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Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of The Hound of the Baskervilles
In his brilliant reinvestigation of the classic case of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Pierre Bayard uses the last thoughts of the murder victim as his key to unravel the mystery, leading the reader to the astonishing conclusion that Holmes-and, in fact, Arthur Conan Doyle-got things all wrong. Part intellectual 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.
208 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 2008
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559 people want to read
About the author
Pierre Bayard
47 books123 followersPierre Bayard (born 1954) is a French author, professor of literature and connoisseur of psychology.
Bayard's recent book Comment parler des livres que l'on n'a pas lus?, or "How to talk about books you haven't read", is a bestseller in France and has received much critical attention in English language press.
A few of his books present revisionist readings of famous fictional mysteries. Not only does he argue that the real murderer is not the one that the author presents to us, but in addition these works suggest that the author subconsciously knew who the real culprit is. His 2008 book L'Affaire du Chien des Baskerville was published in English as Sherlock Holmes was Wrong: Re-opening the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles. His earlier book Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? re-investigates Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. His book on Hamlet which argues that Claudius did not kill Hamlet's father remains untranslated into English.
Bayard's recent book Comment parler des livres que l'on n'a pas lus?, or "How to talk about books you haven't read", is a bestseller in France and has received much critical attention in English language press.
A few of his books present revisionist readings of famous fictional mysteries. Not only does he argue that the real murderer is not the one that the author presents to us, but in addition these works suggest that the author subconsciously knew who the real culprit is. His 2008 book L'Affaire du Chien des Baskerville was published in English as Sherlock Holmes was Wrong: Re-opening the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles. His earlier book Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? re-investigates Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. His book on Hamlet which argues that Claudius did not kill Hamlet's father remains untranslated into English.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 127 reviews
July 31, 2022
Per la serie: se mia nonna avesse le ruote... Un libro di apprezzabile cazzeggio intellettuale sui personaggi letterari e su quelli della letteratura gialla in particolare. E se Sherlock avesse sbagliato l'indagine!? E se Conan Doyle avesse volutamente seminato indizi per la vera soluzione del suo celebre caso!? E ancora piu' intrigante: se i personaggi letterari avessero una vita propria, reale, aldila' della volonta' degli autori stessi!? Quel che e' certo e' che l'approccio psicanalitico (non pesante) dell'autore contribuisce ad evidenziare la dinamica emotiva autore-personaggi, a chiarire come molte discrepanze nella trama, apparenti "errori", siano probabilmente frutto delle tensioni nella coppia suddetta, nel nostro caso dell'odio malcelato di Conan Doyle verso il personaggio che l'aveva assorbito e messo inopinatamente in secondo piano, che addirittura tenta di uccidere senza successo. La vera e propria sommossa dei lettori inferociti lo costringe a una rinascita maldigerita. Un libricino denso, a volte un po' tortuoso ma che un appassionato di Holmes e del giallo in generale, puo' trovare intrigante.
March 20, 2012
With such an ambitious, and in some aspects arrogant, title Pierre Bayard was always going to have to write a very convincing analysis. Which in my opinion he managed to do while also throwing in a hint of literary criticism of a type I had not paid attention to as of yet. And while such things appeared at first disconnected from his analysis he managed to pull everything back together by the end to throw the entire case on its head.
Bayard for the first half of the book begins with a recap of past events. This is the more taxing and uninteresting aspect of his work. And when he leaves The Hounds of the Baskervilles to talk about how he developed a mode of detective criticism for use on Hamlet and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd serves to do little but tell how good Bayard is at solving mysteries the writers cannot. However once you pass through this unnecessary hurdle the true magic of Bayard's analysis appears.
He begins by breaking down Holmes' method through drawing attention to passages from both The Hound of the Baskervilles and other notable stories in the canon. Through quotes and references he quickly reveals the subtle flaws behind Holmes' technique.
Bayard also indicates that since the crime is observed from Watson's point of view all observation of clues and suspects is tainted by his opinion. This of course influences the way the reader observes the case in the end.
The next part in the investigation involves a look at the accused parties and creating proper alibis from the text.
A proper examination of the crime out of place Bayard proceeds on a slight tangent. It is this aspect of his work which lowers its overall standard. His observations are quality and his final judgements profound but his method of informing the reader lets him down. Perhaps that is in part resultant from translation but nonetheless it is an obvious flaw.
