Suddenly we get a banking 101 introduction course.
Confession: I totally skipped Mr. Holder's ramblings on about banking and how great his bank was.
I skipped it and then, because I didn't remember if the minutiae of banking procedures were somehow relevant to the story, I skimmed it to be sure and I feel betrayed. Betrayed!
This is the other tricky bit with Holmes and the Holmes stories, which is that Watson and Holmes are, together, a somewhat unreliable narrator. Holmes tells Watson that he values reason over emotion and cool logic over the distracting human passions. Watson relays this to us as an absolutism. Generations of readers take it as fact.
Holmes' and Watson's reading of Holmes and Watson is totally wrong.
lollll
I mean. Not TOTALLY. But Doyle has a whole consistent stylistic thing where he has an idea of what his narrator's personality is like and what they say is filtered through that personality, so you sometimes get conflicting messages from "what they say they'd do" and "how they act". Which, I mean, I think that's great! But it does go over some people's heads when they're too trusting of the narrator.
I think this is a good take, but I disagree almost entirely. It's true that Watson doesn't ever figure out the case, but it's also always very obvious that it's largely because Holmes just has more information. And he doesn't give it to Watson until "the reveal".
That's true, here too he was off galavanting doing a bunch of investigation work on his own. I think I was taken in by how Holmes will often give Watson a ribbing for not figuring something out, but more often than not he just knows more.
Yeah that last bit is the "Holmes is an ass" part of his character, lmfao
That's my secret, Cap. I'm always bad at computers.
I haven’t managed to reply to the most recent posts nor read this week’s story, but please do say something!! I actually really enjoy reading both of your takes
and
The Society for Evasionary Action in Literature (and Jesus)
I haven’t managed to reply to the most recent posts nor read this week’s story, but please do say something!! I actually really enjoy reading both of your takes
oh no i didn't manage to read it because we were crunched trying to get ready for J's trip
That's my secret, Cap. I'm always bad at computers.
What do you know, I actually remember reading this one years ago?? At least, the parts of a woman having to cut her hair and wear a blue dress and stay by the window to impersonate somebody who had been sick.
Which means, it was actually a bit boring to read this time around, past the hilarious intro scene.
"Are they not fresh and beautiful?" I cried, with all the enthusiasm of a man fresh from the fogs of Baker-street.
But Holmes shook his head gravely.
"Do you know, Watson," said he, "that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation, and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there."
"Good heavens!" I cried. "Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?"
"They always fill me with a certain horror. It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside."
"You horrify me!"
"But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.”
Too real tbh
and
The Society for Evasionary Action in Literature (and Jesus)
Hey, friends, are we ever picking this back up or should I just start reading the next anthology on my own?
omg. i actually read the story and thought through a post and apparently never posted so i was waiting on someone else saying they were ready to read the next one because i'm a dumb
i'd like to if you're up for continuing, i can redo copper beeches by this weekend
That's my secret, Cap. I'm always bad at computers.
