Even though Peoria has over a hundred thousand people in it, and I live pretty close to the geographic center of Peoria, I still think of myself as a small town boy at heart. I grew up in Illinois towns of six to ten thousand, but always returned to my folks’ hometown of five hundred to relax with the grandparents and my favorite aunt. A town of five hundred is a special place, where people tend to know each other, and have a comfort level you don’t get anywhere else. So I had to laugh this weekend when, in the heart of Minneapolis/St.Paul, I realized that I was in a small town.

A small town we call “Sherlockiana.”

Sherlockiana, U.S.A., has a population of well under a thousand when you come right down to it. I’m sure if you added up all the local banquet attendees, the closet Holmes fans, and others who haven’t hooked up with the Sherlockian mainstream you could make a case for there being more people than that, but if you have a conference, try to sell a book that only appeals to hardcore Sherlockians, or any other such activity, the best number you’re liable to come up with is probably going to be about three hundred. And that’s small town to me.

The thing I love about any good Sherlockian event is the way an urban neighborhood can suddenly turn into Sherlockiana, U.S.A. overnight. You pass people on the street, say “Hello” and they call you by name. You go into a restaurant and know most of the people at the other tables. It can happen in anywhere from Dayton, Ohio to New York City. But one of my favorite places to see Sherlockiana, U.S.A. pop up is Minneapolis, Minnesota. There’s a midwestern feel to that city that just seems to make a small town fit snugly into place.

“Victorian Secrets and Edwardian Enigmas” is the name of the conference held by the Norwegian Explorers and the University of Minnesota this past weekend, though those who attended will forever remember it as the “Langdale Pike” conference. As a connoisseur of the Minneapolis Sherlockian conference, I have to say that this was their best one ever. If you were reading this column three years ago, you may recall (or can recall now by hitting this link) that I always tend to hit the wall at some point during the cavalcade of presenters at a Minneapolis conference. Sitting through eight solid hours of speakers on hard chairs will test the mettle of any serious Sherlockian, and I inevitably found myself eventually retreating to my hotel room to watch a bad movie on HBO. This time, plenty of socializing time was allowed between speakers (It’s a conference where we actually got to confer!) and it just made a good thing better.

Of course, getting to socialize with your fellow Sherlockians is only as much fun as your fellow Sherlockians, and Minneapolis always draws a crowd that’s every bit as interesting as the presenters themselves. Whether it was the chance to spend a few moments talking to a Sherlockian icon like Peter Blau or a fresh face on the scene like Minnesota local Tim Reich, there are always new tid-bits of Sherlockian interest to be found.

The last Minnesota conference centered on Conan Doyle, but this one, while having some very strong and interesting Doylean presentations, seemed to be most enjoyable on the classic Sherlockian side of things. Michael Kean and Cliff Goldfarb started off the program tracking down, respectively, Bruce-Partington and Canonical authorship, and then Washington Post columnist Michael Dirda stepped up to the plate.

Having stayed home from the New York festivities for a few years, I hadn’t been around when some of the newest Baker Street Irregulars had come on the scene. And while one hears one’s fellow Sherlockians raving about having celebrities like Michael and actor Curtis Armstrong on the scene, you always wonder about their Sherlockian “street cred.” Sure, they’re wonderful in their home turf, but how are they on ours? With both Michael Dirda and Curtis Armstrong at this Minneapolis this year, it was a great chance to find out. And guess what?

These guys are good. I mean real good. I mean, the kind of good that gives the rest of us every reason to step up our Game.

Michael Dirda gave a very surreal talk on his Canonical namesake that played the Game at a master’s level. He began by telling of finding an old book entitled A Case for Langdale Pike on a low shelf in an old bookstore and continued to describe what was in that book along with other details of Langdale Pike’s life with a vivid detail that had a good share of the audience taking it for God’s honest truth until ten or even twenty minutes into the talk. As you’ll hear mentioned elsewhere, Michael’s talk actually infected nearly every talk that followed with Langdale Pike references in a way I’ve never seen at a Sherlockian symposium. And when it came time for question-and-answers, he kept the Game afoot with an ease that was every bit as impressive as his talk itself.

