Sherlock Holmes

As I have mentioned on this blog that I am a devotee of Sherlock Holmes. I am a big fan of the stories and books—reading the Complete Sherlock Holmes is a singular pleasure—and I gravitate towards anything Holmes themed. I love the Robert Downey Jr. films (especially the second one), the Cumberbatch BBC series (seasons 1-3; 4 is a failure), and Elementary with Johnny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu is among my favorite series of all time; I’ve seen it in its entirety five times.

I also like the series Miss Scarlet and Vienna Blood. They are not Sherlock Holmes series, but they’re quite Holmesian.

Moreover, Doctor Who and House were derivative enough to fall very much on my radar. I’ve even watched (and enjoyed) smaller projects like the short-lived series The Irregulars and Enola Holmes, starring Milly Bobby Brown.

So, it is much to my embarrassment that I should just now start watching The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett. It aired from 1984 to 1994. And I must say, it’s the closest one will get to the books. The Downey and Cumberbatch projects are great fun, but they’re not the books. Brett’s portrayal of the Holmes character is on point. He even looks like the old Sidney Paget illustrations. And a dash of overacting? Outstanding.

That is what I’m watching these days. Father Brown and Sister Boniface (also Holmes influenced?) had run their courses—good though they were.

Thucydides, etc.

As I am half-way in my Turner bio, I am gearing up for the next major read. Bedtime reading has become Thucydides’s The History of the Peleponnesian War.

I have opted for the Lattimore translation. I’m to understand the Rex Warner translation is another quality translation (which I have ordered). The latter is considered more reader-friendly, the former more “complex” and rigorous.

My reading pace will be slowed upon finishing the Turner bio because I will begin work on an essay on Descartes’s Meditations. I’ve done Socrates, Hobbes, and Sartre. So, I guess Descartes is next.

As I have no self control, my new bedtime reading will be Virgil’s Aeneid; I have ordered a new translation (Shadi Bartsch), which looks promising.

If anyone has any information or insight on the Thucydides/translation matter, I’m all ears.

https://a.co/d/eQ646hv

J. M. W. Turner

I don’t allow myself much free reading, as such. There is usually an agenda. Most of my reading falls in the general category of “work”: philosophy, history, etc. I guess trashing “Gatsby” was an indulgence, but it is after all a work of literature, and I need to stay sharp in that area, too.

Anthony Bailey’s biography of painter J. M. W. Turner is just something for fun. I’ve been wanting to do a Turner biography for some time. And now that I’m heading to London later this year to look at his and Constable’s paintings, it seemed worthwhile to get a Turner bio under my belt.

Bailey’s biography is a feat of scholarly investigation. I doubt we will be receive a more detailed biography on Turner ever. He seems to have read every receipt, letter, and ledger featuring Turner’s name. It is an unbelievable achievement.

One detail I learned that I simply relish is that the young Turner, whose brilliance emerged quite early, drew chickens and barnyard animals on walls in his youth. So, Turner was for a time a graffiti artist. I love this.

The Great Gatsby

As I suspected, the reputed great American novel, The Great Gatsby, gave me a headache. Beloved by readers for a hundred years and read by high school students the country over, this so-called literary masterpiece I found to be vapid at its best moments.

The characters are unlikable. They are, as a group, entitled, privileged, bigoted, self-indulgent, and intellectually inert. At one small gathering, one of the characters mentions a book, The Rise of the Colored Empires, which warns the White West about the rise of non-White cultures. White culture should be on its guard. Another character replies, “We’ve got to beat them down.” The White race, the thinking goes, needs to beat down the non-White races.

 
Speaking of beating people down, the character who enthuses about this “scientific” book later breaks his mistress’s nose. Think about that phrase. This happens like someone sipped a drink.

 
This character again (Tom), vents his White supremacy when he discovers his wife is having an affair—it’s hard to feel sorry for a fella who has a mistress (one whose nose he’s broken):

 

Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions and next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between black and white.

These occurrences pass without comment. Are we supposed to look past them? Is Fitzgerald showing his hand? It’s art, and therefore it’s up to us? The artist gets a pass?

So, these are the kinds of people you encounter in The Great Gatsby. The narrator, Nick Carraway, doesn’t offend; he’s just blank. And Gatsby is remarkably unremarkable. I didn’t see anything great in him. He’s presented as this mysterious Dracula kind of character, but when you meet him, he’s normal to the point of boring.

 
This novel is supposed to invite analysis and/or discussion of capitalism and the American dream. It does neither. I do not see what this novel has to do with either one. Amassing a fortune—or inheriting one—is supposed to invite analysis? And the American dream was about the lower and middle classes moving up from where their parents resided on the social ladder. The American dream is not about whether you have cleaned your pool or not this season.

 
I think the attraction is Fitzgerald’s poetics—which I found mostly annoying—and the aesthetic of people in seersucker suits attending extravagant parties. When men were men. When people drank whiskey and smoked. And who doesn’t love the fetishization of wealth? Maybe this is why this novel is so popular: We just want to attend these stupid parties.

And what does the green light mean? I couldn't care less.

 

Turner and Constable

Kate hit me with this last night. Two of my favorite painters in one major exhibit. We might have to do this.

I said as long as we can have dinner (dinners) at Fergus Henderson’s St. John restaurant. I’m not crazy about traveling in my current state, but for my dudes, parsnip soup, and roasted bone marrow, I’ll get on an airplane. And an order of rabbit offal, thank you. I will be in heaven. Ooh, and the roast partridge!

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/turner-and-constable

COVID and the Russian Revolution

If there is anything in the plus column for having COVID, it’s that you get a lot of downtime to yourself. This creates an ideal opportunity to get some quality reading in.

I have had seven vaccine shots for the Coronavirus; but they say this will stand me in good stead regarding symptoms. So far, it’s been a nasty cold: sore throat, painful coughing, etc.

Perhaps I was a war criminal in a previous life, and had entire villages exterminated. Thank you, Field Marshal Harms.

So, my friend Michael pulled through with a book suggestion on the Russian Revolution, by historian Sheila Fitzpatrick. It is the perfect level of detail I was looking for. I’m giving it a slow, careful read. (You’ve read it, McFerron??)

This chapter in history I find quite fascinating. It set up what became the Cold War, and it ratcheted into place the Adam Smith vs. Karl Marx nonsense. Noam Chomsky has pointed out that both dominant ideological centers agreed that what Russia was doing was communism. It was not. And when the Soviet system collapsed, Chomsky was quick to point out that it was a great victory for socialism. Agreed.

You have seen countless Cold War movies and spy thrillers. They are fun to watch; but they’re all wrong. Yes, the Cold War was real, but the way the Kremlin is painted, as this evil Mordor-type entity, is difficult to take seriously.

Lenin and company conducted more of a coup than a revolution. And it was not at all what Marx had in mind: an intellectual vanguard creating a single-party tyranny in feudal Russia? [wrong answer buzzer]

So, if you pray, could you put in a good word for me? I’ll be here, next to my space heater, book worming, and overdoing it on coughdrops.

2025 is off to a great start. If I see 2026, I shall be well impressed.

www.amazon.com/Russian-Revolution-Sheila-Fitzpatrick/dp/0198806701/

Russian Revolution