Sherlock Holmes was Wrong: Re-opening the Case of the "Hound of the Baskervilles"
by Pierre Bayard
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Eliminate the impossible, Sherlock Holmes said, and whatever is left must be the solution. But, as Pierre Bayard finds in this dazzling reinvestigation of The Hound of the Baskervilles, sometimes the master missed his mark. Using the last thoughts of the murder victim as his key, Bayard unravels the case, leading the reader to the astonishing conclusion that Holmes-and, in fact, Arthur Conan Doyle-got things all wrong: The killer is not at all who they said it was.Part intellectual show more entertainment, part love letter to crime novels, and part crime novel in itself, Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong turns one of our most beloved stories delightfully on its head. Examining the many facets of the case and illuminating the bizarre interstices between Doyle's fiction and the real world, Bayard demonstrates a whole new way of reading mysteries: a kind of "detective criticism" that allows readers to outsmart not only the criminals in the stories we love but also the heroes-and sometimes even the writers. show lessTags
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PuddinTame These are both readable, intelligent readings into the text of works, asking questions that I am sometimes embarrassed to admit never occurred to me. Both authors have other books along the same lines.
Member Reviews
Gosh, this book is an absurd flight-of-fancy, irritatingly smug, and sits at the opposite end of the literary theory spectrum to myself. It is also, incidentally, well-written and coherent within its own framework.
Bayard adopts the viewpoint of the 19th century school of literary theory (somewhat back in vogue) that characters can have a life beyond the page. He argues forcefully for the fact that we all play some role in bringing characters to life, interpreting the gaps and lacunae in the author's descriptions and bringing our own biases with us. He takes this theory further, arguing that it is dull to accept what the author tells us, and we must instead fashion our own work out of that on the page. An intriguing theory that doesn't show more sit well with my New-Criticism-cum-New-Historicism viewpoints, but I'm willing to let other opinions stand.
Without spoiling anything, Bayard's ultimate conclusion about what really happened in The Hound of the Baskervilles is quite clever, really. He makes a convincing case that Holmes' faulty reasoning and preconceived notions led to an incorrect conclusion, and he argues forcefully that readers' love of Holmes since his conception goes beyond that of fans and a character. That, in a sense, Conan Doyle created a character who outgrew him, who outgrew the world of fiction.
Undeniably this work (in translation) would have been better as a long essay than an entire volume. The first 53 pages are a retelling of Conan Doyle's novel, which seems excessive. The section on Conan Doyle's relationship with his character is entirely filler, if interesting historically. Nevertheless, this is the book that we have, and thus it's the book I'm reviewing.
Much of your feeling on this book will depend on how you take Bayard's own attitude. Is he being wryly self-aware or does he truly believe his own argument? Evidently a lot of Goodreads reviewers are frustrated by the theorist arguing that characters experience lives we are not a part of. I suspect Bayard knows exactly what he's doing, and is having fun with his own conceit. He knows, as well as we do, that this is not possible, and that if Conan Doyle had intended for Holmes to get the case wrong, he would have made that clear. Thus, we must approach the whole work within Bayard's own framework or there is no point reading it at all.
From this point of view, the book is rather good. On reflection, even the seemingly excessive chapters (such as a deep analysis of the eponymous hound's mindset) are relevant to the central argument. This is a book that can inspire great literary debates - as indeed it has in my friendship circle - and for that we should be grateful. (Although the fact that Bayard has written three such books as this - another on Hamlet and one on Agatha Christie's Roger Ackroyd - may annoy literary elitists like myself, who would rather theorists devote themselves to exploring the texts themselves rather than making a career out of the spaces in between!)
What am I saying? If the work is one long con, it's a damn good one. If it's completely serious, it's trash. If it's somewhere in between, I suspect it's a cunning little argument that helped earn a writer some royalties, and it needn't be any more than that. show less
Bayard adopts the viewpoint of the 19th century school of literary theory (somewhat back in vogue) that characters can have a life beyond the page. He argues forcefully for the fact that we all play some role in bringing characters to life, interpreting the gaps and lacunae in the author's descriptions and bringing our own biases with us. He takes this theory further, arguing that it is dull to accept what the author tells us, and we must instead fashion our own work out of that on the page. An intriguing theory that doesn't show more sit well with my New-Criticism-cum-New-Historicism viewpoints, but I'm willing to let other opinions stand.
Without spoiling anything, Bayard's ultimate conclusion about what really happened in The Hound of the Baskervilles is quite clever, really. He makes a convincing case that Holmes' faulty reasoning and preconceived notions led to an incorrect conclusion, and he argues forcefully that readers' love of Holmes since his conception goes beyond that of fans and a character. That, in a sense, Conan Doyle created a character who outgrew him, who outgrew the world of fiction.
