Holmes to prevent a similar fate from befalling the new heir, Sir Henry Baskerville. Claiming a previous engagement, Holmes sends Watson, who hits on resident lepidopterist, i.e. butterfly chaser, Jack Stapleton--or rather, Stapleton’s mysterious dog--as the murderer. Along the way, Watson notes Stapleton’s alleged sister, the luscious Beryl “a very fascinating and beautiful woman,” but never considers her a suspect. Of course, Holmes fans also know that as a detective, Dr. Watson is a pretty darned good ophthalmologist.

To our surprise as well as professor Bayard’s, when Holmes reappears in the story, he swallows Watson’s theory whole. Like Hercule Poirot to Caroline Sheppard in last week’s post, the usually misogynistic Holmes accords Beryl Stapleton every courtesy. He never checks her alibis, taking all her statements at face value. What gives?

In last week’s post, Bayard offered a reason for Poirot’s atypical behavior. He offers no concrete reason for Holmes’ refusal to consider Beryl, who is actually Stapleton’s wife, as a suspect. But every fan of Doyle
’s can suggest an answer. Since 1897 at the latest, Doyle had been romantically, if not physically, involved with family friend Jean Leckie.

Doyle’s wife Louise was dying of tuberculosis. He was too sensitive to his wife’s
feelings--and to Victorian morality--to parade Leckie openly, his hidden relationship haunted him. Did he realize that Leckie, who became the second Mrs. Doyle, had as much of an agenda as Beryl Stapleton (who we, as well as Bayard, know has designs on Sir Henry)? Was it possible Doyle didn’t want to admit either woman’s agenda, even to himself?

In the end, Bayard ingeniously ties his solution the hope for justice that must have passed through the mind of the dying young woman who started the whole business. But I won’t spoil your enjoyment, either of the original Hound or Bayard’s revisionist version. Get to a library, bookstore or Amazon and weigh the evidence for yourself.

(Next Wednesday, Adventure classics begins a May of historical fiction with Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. And argue about what constitutes historical fiction.)

Adventure classics -- The doctor did it. Or did he?

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

by Agatha Christie

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It’s one of the most famous of Agatha Christie’s mysteries. Certainly the most controversial, for pulling a twist many readers found unfair. At this point, I’m going to do something book reviewers should never do, reveal the ending. If you truly hate spoilers, stop reading right now, get the book and read it. Then reread it for those clues  that somebody’s not telling everything he knows.

For those of you still reading this post, the twist Christie pulled off, the one that broke a major rule of the mystery genre but had readers panting for more was this: the book is narrated by the murderer, Dr. Sheppard.

Sheppard lives with his older unmarried sister Caroline in the tiny English village of King’s Abbott, a place “rich in unmarried ladies and retired military officers,” Dr. Sheppard writes. “Our hobbies and recreations can be summed up in the one word, ‘gossip.’”  And among the gossips, the greatest is Caroline Sheppard. “The motto of the mongoose family, so Mr. Kipling tells us, is: ‘Go and find out.’ If Caroline ever adopts a crest, I should certainly suggest a mongoose rampant.”

Aside from the twist, the story is a classic of the locked room class. Village squire Roger Ackroyd believes his fiancée, Mrs. Ferrars, committed suicide to escape a blackmailer's clutches. While Ackroyd discusses the situation with his friend, Dr. Sheppard, the mail arrives, including a letter addressed in what Ackroyd recognizes as Mrs. Ferrars’ handwriting. Overcome with emotion, Ackroyd sends Sheppard away in order to read the letter privately, believing it will reveal the name of the blackmailer. Sheppard leaves Ackroyd at ten minutes till 9.  When the study door is forced open later that night, Ackroyd is dead, stabbed in the back with a silver dagger, as in this post’s illustration, via Flickr, from Tom Adams’ cover for a 1974 edition. About three-quarters of an hour after Sheppard leaves, members of Ackroyd’s household hear him speaking behind the locked door of his study, proving he was still alive at 9:30.  Or was he?  

