Let’s look at this thing we call “Sherlockiana” objectively for a moment.

You read a book. You enjoy reading the book. The same author has another book with the same main character. You read that book. You enjoy reading that book. One more book with same author and same character, same response. Basic Pavlovian conditioing, right?

How many serial characters have you read in your life? Their names are legion:  Harry Potter, the Scarlet Pimpernel, the Bobbsey Twins,  Jack Reacher, Anita Blake, Remo Williams, Tarzan, Nero Wolfe, Lucky Starr,  Damali Richards, Flinx and Pip, Nancy Drew,  the Stainless Steel Rat, Jane Marple, Arthur Dent,  Clark Savage Jr.,  Fletch, Mack Bolan . . . on and on it goes. Every reade r’s list is different, and each name represents anywhere from six to a hundred or more books.

We’re drawn back to serial characters because they strike a familiar chord in us. Maybe it’s not something in how life truly is, but how we think it should be. Something in them reinforces something we want to hold on to . . . a love of adventure, an assurance that good will always triumph over evil, maybe even just a lively conversational style.  Something fundamental brings us back. And if that basic attraction touches us deeply enough, we move on to the next level: not just reading for enjoyment, but studying for deeper understanding.

At that point things start going past the basic stimulus-response model.  Moving past “regular reader” to “self-admitted serious fan” is something that varies widely in its psychological underpinnings from person to person. To anyone standing on the sidelines,  it starts to look like you’re just beating a dead horse in your insistence upon spending time with books you’ve finished reading.  I mean, who cares how many times a certain  fictional character smoked a certain type of tobacco?  Who cares which page you’ll find a reference to “polyphonic motets” on?

Um . . . we do?

A true fan winds up somewhere past the point of just beating a dead horse.  Bringing together the magic of the original creation and the madness of the fanatic,  a true fan actually winds up riding that dead horse. It looks impossible and nonsensical to any normal  person, but come on . . . how interesting is it to be “normal”?

As he neared the end of his life, a weary Conan Doyle did a drawing depicting himself as a worn-out old horse pulling a wagon stacked with all the achievements of his life, the writings, the travels, the causes. The wagon is stacked high with boxes labeled with all these accomplishments and the general implication is that the wear and tear of pulling that load was what was finishing the old horse off. That was, of course, one way of looking at his life’s work . . . personally, I think the author got it backwards.

Conan Doyle was the wagon, not the horse. The horses that drew him through life were the travels, the causes, the writings, even Sherlock Holmes. He wouldn’t have lived nearly as full a life without  them, and once the worn-out wagon of his human body finally broke down and gave up its travels, those horses ran free. They were wild stallions full of enough vigor to take on other riders,  those horses sometimes even bucking new riders off with the wild energy left in them.

This summer , J. K. Rowling’s last Harry Potter novel comes out, but you know that a good chunk of the fandom she’s drawn to that character is not going to let Harry go once that book is read and placed on the shelf. Will they keep riding that horse over a hundred years later like Sherlockians have been all this time?

It’ll be fun to see.

Your humble correspondent,

Brad Keefauver