Arthur Conan Doyle

Via VICTORIA: the first part of Michael Chabon's review of the new annotated Sherlock Holmes collection. Alas, Chabon has yet to make it to the books he's supposed to be reviewing, but presumably he'll get there eventually.

My students are often startled when the Holmes stories put in an appearance in my classes--"We're reading Sherlock Holmes stories in, like, a college course?!"--but they're brilliant examples of Victorian popular fiction, and the kids soon realize that Doyle does a fine job with his use of first-person POV. After all, the stories wouldn't even begin to work without Watson, as Holmes himself has to admit. (It becomes exceptionally difficult to maintain the balance of power between the two characters when the stories are transferred to film, as the revisionist BBC adaptations sometimes inadvertently demonstrated.) I'm not so sure I want to invest in this new edition, though; while the Baker Street Irregulars-type of annotation can sometimes yield entertaining insights, the "game" really becomes...irritating...after a while.