Okay, now I have to stop and take a breath after all that raving. Luckily, there was a buffer zone between Michael Dirda’s talk and the speakers to follow, lest they be too intimidated at having to follow that. A meeting of the Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections and some remarks by Les Klinger followed and we were off into the night, to dine and continue conversing with our fellow Sherlockians.

The next day started with the words of Conan Doyle himself, being delivered by Jon Lellenberg and Daniel Stashower from a collection of Doyle’s personal letters that will be published this fall. Having paid Doyle his due first off, we were free to roam other Sherlockian and Victorian fields. Sherlockian master of puzzles Dana Richards struggled with a few Powerpoint quirks, but still managed to give a very nice overview of what the Victorians were up to with their puzzles and how that entered into the work of Holmes.

Before I comment on the next presenter, I have to give you a bit of a disclaimer: As you may or may not have noticed from another part of this site, I’m a huge movie buff. The good Carter and I were also huge fans of the TV show Moonlighting. We also live in Peoria, Illinois, where only one person in town meets a celebrity once every five or ten years – it’s our quota or something. So when the BSI actually made Curtis Armstrong a member of the club . . .  well, that was about the coolest thing they had done in recent memory to my thirteen-year-old fanboy brain (the body, of course, is much, much older). And actually being at the same conference . . . well, I had to turn down the “OMG!” Factor in my brain just to appear somewhat normal. But with that disclaimer added, Curtis Armstrong still gave just the sort of talk I would been delighted with even if he was John Jones from Tremont, Illinois. It was an actor’s perspective on Sherlock Holmes the actor, and also a Sherlockian’s Sherlockian’s investigation into our hero. When, near the end of the talk, he pointed out the significant nature of Mrs. Sawyer from A Study in Scarlet – a minor character whose truly amazing nature many a Sherlockian overlooks – it was icing on the cake. And any Sherlockian who ranks “the Sherlock Holmes in our heads” over any actor’s portrayal, as Curtis did in his Q&A, always scores big points on my Sherlockianometer.

But I’m raving again, aren’t I?

Well, it was that kind of weekend. The McCaffertys from England did a tag-team talk on Charles Augustus Howell (and Milverton, his Canonical counterpart) that let us bask in their lovely English accents for a time while we were educated and entertained (and nearly frightening by the explosive finale!).  Michael Eckman tied in Jeeves, Bill Mason theorized on “Greek Interpreter,” Randall Stock delved into Doylean manuscript investigations, Gary Thaden tied Christopher Morley to the birth of the Norwegian Explorers in a comic bit of forged history (yet passing on a lot of real stuff along the way), and Sue Vizoskie finished out the program with a talk that was a little too interesting. The question-and-answer seemed like it would go on forever, right at the time when I knew hitting the road was a must.

And so, as much as I hate to admit it, I gave into that Midwestern tendency to slip out before the last act to avoid traffic. Friend Hobbs had already headed for the airport, as had my seat-neighbor Bill Mason, and I knew if I prolonged my own good-byes I’d be staying for lunch and talking on into the afternoon. I missed out on the symposium wrap-up, and wound up in a horrible traffic jam halfway through Wisconsin anyway, finally completing what had been a seven hour drive up in about ten hours coming back.

I didn’t take photographs in this weekend’s Minneapolis setting of Sherlockiana, U.S.A., but that doesn’t mean I didn’t tuck a few away in my head. Sights like Catherine Cooke (of the Marylebone library), Peggy Perdue (of the Toronto library), and Peter Blau (of his own library) strolling along and wondering at what point a collector becomes a librarian of sorts. Or Terry Kilburn, the actor who played Billy in the Basil Rathbone Adventures of Sherlock Holmes as an honored guest at the banquet. Or Minneapolis itself zipping by in the summer heat as we rode in the Spyder convertible Don Hobbs had rented and wondered if one could pull off Minneapolis Vice and still be cool.

But for now, it’s back to Peoria and the regular day-to-day. (With a little more Sherlockian mojo, for a little while at least.)

Your humble correspondent,

Brad Keefauver