Meeting Minutes - The Adventure of the Empty House (1903)
Max Magee
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q9kn85CKOtIOOY_V6PXETAPF6yOsi_PBbGQa3icogt4/edit?usp=sharing
Meeting Minutes
Notorious Canary-Trainers
Introductions
Tom & Cherry (from Kenosha)
Kent
Johanna
John
Max
Diane
Dave
Vicki & Jim
Elizabeth
Announcements & Show-And Tell Describy Things (John)
Johanna shared new figurines from HeroClix Iconix, three comics (two by Petr Kopl?), and Biographic Graphic - Sherlock Holmes
Upcoming Events
Next month, we'll be having a contingent of visitors from Chicago coming to join us to discuss the Norwood Builder. We'll plan a social event and arrange for enough seating.
Torists - Torists (Monica) and Silver Blaze June 28, 29
Norwegian Explorers Conference July 26-28
Impressions and a Question
Johanna - Yay he’s back. But it’s not a great story.
John - This remains one of my favorites of all of them. As a kid, my dad only had The Return…so this was my first story. To me, it really stands out.
Max - Not my favorite. Barely in the top half. It’s all hand-wavium. Interesting locked-room mystery, but the impact and sincerity that went into Final Problem was all nerfed by the goofy way Holmes “got out of” being dead in this story. Also, the description of his hiatus was so corny and far-fetched. Question: if Moran was throwing boulders at Holmes and knew he was still alive after Moriarty went over the falls…why did he think anybody in that gang would believe he was still dead?
Diane - Liked it because we get Holmes back! I was so caught up with tracking where they went on their route that it never occurred to me to ask the question that Max proposed.
Dave - I liked it, but it doesn’t hold up, particularly if you start doing the geometry. It has some of the best screenwriting/story beats work. It’s got actual development of a larger plot. Very propulsive and works better than some other stories.
Vicki - I’ve got two questions: one trivial, one less trivial. The story talks about crocuses and I recall moss roses and bushes in another one. The second question: In the story, it was three years in between the last time we saw Holmes, but what was the real gap in publication? It seems like they crammed a lot into the story of what he was doing.
Jim - My experience was very different but similar to John’s—I read the Final Problem first and it was quite a while until I read Empty House. Why would Moran, who was supposedly the best shot in the world, resort to hurling boulders?
Elizabeth - I liked the story and all the details. I didn’t know he was gone for that length of time.
Cherry - I’ve not read many of the stories, but I have read the Empty House and a few others but seen all of the Granada series multiple times. It was nice to see Sherlock acknowledge how much Watson means to him.
Tom - I like it and I don’t like it. If I had to rate it, I’d give it a 5 and a 1. Of course, it’s great because Holmes is back—and the brotherhood is really nice, and it provides so much fodder for pastiches and what really happened at Reichenbach (Moran spent his last bullet on Moriarty? Did Holmes lure Moriarty to the falls to kill him?)
Kent - I really liked this story. I always rate them on how much I’m engaged by them, and I think this was in the top half of the top half. Doyle wrapped up all of the tasks (how did Holmes survive? Where was he? How did he make it back? Who took care of the lodgings at Baker Street?) very well. Found it humorous that the garroter was a harmless little fellow. You have not made it clear what Moran’s motive was…
Story Discussion
Tom & John - Granada gives Mrs. Hudson some fun action and lines. Then she brings the boys 3 glasses of Champagne at the end and she had one with them.
Johanna - Dakin’s Commentary explains it away as Mycroft forgot/neglected to tell Watson. Sometimes Dakin can get it right. In this case, not so much.
Max - A lot of the details about the set-up (Watson is back in 221b because of his bereavement, Holmes never really went over the falls) are very difficult to reconcile with reality or with chronology. Basically retconning.
Johanna - In comics, that’s called a reset
Jim - And remember this is FICTION (I like to throw that out there every once in a while)
Johanna - Although this one may have been inspired by the Baccarat Case.
Tom - Back to the bereavement, there are all kinds of theories to explain that—a divorce? a child? A wife with consumption (which mirrors Doyle’s own wife’s health issues)?
Elizabeth - Maybe Holmes went away to get treated for his addiction and that’s why he was out of the public eye for so long.