The tangent involves a look at how the literary and real worlds collide. The author of course uses this to point out how Sherlock Holmes took on a life beyond that which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle intended. After all Hound of the Baskervilles was written after he had killed the great detective. This look at how Holmes became an almost real character provides some intriguing discussion apart from the case but is also used to provide reasoning to the structure of Doyle's bizarre tale.
The penultimate procedure is an explanation of how Holmes falls into being manipulated and used. In this section a brief examination is made of how Holmes comes to ignore his own rules about theorising and gathering data.
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgement."
And again:
"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."
For it becomes clear that in The Hound of the Baskervilles Holmes does theorise before gathering all data. As such his final judgement appears on the whole flawed despite his surety that he is correct.
Sherlock Holmes is renowned for one of my personal favourite quotes. "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." However, as Bayard shows in his conclusion, the impossible has not in this case been completely eliminated. There remains one highly possible and more probable solution passed over by the detective. And it is this revelation of the true and more likely suspect which makes reading Bayard's work worth all the flaws and disjointed sentences.
In summary I would state that this is a work with on the whole excellent depth. A book that reveals how superficial the seemingly conclusive solution is in The Hound of the Baskervilles. And it is worth all the painstaking disassembly by Bayard to see the end conclusion. A conclusion which will flip your idea of The Hound of the Baskervilles on its head. So I suggest that if you haven't read The Hound of the Baskervilles that you do so and then right afterwards delve into this. You'll go from being impressed with the depth of the book to being impressed with the crime behind the crime. And I still cannot figure out if the brilliant Sir Arthur Conan Doyle intended his work to end that way or not. Although it seems he did with all the obvious threads...
Bayard for the first half of the book begins with a recap of past events. This is the more taxing and uninteresting aspect of his work. And when he leaves The Hounds of the Baskervilles to talk about how he developed a mode of detective criticism for use on Hamlet and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd serves to do little but tell how good Bayard is at solving mysteries the writers cannot. However once you pass through this unnecessary hurdle the true magic of Bayard's analysis appears.
He begins by breaking down Holmes' method through drawing attention to passages from both The Hound of the Baskervilles and other notable stories in the canon. Through quotes and references he quickly reveals the subtle flaws behind Holmes' technique.
Bayard also indicates that since the crime is observed from Watson's point of view all observation of clues and suspects is tainted by his opinion. This of course influences the way the reader observes the case in the end.
The next part in the investigation involves a look at the accused parties and creating proper alibis from the text.
A proper examination of the crime out of place Bayard proceeds on a slight tangent. It is this aspect of his work which lowers its overall standard. His observations are quality and his final judgements profound but his method of informing the reader lets him down. Perhaps that is in part resultant from translation but nonetheless it is an obvious flaw.
The tangent involves a look at how the literary and real worlds collide. The author of course uses this to point out how Sherlock Holmes took on a life beyond that which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle intended. After all Hound of the Baskervilles was written after he had killed the great detective. This look at how Holmes became an almost real character provides some intriguing discussion apart from the case but is also used to provide reasoning to the structure of Doyle's bizarre tale.
The penultimate procedure is an explanation of how Holmes falls into being manipulated and used. In this section a brief examination is made of how Holmes comes to ignore his own rules about theorising and gathering data.
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgement."
And again:
"It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."
For it becomes clear that in The Hound of the Baskervilles Holmes does theorise before gathering all data. As such his final judgement appears on the whole flawed despite his surety that he is correct.
Sherlock Holmes is renowned for one of my personal favourite quotes. "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." However, as Bayard shows in his conclusion, the impossible has not in this case been completely eliminated. There remains one highly possible and more probable solution passed over by the detective. And it is this revelation of the true and more likely suspect which makes reading Bayard's work worth all the flaws and disjointed sentences.
In summary I would state that this is a work with on the whole excellent depth. A book that reveals how superficial the seemingly conclusive solution is in The Hound of the Baskervilles. And it is worth all the painstaking disassembly by Bayard to see the end conclusion. A conclusion which will flip your idea of The Hound of the Baskervilles on its head. So I suggest that if you haven't read The Hound of the Baskervilles that you do so and then right afterwards delve into this. You'll go from being impressed with the depth of the book to being impressed with the crime behind the crime. And I still cannot figure out if the brilliant Sir Arthur Conan Doyle intended his work to end that way or not. Although it seems he did with all the obvious threads...