Undeniably this work (in translation) would have been better as a long essay than an entire volume. The first 53 pages are a retelling of Conan Doyle's novel, which seems excessive. The section on Conan Doyle's relationship with his character is entirely filler, if interesting historically. Nevertheless, this is the book that we have, and thus it's the book I'm reviewing.
Much of your feeling on this book will depend on how you take Bayard's own attitude. Is he being wryly self-aware or does he truly believe his own argument? Evidently a lot of Goodreads reviewers are frustrated by the theorist arguing that characters experience lives we are not a part of. I suspect Bayard knows exactly what he's doing, and is having fun with his own conceit. He knows, as well as we do, that this is not possible, and that if Conan Doyle had intended for Holmes to get the case wrong, he would have made that clear. Thus, we must approach the whole work within Bayard's own framework or there is no point reading it at all.
From this point of view, the book is rather good. On reflection, even the seemingly excessive chapters (such as a deep analysis of the eponymous hound's mindset) are relevant to the central argument. This is a book that can inspire great literary debates - as indeed it has in my friendship circle - and for that we should be grateful. (Although the fact that Bayard has written three such books as this - another on Hamlet and one on Agatha Christie's Roger Ackroyd - may annoy literary elitists like myself, who would rather theorists devote themselves to exploring the texts themselves rather than making a career out of the spaces in between!)
What am I saying? If the work is one long con, it's a damn good one. If it's completely serious, it's trash. If it's somewhere in between, I suspect it's a cunning little argument that helped earn a writer some royalties, and it needn't be any more than that. show less
I wish this 188 page book had been about 133 pages long but, otherwise, enjoyed it.
Peter Bayard’s notion is that the characters of a novel live and operate independently of their author and that the latter is often unaware of the true events taking place in a story (the quote from Jasper Fforde at the beginning of the book gives the reader his first inkling).
In previous stories, he has apparently shown that Claudius was not the villain of Hamlet and that Hercule Poirot misidentified the murderer in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In this volume he tackles Sherlock Holmes, showing that the detective got it entirely wrong in The Hound of the Baskervilles.
The book comprises six actual sections, but is divided into roughly four parts that show more don’t quite correspond to the author’s divisions. The first is a recapitulation of the plot of The Hound of the Baskervilles. It is done quickly and is useful if you haven’t read the latter recently.
The second is an explanation and critique of Holmes’ methods. If you are a fan of the detective, this section is nothing new, for you are certainly familiar with those methods. Quite probably, you have also reached the independent conclusion that Holmes often treats statistical probabilities as facts and often leaps to ill-supported conclusions that seem brilliant only because the comparison is Watson, who is such a dunderhead. Yet, Bayard expresses his ideas quickly and with many examples and it is enjoyable to read.
The third section came close to ruining the book for me. It is a psycho-philosophical discourse on the “realness” of fictional works, along with a recounting of Doyle’s actual dissatisfaction with Holmes. And it is long. And it is tedious. Essentially, Bayard sets up the premise that Doyle was so upset with his inability to kill Holmes that he could not be trusted to provide an unbiased reporting of events. It felt like five pages of text ballooned into over 60.
The fourth section is the payoff, in which Bayard exposes the real murderer in the book. No spoilers but, quite simply, his solution is much better than Doyle’s. The resolution is a much better fit of the facts of the story; the crime more intricate and interesting to the reader; the oddities and coincidences which fill this story are explained.
A recommended read but, if you skim the third section, I shan’t blame you. show less
Peter Bayard’s notion is that the characters of a novel live and operate independently of their author and that the latter is often unaware of the true events taking place in a story (the quote from Jasper Fforde at the beginning of the book gives the reader his first inkling).
In previous stories, he has apparently shown that Claudius was not the villain of Hamlet and that Hercule Poirot misidentified the murderer in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In this volume he tackles Sherlock Holmes, showing that the detective got it entirely wrong in The Hound of the Baskervilles.
The book comprises six actual sections, but is divided into roughly four parts that show more don’t quite correspond to the author’s divisions. The first is a recapitulation of the plot of The Hound of the Baskervilles. It is done quickly and is useful if you haven’t read the latter recently.
The second is an explanation and critique of Holmes’ methods. If you are a fan of the detective, this section is nothing new, for you are certainly familiar with those methods. Quite probably, you have also reached the independent conclusion that Holmes often treats statistical probabilities as facts and often leaps to ill-supported conclusions that seem brilliant only because the comparison is Watson, who is such a dunderhead. Yet, Bayard expresses his ideas quickly and with many examples and it is enjoyable to read.