The group replied yes, that’s the plot of the Seven Per-Cent Solution by Nick Meyer and that took us on a tangent about whether we liked or disliked it.
Vicki - The description of Adair’s murder and the motive behind it was full of holes. (pun intended?)
Jim - I respectfully disagree with my spouse. I thought the inclusion of the Ronald Adair murder was a very satisfying device. Doyle was facing a lot of pressure to bring back Sherlock Holmes, and he could have left it at explaining how that happened. The mystery plot worked really well.
Max - Speaking of Nick Meyer, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan / Star Trek III: The Search for Spock did the same thing, and that’s why I didn’t love it.
John - I love this story because if it weren’t for this story, we wouldn’t be talking about Holmes today.
Johanna - This is the story that made him SUPER human.
Dave - Got in trouble teaching Sunday school for this comparison, but this is one of the resurrection stories that made them great. Jesus wouldn’t have been nearly as popular if he hadn’t come back either…
Diane - Was this the first literary character who came back from the dead*
Jim - Poe used this device
John - Maybe in popular culture, but Jesus, Ra, the Sun, people in Greek literature going to the underworld, etc.
Max - Marley, monkey’s paw, ghosts who haunt, but not really “resurrected”
Johanna - That’s why in the comics, they “put them back on the shelf” rather than killing them off
Max - And remember, Holmes wasn’t dead and resurrected he escaped death. And in the modern day, we don’t remember him for being resurrected, just that he came back.
Johanna - When was that Raffles story? Didn’t that inspire Doyle?
Max - OH YEAH!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gift_of_the_Emperor (Spoiler: dies at the end, 1898)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Sinecure (Jan 1901)
John - Max made a statement to the effect of “Why isn’t Empty House better” when compared to Hound of the Baskerville. I would ask HOW is Hound of the Baskervilles so good? It had the length of a novel to lay out the story. That’s why it’s not fair to compare the two.
Jim - Max asserted that Doyle didn’t do well with characterization, but wouldn’t Baskervilles suffer from that if that were the case?
Max - I was being flip. I think that’s what makes that story so great—he DID a good job of creating several interesting and multidimensional characters, but in the short stories, like Empty House, I don’t think Mrs. Hudson even has any lines. She’s basically scenery.
Jim - Well, she had one—”and that on my knees.”
Max - Okay, I stand corrected, but I mean, it’s one, and it’s a terrible line and a terrible position to put her in.
Vicki/John - In his defense, sometimes Doyle doesn’t need all that much time or words to make the impact. He just says a quick phrase and you know everything about the character you need to.
Johanna - Doyle does a great job with some types of characters (that you’d pay attention to), like soldiers, nobles, gentlemen…but he doesn’t deign to write women or servants many lines.
Kent - We’re out of time, so what are we reading next time?
Johanna - The Adventure of the Norwood Builder
Tom - What order do we do the readings in?
Group - We’ve tried “chronological” based on Les Klinger’s previously released (see Klinger, Leslie S. “A Consideration of Chronological Data,” The Baker Street Journal, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Autumn 2014), 34-45) and found it didn’t read well, so now we’re going through it in publication order
Max - I think publication order works best (from a reading enjoyment aspect), although I could be convinced that the books could be moved around some.
Tom - I’ve seen some groups read them alphabetically, and that’s so silly—the Empty House comes right before Final Problem!
As always, you can refer to that notorious website, www.canarytrainers.com for all of the dates and meeting location details.
Next month's story: The Adventure of the Norwood Builder (Oct. 1903)
* I did a bit of internet digging on this question. A couple of additional examples that we didn’t cover above:
In Dante’s Divine Comedy
The poem often references Jesus' resurrection and makes a point of asserting that all the dead will come to life at the end of time.
Used metaphorically in the Purgatorio. After having been freed from Purgatory and sent on the path to Paradise, Statius's visage is compared to the resurrected Jesus and Dante and Virgil are compared to the apostles who met Him on the side of the road.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is also a pretty stark and early example of resurrecting a character (that was kind of his whole thing).
Tom Smith
On Jun 16, 2024, at 10:55 PM, Max Magee <maxp...@gmail.com> wrote:
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