Here is a thing that does not matter: A while ago there was a controversy because the Mormon church had taken to retrospectively baptising the dead ancestors of new converts. It hit the headlines because some of those ancestors were killed for being Jewish, in the holocaust. Obviously, the souls of the dead Jews weren’t affected, because they don’t exist. And their relatives, who kicked up the fuss, weren’t affected because they don’t believe in Mormonism or any of its silly rituals. Nothing whatsoever happened, and it made the national press simply because it has the shape and colour of news.
Then, there was the mild kerfuffle recently about the zodiac being out of step with the modern sky. That didn’t matter, either. A system of divination that doesn’t work and in which nobody seriously believes was criticised in the mildest possible way: for being dated. And yet people leapt to its defence by saying no, its arcane laws don’t work in precisely that way. Obviously the fact is they work any way you like, because they’re simply made up. If you want to chuck in Serpentarius, you go right ahead. Bung in Orion for all it will matter.
Today I learned that the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has authorised Anthony Horowitz to write a new Sherlock Holmes book. This also does not matter. The existing books are out of copyright: he could have done so anyway. And, Arthur Conan Doyle is dead. The people who granted Horowitz permission to continue his work don’t have his permission. Their connection to the work is an accident of birth.
So, what can they meaningfully grant him, other than the right to pay them royalties? Will it count as ‘canon’, perhaps? Does anything count as ‘canon’? Does the episode of The West Wing that John Wells wrote really resolve the Aaron Sorkin-written cliffhanger? Each collaborator on the first two Red Dwarf novels wrote a separate and contradictory third instalment. Not one person involved in the 1989 series of Doctor Who worked on the 2005 series. Is it ‘canon’? Are they both just fan-fiction with legal clout? Does the question even mean anything? I would say it doesn’t. Ricky Gervais recently reprised the role of David Brent for the US version of The Office, whose first series aped the British series in places word-for-word. If Brent and Scott get talking, they might figure it out. Then what? Of course it doesn’t matter, since, there are enough cross-over episodes and subtle references that a significant fraction of all US and some UK TV output of the last 30 years, including both versions of The Office, has all taken place in the same fictional universe — including one whose series finale revealed that the whole thing had been a dream. If you accept ‘canon’ as a meaningful concept in fiction then you must also accept that an autistic construction worker called Tommy Westphall has imagined almost every event you’ve ever seen on TV.
I believe this also includes Red Dwarf, whose latest series ill-judgedly gatecrashed on “our” reality, meaning that the actual physical universe is part of Westphall’s imaginary world. If Horowitz’ book is meaningfully different from Mitchell and Webb’s Sherlock Holmes sequel sketch then you do not exist.
None of this matters. In none of these stories has anything even happened, other than some people talking and writing things down, and the Earth precessing slowly around. But I love how much importance people can attach to actions that have absolutely no effect on the universe.
If some people think that the blessing of Conan Doyle’s estate makes a difference then it makes a difference. I’m not sure what kind of independent life you’re suggesting for this novel where that wouldn’t be the case.
Also: your captcha failure message is ridiculously obnoxious given how often it imposes itself when I’ve completed the captcha correctly. Particularly annoying given that the spambots probably aren’t too troubled by it.
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Well, of course it makes a difference to people who have convinced themselves of its importance. The same is true of any arbitrary nonsense sentence you care to invent. But I don’t think that people believing something has happened is the same thing as something actually having happened.
Obviously that belief can cause actual things to happen. It will boost sales of the book, for example, and make fans who dislike the book crosser than they would otherwise have been. But getting people emotional when nothing has happened is the oldest marketing trick going.
If the captcha’s giving you false negatives, can you let me know what question it asked? If it’s split across all three there’s a general failure, if one reliably fails that’s an easy fix. In return I shall change the failure message.
My point was that it will affect how they read the book, and as the reading is really all a book has going for it, that’s important. You can argue that it shouldn’t make a difference and I would agree with you, but it is a meaningful part of the book’s context in a way that that simplistic, binary idea of “canon” doesn’t cover.
I think it was a “type ldop backwards” one that gave me trouble last time, but I think it might have been a sessiony thing rather than a problem with the captcha itself.
Also: you sort of skip past the question of whether it would have been meaningful for Conan Doyle himself to give his blessing to a sequel, which I think is a vaguely interesting one. (For what it’s worth, I don’t think it would be any different to the estate giving theirs.)
Well, yes. Fans will never completely agree what makes the Holmes books special, so I can see an argument that the original author gets to decide what is and is not worthy of inclusion in the “official” body of work, but I agree that even that wouldn’t alter things particularly. Someone will still hate it and insist that it doesn’t count. I’m sure someone reacted that way to His Last Bow, and they’re not meaningfully “wrong” either.
What’s interesting about this (for me) is that the format and central characters are considered far more important that the author’s writing style. A significant step in this may have been Holmes’ successful move to the screen, which has included faithful adaptations and new stories.
On top of that, Holmes outgrew the control of his creator within Conan Doyle’s lifetime, which is why he had to cave in to audience (and financial) pressure to bring him back. I suspect that a lot of Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts would despair of the rest of Conan Doyle’s literary output (e.g. “The Horror of the Heights”), because it’s not his skills that they’re interested in.
So it seems that really popular characters (Rimmer, Ford Prefect, The Doctor…) are a joint product of the creator, re-tellers and the audience. This isn’t a TV-age development, but something that happened with medieval literature, long before writers starting putting their names to things. And arguing about what’s an authentic use of the characters and what isn’t is a crucial part of the consumption process (and not just about production). And in a way, this post of yours is also part of the process, merely by mentioning the character.
(Sorry for the rambling)