2013 JAN WHIMSEY AWARD
Melinda Caric, ASH for “An Open Apology to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.” The Serpentine Muse Vol. 28, No 3, 2012, pp 14-15.
AN OPEN APOLOGY TO SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
by Melinda Caric
First, I’d like to apologize on behalf of all of your fans, going as far back as Sidney Paget, for making Holmes so damn good looking, thereby guaranteeing his continued popularity despite your intentions to the contrary. I know you had a different, less attractive, and much dorkier hero in mind, and we’re all so very ashamed of ourselves for hiring artists and actors who gave us someone nice to look at.
I’m sorry for the derivative fiction, both good and bad, furthering the adventures of two men of whom you have long since grown weary. We honestly couldn’t help ourselves. We took your characters to places and put them in situations where you no longer had any semblance of control over them. Fighting Nazis, escaping velociraptors, and being humiliated at the end of a dominatrix’s whip are all things you probably didn’t imagine we could come up with, but we’re a pretty resourceful group. To say nothing of the more risqué pieces of fan fiction out there (of which I have only heard rumors as I would never read such things myself).
I’m sorry that in 2009, 7-Eleven used the images of an ex-drug addict and a noted philanderer, costumed as your most beloved characters, to promote their 99-cent special on what they called “Go-Go Taquitos.”
I’m sorry your literary genius ultimately became an iPhone app wherein players can manipulate the bodies of your immortal creations with a simple swipe of their Dorito-stained fingertips.
I’m sorry that little more than one hundred years after the fact, your eye for detail and rather eloquent description of period dress trickled down into deerstalkers and curved pipes, eventually winding up in that cesspool known as Halloween Costume for Women, where it came to be sold online under the name “Sexy Detective.”
I’m sorry that I never read The White Company. I know it would make you really happy if I did, and I meant to, but I just kept re-reading The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans instead. I don’t know why.
I’m so sorry about the Taquitos.
Last but not least, I need to apologize for the fact that it seems that there are those who feel that Undershaw would be better if it were developed, divided, and destroyed. I want to assure you that despite the changes your characters have endured by our hands, we also recognize that some things are best preserved exactly as they are.
Please join me in raising your glass to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. My apologies, as you may have guessed, are insincere ones at best, since Holmes and Watson have proven themselves targets far too delicious to resist. To take a crack at two of the most beloved icons of literature is a temptation few have been able to withstand. It is a continuing testament to the storytelling mastery of Arthur Conan Doyle that they are still very much men of the present, and as relevant now as they were in 1895.
