Customer Reviews

Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have nothing against reexamining a literary classic. Even with such well-trodden turf as the Holmesian canon, enjoying a familiar story through someone else's lens may provide fresh perspective. So why just 2 stars here? Much of this book is simply Bayard indulging his own specialty (psychoanalysis), ultimately asking the ridiculous question: Are the characters in a book committing crimes behind the reader's (even the author's) back? Bayard: "The book is not the story of an investigation, but a secret narrative of an interminable killing of which the reader is the unconscious voyeur and accomplice." (!)

Detective criticism is Bayard's unique approach; he tried it previously with Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?: The Mystery Behind the Agatha Christie Mystery, which appears to have received a lukewarm reception. So instead of Stapleton's dog, we are presented with an alternate murderer. All well and good in the main, but when you realize that Bayard bases his insight on a loose French translation of Conan Doyle's original, most of whatever power his punch may have had is lost. For example, the translator's note on page 144, following Bayard's analogy of Holmes to the Hound, cautions us that, "Bayard is working from a French translation" which renders Conan Doyle's original text of "his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight" to the much narrower "his eyes gleamed like a wolf's." (!!)

Bayard registers some good observations, such as questioning why Holmes takes Dr. Mortimer's account at face value ("If Mortimer, for whatever reason, has given an inexact version--for instance by mistaking the prints of some other animal for a dog's--then the detective's whole solution collapses.") or wondering how the dog could perceive Sir Charles' state of vitality so quickly and from such a distance ("How can we think that in such a brief time Sir Charles Baskerville could suffer a heart attack and die, leaving the dog time to make a precise enough diagnosis to decide, in the interest of its dietary preferences, to cease its efforts before reaching the body?"). He also takes a well-placed stab at playing The Game, asserting that the Hound only attacked Sir Henry after Holmes and Watson shoot at it ("Can we reproach a dog hit by a bullet for being overcome with rage and rushing at one of the people it legitimately supposes to be its assailants?"). These however are hardly ample reward for having to slog through the rest of the book.

Bayard is pretentious, verbose, and, not insignificantly, unkind to both Holmes and Conan Doyle. He also repeats ("It is said...") the apocryphal black armband story which to my knowledge has never been substantiated by primary sources.

Anyone new to the HOUND story would do best to start with the original in its well and creepy goodness: on its own (The Hound of the Baskervilles: 150th Anniversary Edition (Signet Classics)) or as part of the handy albeit heavy collection (The Complete Sherlock Holmes: All 4 Novels and 56 Short Stories). Longtime fans have plenty of options, chief among them the third volume of Les Klinger's The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Novels (A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Valley of Fear).

Pierre Bayard, a professor of French literature at the University of Paris VIII and psychoanalyst, asserts that in fingering Jack Stapleton and his hound, Holmes nailed the wrong suspect(s): "... I feel there is every reason to suppose that the generally acknowledged solution of the atrocious crimes that bloodied the Devonshire moors simply does not hold up, and that the real murderer escaped justice."

In brief chapters, Bayard recounts the well-known plot, describes Holmes's methods of inquiry (along the way noting a number of mistakes committed by the master throughout the canon, both acknowledged by Holmes or Watson and not), presents his own method of "detective criticism" ("The aim ... is to become more rigorous than even the detectives in literature and the writers who create them, and thus to work out solutions that are more satisfying to the soul"), and then delineates all the problems with the received text and solution.

Among the problems Bayard highlights are: Why did the hound leave no marks on the first corpse, that of Sir Charles Baskerville? When Selden, the convict, dies wearing the clothes of Sir Henry Baskerville, the hound is never actually seen, so why assume that it was responsible? It does attack Sir Henry near the end, but only after a shot has wounded it first.

Bayard also notes that, after fastening on Stapleton as his suspect, reading all the clues as pointing in his direction, and then driving the man out onto the moor to his certain death, Holmes waves away the issue of motive! Watson asks him, "If Stapleton came into the succession, how could he explain the fact that he, the heir, had been living unannounced under another name so close to the property? How could he claim it without causing suspicion and inquiry?"