Red herrings swim in schools through the book, baffling everyone except Hercule Poirot, lured out of retirement to investigate the case.  Poirot insists that the mechanically-talented Dr. Sheppard gave himself an alibi by leaving a Dictaphone recording of Ackroyd’s voice, which he removed when he was called to the crime scene. After confronting Sheppard privately, Poirot leaves him alone to write his ambiguously-worded confession and swallow a fatal dose of poison.

Leaving us to wonder, why? The Dictaphone Poirot pins his case on is never found. The incriminating letter has disappeared. There are neither witnesses nor physical evidence tying Sheppard to the murder. Why doesn’t he just stand pat and defy Poirot?

Pierre Bayard’s psychological reconstruction, Who Killed Roger Ackroyd, builds a case for Caroline as the murderer, the person Ackroyd is heard talking to on his final night. 
And Sheppard killed himself, Bayard says, to protect Caroline. Just as Caroline killed Ackroyd (and presumably destroyed the letter) to protect her brother from a charge of blackmail, Sheppard kills himself to protect his sister from being charged with murder.

“My greatest fear all through this has been Caroline,” Sheppard writes.

Poirot seems to have joined him in this league to protect Caroline. Poirot checks and double checks the alibis of every other person with access to Ackroyd’s house, but he never checks Caroline’s. He shares his findings with her, accepts her tidbits of gossip at face value. If he weren’t Hercule Poirot, I’d have to think he was in love with her.

The root of the dilemma probably lies in Christie’s own infatuation with Caroline. Christie would later admit that Dr. Sheppard’s devoted sister was her favorite character in the book, and the precursor of Christie’s amateur detective Miss Marple. Did she love Caroline enough to let her get away with murder?

(Next Wednesday, Adventure classics concludes an April of mysteries with Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, about which Pierre Bayard also has a few things to say.)

Wordcraft --Resolutions for writers, in brief

The thing that makes New Year’s resolutions so hard to keep is their too frequent vagueness. Or maybe it’s their habit of being just too open ended. Or too painful. It doesn’t have to be so. One year I resolved to kiss my loved ones and tell them every day that I loved them. I recommend it. And for this last post of 2013, I’ll list a very few resolutions for writers that are short, sweet and joys to keep.

Number One -- Get a library card! To write, we need to read. And we need to nurture other readers. So don’t just get a card for yourself, but for every member of your household.

If you’re an adult living in my town--Dallas, Texas--all you need to get a library card is a current government-issued photo identification and proof of Dallas residency, which can be as simple as a utility bill. If you’re applying for a card for a child, you as guardian, will need your photo ID and proof of Dallas residency, or the child’s school registration (within the city of Dallas) and/or ID. Teens may apply for their own library card with a current Dallas school or government ID. In some cases, you may even get a Dallas library card for limited use if you’re not a city resident (although you should check with your local library about its requirements). For specifics, see http://dallaslibrary2.org/about/libraryCards.php/.

Number Two -- About that reading thing. . . . The more I wrote, the less time I thought there would be to read. But in Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, he notes that he reads sixty or seventy books yearly. If King, who releases a new book practically every hour, can find that time to read, can’t we? Consider shoehorning in reading time with audio books, which King likes as much as I do.

And (although this is anticipating resolution number three) consider keeping a record of books read. Since I sometimes feel uncomfortable about not having read whatever the book of the hour is, I fall back on the wisdom of my newly favorite author, Pierre Bayard and his How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. Bayard marvelously organizes reading in cultural contexts. And speaking of cultural contexts, I’ll be searching for new reads from around the globe, via
http://ayearofreadingtheworld.com/.

Number Three -- Keep a record of progress. Writing is hard lonely work. If we don’t keep track of our milestones, who will? So, let’s keep logs of stories, poems and articles we’ve written. And of stories, poems and articles published. If we write blogs, notice how many posts we write and how our writing improves along the way.

Number Four -- Make a collection that doesn’t cost anything, which in some ways is also a record of progress. I have a tiny notebook of first sentences from books I love. Or we can collect last sentences, such as the lyrical passages Cormac McCarthy typically ends with to compensate for his blood-soaked prose. Or worst sentences, to make us laugh. Whatever we collect, it should be something that gives us joy, such as this short and lovely first sentence from my recent reading, “It began to snow.” (The Samurai, by Shusaku Endo). (RIP, Leonard Elmore. Sometimes it’s okay to write about weather.)