sketchbook: more of the same

with some thoughts on enduring character archetypes

So there’s this Arthur Conan Doyle quote about why he killed off Sherlock Holmes: “That pale, clear-cut face and loose-limbed figure were taking up an undue share of my imagination.”

and hey, buddy? I GET IT

The assassination attempt on his own fictional character was not successful, and nine years after the story of Holmes’s death had been published in The Final Problem, Doyle was forced to bring him back to a life by an adoring public and editors who would pay any amount of money for more stories about the detective and his doctor.

There’s something SO fascinating in this to me. Writing is a way to tap into collective imagination, and when you find a particularly potent, previously untapped wellspring…that’s when a fictional character truly gains a life of their own. At the end of the 19th century, as London became the biggest city that had ever existed, as colonialism and industrialization changed daily life in profound ways, Holmes became the most iconic example of a new kind of protagonist in Western literature. The trickster detective, specifically suited for adventures in an urban environment, with all the complexities that city life brings. A hero who fought with his mind more than his body, who understood secret codes and patterns and the tangled mysteries of everyday people. A hero who could easily have been a villain; who would have been a villain in many other stories and settings. Arthur Conan Doyle created the character, but in doing so he tapped into something bigger than himself.

Here’s a cariacature of Doyle from 1926, literally chained to his creation, from the Baring-Gould Annotated Sherlock Holmes:

As the world changes, I am always curious about what new archetypes we’ll see arise in our stories. What new heroes will suddenly resonate? What qualities will they embody that will be meaningful to people living in our world?

I’m fairly confident of one thing…

We’ll always want to see them kiss each other.