In case you're wondering, Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong is probably a satire -- an ostensibly earnest yet loving one. Bayard has created his own minor subgenre, which he calls "detective criticism" and describes in this slim volume, although only one other example has been translated into English: a critique of Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, called Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? Most regrettable, his 2002 Enquête sur Hamlet, in which he apparently proves that Claudius did not kill Hamlet's father, remains untranslated. Of more than a dozen works published by Bayard in French, the only other to have been translated thus far is the even more sly and cerebral How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read, which was a minor U.S. bestseller last year.

Though Bayard occasionally gallops into the high alpine meadows of literary and psychoanalytic theory, he still sticks closely to the text he's given. And though he probably doesn't believe half of what he's saying, it does pass the logical plausibility test. It has an inner consistency, and that makes it worth doing -- as a challenge, as a joke, and (dare one say it?) as a work of art.

The chapters, as well as the book as a whole, are short. Bayard engages in a bit of psychological and academic gibble-gabble, but never for long. If you know and love the Holmes canon well, you'll probably enjoy it. If you don't, you might wonder what all the fuss is about.

If you are interested in semiotics, freudian analysis, and sherlock holmes (and I am sure most of you are) then this book is a brilliant find. In its frugal, non-franco-typical 188 pages, the author covers a very broad range of topics from contemporary lit-crit to cognitive psychology, while demonstrating a delightful command off Holmes and Holmes critical impedimentia.

There are two central ideas. First, Bayard explores the relationship between literary characters and reality, which leads to a quick detour through our collective subconscious. Second, there is a meditation on positivism and pseudoscience, with a shout-out to freudian contributions to the scientific method. These two ideas are dialectically synthesized into the conclusion that Holmes' methods are fundamentally flawed and lead to a flawed outcome in the Hound of the Baskervilles, which quite simply Sherlock fouls up to a fair-the-well.

Bayard, with a better understanding of the cognitive processes of real and fictional characters (Conan Doyle and Holmes, specifically) is able to utilize Holmes' techniques of close observation and deduction to discover the true culprit in the tale, which I won't spoil by revealing. His "solution" is analytically compelling and represents a coup de main for the new criticism ideas of close textual reading and multiple interpretations of texts. In fact, he makes those highly academic ideas quite fun while letting that poor doggy off the hook.

Reading this book made me scramble back to my old copy of Sherlock Holmes mysteries. One particularly disturbing aspect of this stunning new analysis suggests Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had a vendetta not only against his creation...but also Sherlock Holmes fanatics. It warns the reader of an unorthodox way of understanding the complex interaction between fiction and reality. The cruel irony of realizing we as readers can be tricked into believing one conclusion when the real one is in plain view should be lost on no one. This book may end up becoming a classic in literary criticism.

Being an admitted Sherlock Holmes addict I was very excited to purchase this book and go back into the "Hound" adventure. I was bored, I tell you bored out of my mind. His long involved wordy explanations were just a review of what we all learned in College Lit and I am convinced the author needed page-fillers to complete this book. The denouncement of the "real" killer was just as flawed and predictible as Bayard claims of Holmes' conclusion. So glad I have not purchase Bayard's criticism of "Roger Ackrod" by Christie. I could not tolerate Dame Agatha subjected to his blatherings.

This book reads like an undergraduate thesis. It's nothing but pretentious metaphysical sophistry of the worst water. This exercise could have had a bit of fun injected into it were it not for the ponderous earnestness with which the author dully circles around his thesis. Bayard betrays a stunning lack of understanding of anything but the literal words of the translations he has read; subtext, metaphor and literary context elude him utterly, despite a penchant to name drop at least a dozen other Conan Doyle and other stories.