The third section came close to ruining the book for me. It is a psycho-philosophical discourse on the “realness” of fictional works, along with a recounting of Doyle’s actual dissatisfaction with Holmes. And it is long. And it is tedious. Essentially, Bayard sets up the premise that Doyle was so upset with his inability to kill Holmes that he could not be trusted to provide an unbiased reporting of events. It felt like five pages of text ballooned into over 60.
The fourth section is the payoff, in which Bayard exposes the real murderer in the book. No spoilers but, quite simply, his solution is much better than Doyle’s. The resolution is a much better fit of the facts of the story; the crime more intricate and interesting to the reader; the oddities and coincidences which fill this story are explained.
A recommended read but, if you skim the third section, I shan’t blame you. show less
If understood as having tongue firmly in cheek, this is the best kind of literary criticism: inventive, thoroughly, approachable, rigorously grounded in the text, and fun to read. It's possible that Bayard is serious, but given the subjects of his other works, I think we can rule that out as an impossibility.
I loved this book. For one thing, it does a better job than Holmes in discovering the true crime at the heart of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and the true perpetrator. Moreover, it is simultaneously a serious work of criticism and theory and greatly playful, both a work of analysis and a novel itself, albeit a novel that consistents entirely of events and characters already available to the reader. The book is full of precise insights about readers and books generally, and detective fiction in particular. The crime-solving portion of the book encompasses maybe half of what is a short book, so a reader only interested in who done it might be a bit disappointed. But in what murder mystery is not the point the getting there, rather than show more the particular destination? show less
This book is playful, funny and amazing and adds so much to its subject. Having read THotB though is pretty much required preparation, and ideally some more Sherlock Holmes stories.
However, a caveat: This book requires you to like metafiction and be prepared to tolerate a charming arrogance/wankiness about literature though, but if you've read Sherlock Holmes then you should be up to the task. If you don't read it with too serious a face, it's really enjoyable.
However, a caveat: This book requires you to like metafiction and be prepared to tolerate a charming arrogance/wankiness about literature though, but if you've read Sherlock Holmes then you should be up to the task. If you don't read it with too serious a face, it's really enjoyable.
Drawing on and expanding his previous works of what he terms "detective criticism," in Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong (Bloomsbury, 2008) Pierre Bayard reopens The Hound of the Baskervilles and suggests that by a rigorous applications of Holmes' own detecting methods, the murderer was likely not the man ultimately fingered by Holmes and Watson, but someone else entirely.
A creative idea, and some of Bayard's reasoning is fun to follow and interesting to read. He makes some interesting points about the timing of the publication of Hound and Conan Doyle's ambivalence about resurrecting Holmes (perhaps reading a bit too deeply into the author's psychological state while doing so), and muses on the power of fictional characters: can they at times show more "cross the gap," as it were, and become more than just words on a page? It's no accident, I expect, that the initial epigram is a quote from Jasper Fforde.
In offering a close reading of the Hound itself, Bayard relies too heavily on a French translation of the novel, in which the translator uses canine descriptors for Holmes (thus "his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight" from the original English becomes "his eyes gleamed like a wolf's" in the French translation). Thus, Bayard's use of the translation to make a point that Conan Doyle is connecting Holmes and the Hound doesn't quite hold up.
While Bayard's plausible case for a different killer with a carefully-honed agenda makes for provocative reading, it's no less circumstantial a case than Holmes' is against the canonical murderer. Nonetheless, if you like exploring alternative interpretations of literary events, this is a book worth picking up.
http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2011/07/book-review-sherlock-holmes-was-wrong.ht... show less
A creative idea, and some of Bayard's reasoning is fun to follow and interesting to read. He makes some interesting points about the timing of the publication of Hound and Conan Doyle's ambivalence about resurrecting Holmes (perhaps reading a bit too deeply into the author's psychological state while doing so), and muses on the power of fictional characters: can they at times show more "cross the gap," as it were, and become more than just words on a page? It's no accident, I expect, that the initial epigram is a quote from Jasper Fforde.
In offering a close reading of the Hound itself, Bayard relies too heavily on a French translation of the novel, in which the translator uses canine descriptors for Holmes (thus "his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight" from the original English becomes "his eyes gleamed like a wolf's" in the French translation). Thus, Bayard's use of the translation to make a point that Conan Doyle is connecting Holmes and the Hound doesn't quite hold up.
While Bayard's plausible case for a different killer with a carefully-honed agenda makes for provocative reading, it's no less circumstantial a case than Holmes' is against the canonical murderer. Nonetheless, if you like exploring alternative interpretations of literary events, this is a book worth picking up.
http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2011/07/book-review-sherlock-holmes-was-wrong.ht... show less
I'm really very much not a fan of **Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of The Hound of the Baskervilles** by *Pierre Bayard*. Spoilers ahead, though I won't spoil the proposed solution to the Baskerville case.
