Author Spotlight: Arthur Conan Doyle

As you may have noticed from previous posts, I’m a bit of a Sherlock Holmes fan.  

Okay, fine, I’m a HUGE Sherlock Holmes fan, and will watch pretty much anything related to the Great Detective, be it movie, miniseries, documentary or Wishbone episode.  Yet more generally, I am a fan of Arthur Conan Doyle’s writing as a whole. Of course I began reading Holmes’ and Watson’s adventures for the characters and mysteries, but as I’ve grown older and more experienced in reading classic fiction…it turns out Doyle is pretty great on the merit of his own literary style. Arthur Conan Doyle is one of the few authors whose books I will buy indiscriminately, even if I haven’t read the book yet. 

My appreciation of his writing style grows every time I read it. Having recently read Tales of Terror and Mystery—a collection of unconnected short stories—I was once again struck by the quality of the writing style.  This is perhaps the worst book I’ve read of Doyle’s, and still it was pretty high-caliber stuff (which goes to show how great his best work really is).  For example, see how precise and succinct he introduces characters: 

“His knowledge was greater than his wisdom, and his powers were far superior to his character.” – The Leather Funnel

Or, in addition to writing action, he can incorporate philosophy into his prose without seeming pretentious:

“Even such subtle and elusive things as dreams will in time be reduced to system and order.” - also The Leather Funnel

Doyle’s famously dubious relationship with his creation (he did throw Holmes off a cliff, for a while, anyway) is famous enough that I don’t have to elaborate it. The Sherlock Holmes stories were in many ways just a “job” for Doyle, a way to make money while pursuing what he believed to be higher literary forms. According to a collection of essays on Doyle’s life and writing career (The Case Book of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, copyright 1993 by Gale Research, Inc. and including essays by Dorothy Sayers and G.K. Chesterton among others), these higher literary forms were his historical novels, such as The White Company or Sir Nigel. 

All due respect to Doyle, but I prefer his more “contemporary” adventures, and this is why: because Doyle’s style is so crisp and electric that this selfsame electricity seems anachronistic in a medieval setting. This is not to say that Sherlock Holmes is the only story he could ever write;  the Challenger books (The Lost World—no, not the one with Jeff Goldblum!—and The Poison Belt) are just as tremendous. When reading Doyle, I get the feeling he kept his finger on the pulse of what was happening in the world, not only culturally and politically, but also scientifically. He incorporates exotic animals, plants and poisons into his mysteries. In The Lost World he describes prehistoric animals such as dinosaurs with surprising accuracy (for the time), and The Poison Belt is about the course our very Earth takes through the universe. This is obviously a man who not only wrote, but also read extensively and eclectically. 

For writers Doyle stands as a role model for expert prose.  

For readers…well, just read his stuff, okay? It’s really, really good.