Many biographers have painted a picture of Arthur Conan Doyle as neurotic especially in regards to his famous literary creation, Sherlock Holmes, and have accused Conan Doyle of "hating" Holmes enough to kill him (as he did in the short story "The Final Problem." The hate grew exponentially, say these critics, when Conan Doyle was forced by a hungry public to revive Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles. As I read it, this myth of Conan Doyle's hatred and resentment of Holmes has been exaggerated beyond belief, but if you tell enough people a big lie they will swallow it without a doubt. The truth is that Doyle loved and admired Holmes and was inordinately proud of him. I'm sorry, Pierre Bayard, but you have built your grand edifice on an extremely shaky rock pinnacle.

Bayard doesn't seem to have read one word about The Hound of the Baskervilles outside of the "fact" that Conan Doyle wrote it under protest. He seems to be completely unaware that many previous critics and scholars have worked on these same materials before. Most telling, you would think, Bayard seems unaware that Conan Doyle worked on the plot of this book with another man, the illfated Bertran Fletcher Robinson, so if Holmes acts oddly at any time in THOTB, it might just as easily be Fletcher Robinson's hatred of him we are glimpsing...

I really love what Bayard did with THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD and the solution he pulled out of that text was new to me, surprising, and satisfying. Here I'm just meh about his brilliance being put to such use. If I were writing a psychoanalytic handbook on the author, i would seek to find out why, after generations have believed that two fictional male characters committed famous crimes, Bayard now seeks to pin these celebrated murders on previously unsuspected--women?

He says he has also solved the mystery of Hamlet--but that volume has not been translated into English yet. want to bet Ophelia did it?

A glowing beast stocks what is supposed to be the last of the rich and influential Baskerville family. At least two men seem to have been killed on the cold and desolate English moor by the bloody hound. All hopes for the future of the young Baskerville rest on the cunning of the world's most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes. But did he get his conclusion all wrong? Did the real murderer go free?

According to French literature professor, Pierre Bayard, not only did Holmes make numerous mistakes, Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock's creator) hated the character so much that by the time he wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles he couldn't see who the real murderer was either.

Bayard follows the story from the outcry that arose around the world when Conan Doyle killed Holmes in The Final Problem. The intensity of the opposition to Holmes' death proved to be more than Conan Doyle could handle. He grudgingly continued writing the stories despite his desire to move to other stories.

Bayard's supposition, that evidence in the Baskerville case was overlooked and that Holmes repeatedly saw what he wanted to rather than what existed on the page, is intriguing and makes for an interesting and short read. The book opened up an entire world of literary theory that argues that characters in books can be as real as live human beings because of the impact they have on the everyday life.

Humm... I'll have to think about that. The consequences are alarming, but then, so is reality.

--

I re-read the Hound of the Baskervilles before I read this book. I have to say I was disappointed in this book. His alternative conclusion makes less sense than Holmes conclusion. The author ignored other more compelling evidence. It wasn't very satisfying.

Having just finished reading Who Killed Roger Ackroyd I jumped right into the author's Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong, and I was right to do so.

Once again Pierre Bayard enters the intermediate world between fiction and reality and applies his unique brand of detective criticism and once again he has found a worthy author and a worthy mystery.

While I may not have bought fully the idea that Conan Doyle "hated" Sherlock Holmes for grabbing the spotlight from Mr Doyle's other work, I have always felt that the mystery of Hound of the Baskerville was wanting, as I have found a lot of the Holmes stories to be that came after the Final Solution.

That Conan Doyle was able to create such a superb and complex character who over time may have occasionally "failed"to live up to expectations serves well Mr Bayard's thesis that in the Hound, Sherlock Holmes via Conan Doyle was tired and easily distracted,and failed to grasp the slow murder occurring in his presence.

With his literary tool, "detective criticism", Mr Bayard using the exact text of the Hound story as well as some pscyhoanalyzing of Conan Doyle is able elicit another murderer in a most logical and rational fashion. And not that. But is able to give the murder a poetic end that neatly bookcases the Hound in a much more satisfying way.

I haven't yet re-read the Hound, but when I do, I will be most anxious to be once more in the company of that great conflicted detective Sherlock Holmes thanks to Conan Doyle and Pierre Bayard.