The book's premise is this: Doyle was so tilted by having to bring back Sherlock Holmes that he didn't correctly solve this case, because he was busy writing an evil-associated, incompetent, absent Holmes. The author proposes an alternate resolution, and shows plenty of sources for his judgement of both Doyle and Holmes. This part of the book is fine! Speculating about other plausible interpretations of a story, and addressing inconsistencies is fun! I enjoyed the speculation, and the solution.
The problem is – well, show more this would have made a fine essay. Or, you know, do what everybody else is doing and write fan fiction. Instead, the author decided he was a fancy, intellectual scholar with his own school of literature interpretation. So, before in true detective style we get a grand reveal in the end, we have to sit through a long, rambling, and condescending retelling of what the author thinks of literature. Y'know, generally. Points for style because he teasers his other books (he did a similar book on the Roger Ackroyd murder by Agatha Christie), complete with "you'll have to buy them to find out my solution".
I tend to trust translators, so I'd like to place the blame for the Doylian, pretentious and condescending tone with the author. Funnily enough, the translator doesn't only add the customary required footnotes, but also corrects the author's opinions where appropriate: Bayard bases parts of his argument and comparison on associations provided by the French translation that aren't present in the English original.
So all things considered: A good idea that would have been enjoyable if it didn't take itself so goddamn seriously. Write some fanfic, dude. show less
The book's premise is this: Doyle was so tilted by having to bring back Sherlock Holmes that he didn't correctly solve this case, because he was busy writing an evil-associated, incompetent, absent Holmes. The author proposes an alternate resolution, and shows plenty of sources for his judgement of both Doyle and Holmes. This part of the book is fine! Speculating about other plausible interpretations of a story, and addressing inconsistencies is fun! I enjoyed the speculation, and the solution.
The problem is – well, show more this would have made a fine essay. Or, you know, do what everybody else is doing and write fan fiction. Instead, the author decided he was a fancy, intellectual scholar with his own school of literature interpretation. So, before in true detective style we get a grand reveal in the end, we have to sit through a long, rambling, and condescending retelling of what the author thinks of literature. Y'know, generally. Points for style because he teasers his other books (he did a similar book on the Roger Ackroyd murder by Agatha Christie), complete with "you'll have to buy them to find out my solution".
I tend to trust translators, so I'd like to place the blame for the Doylian, pretentious and condescending tone with the author. Funnily enough, the translator doesn't only add the customary required footnotes, but also corrects the author's opinions where appropriate: Bayard bases parts of his argument and comparison on associations provided by the French translation that aren't present in the English original.
So all things considered: A good idea that would have been enjoyable if it didn't take itself so goddamn seriously. Write some fanfic, dude. show less
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Author Information
31+ Works 2,461 Members
Pierre Bayard is a psychoanalyst and professor of French literature in Paris
Work Relationships
Is a commentary on the text of
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Sherlock Holmes was Wrong: Re-opening the Case of the "Hound of the Baskervilles"
- Original title
- L'Affaire du Chien des Baskerville
- People/Characters
- Sherlock Holmes; John H. Watson; Arthur Conan Doyle
- Important places
- 221B Baker Street, London, England, UK; Baskerville Hall, Dartmoor, Devon, England, UK; Grimpen Mire, Dartmoor, Devon, England, UK
- Epigraph
- The barriers between reality and fiction are softer than we think; a bit like a frozen lake. Hundreds of people can walk across it, but then one evening a thin spot develops and someone falls through; the hole is frozen over ... (show all)by the following morning.
—Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair - Dedication
- For Guillaume
- First words
- From the chamber where she has been locked for hours, the young woman hears shouts and laughter rising from the great dining hall below.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)For it is not true that the dead are dead. In fiction as in reality, they possess a singular form of existence and continue to mingle with the living, shaping their decisions, dictating their statements and even their thoughts, imperiously demanding, with as much force and steadfastness as the living, finally to be recognized and heard.
- Original language
- French
Classifications
- Genres
- Literature Studies and Criticism, Nonfiction, Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 823.912 — Literature & rhetoric English & Old English literatures English fiction 1900- 1901-1999 1901-1945
- LCC
- PR4622 .H63 .B3913 — Language and Literature English English Literature 19th century , 1770/1800-1890/1900
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 251
- Popularity
- 128,585
- Reviews
- 16
- Rating
- (3.49)
- Languages
- 5 — English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 16
- ASINs
- 6
