Sherlockiana @ JamesBickers.com

The Los Angeles Times just reviewed “Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong,” the new hardcover deconstruction of “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” The author, psychoanalyst Pierre Bayard, uses Holmes’ own methods on the text itself, questioning everything that is presented in the story, including the testimony of our good doctor himself.

With wit and careful analysis, Bayard makes a convincing case for not only Dr. Watson’s unreliability as narrator and eyewitness to the events in the novel but also the trickier assertion that Conan Doyle, who had actually killed off Holmes in an earlier story and was forced by popular demand to bring him back, became distracted by the fantastical setting and dog he had created and ignored the real killer operating in the margins.

Way to kill the party, Bayard. Next you’re going to tell us that the earth didn’t really stop rotating for a day like it says in the book of Joshua, right?

I’ve ordered my copy of this one … will have my own review in a few days.

Filed under: Readings on December 11th, 2008