October 26, 2021
Police criticism is now my thing! I will have to use whodunnit approach to texts! And I will sure have to read the one about Ackroyd...
February 25, 2009
I can't quite decide if this is a perfect example of tongue-in-cheek meta-criticism, or a nutty rereading padded with chapters of justification that essentially sum up to "It's my opinion, so it can't be wrong." I suggest skipping to the last chapter and just enjoying Bayard's reworking of the plot, which isn't without its own gaping holes but is somewhat more satisfying than the solution in the original.
December 22, 2011
I'm going to chalk much of my distaste for this book due to bad translation. The flow of language is terrible, making this a difficult read for me from the start.
Another large part of my distaste is the sheer arrogance of the author that drips from every page. Holmes was arrogant, too, but his was derived from his success in solving problems where others where having trouble discerning the mere existence of an issue. Holmes also showed a more humble side numerous times. Pierre Bayard exemplifies the stereotype the Anglophone world has of the French: snide, arrogant and dismissive.
He spends too much of the book retelling the story in a most pedestrian and boring manner, boldly poking the reader with quick jabs about the original conclusion while telling us that all will be revealed later. I don't know if this was a nod to the way Holmes worked in the original stories, but Bayard lacks the charm of the former.
Bayard does pick up on one thing that's quite apparent: Holmes was fixated on Stapleton from the very beginning. Bayard's problem is that he keeps harping on it rather than allowing the Great Detective this one idiosyncrasy. His conclusion is just as forced as he claims the original one is, reading into Doyle's writing in a way only a psychologist can. At the end, I'm left with wondering why I plodded through this and why it took me so long to read less than 200 pages. I give this book two stars simply because it wasn't boring in the sense that I wanted to finish it so I could yell at the book like one does at a referee on a televised sports game.
Another large part of my distaste is the sheer arrogance of the author that drips from every page. Holmes was arrogant, too, but his was derived from his success in solving problems where others where having trouble discerning the mere existence of an issue. Holmes also showed a more humble side numerous times. Pierre Bayard exemplifies the stereotype the Anglophone world has of the French: snide, arrogant and dismissive.
He spends too much of the book retelling the story in a most pedestrian and boring manner, boldly poking the reader with quick jabs about the original conclusion while telling us that all will be revealed later. I don't know if this was a nod to the way Holmes worked in the original stories, but Bayard lacks the charm of the former.
Bayard does pick up on one thing that's quite apparent: Holmes was fixated on Stapleton from the very beginning. Bayard's problem is that he keeps harping on it rather than allowing the Great Detective this one idiosyncrasy. His conclusion is just as forced as he claims the original one is, reading into Doyle's writing in a way only a psychologist can. At the end, I'm left with wondering why I plodded through this and why it took me so long to read less than 200 pages. I give this book two stars simply because it wasn't boring in the sense that I wanted to finish it so I could yell at the book like one does at a referee on a televised sports game.
February 2, 2022
I did it! I had guessed the murderer before I read the book!
September 21, 2014
Holmes war ein blutiger Anfänger
Wirklich faszinierend: Die Aufzählung so vieler Fehler, die Holmes im Laufe seiner Ermittlungen gemacht hat. Kaum zu glauben, dass so jemand einen solchen Ruf haben kann. Aber Holmes' Macken überspielen seine Inkompetenz grandios, das muss man ihm zugestehen.
Wie bei vielen Büchern Bayards gibt es Missverständnisse - viele Leser meinen, dass es Bayard darum gehe, Holmes (oder Conan Doyle) in Misskredit zu bringen, aus Neid, Arroganz, Besserwisserei oder sonst einem niederen Motiv. Doch in Wahrheit nutzt Bayard immer wieder solche frechen Thesen, um literaturwissenschaftliche Theorien knallig zu verpacken. Subjektivität auf allen literarischen Ebenen (Autor-Erzähler-Protagonist-Leser), die Stilfigur des "unzuverlässigen Erzählers" und die Idee, dass sich Texte vom Autor und vom Leser lösen und ihr Eigenleben aufnehmen, das ein eigenes "lückenhaftes Universum" bildet, das in sich analysiert werden kann, werden unter anderem in diesem Buch behandelt. Wo endet Realität und beginnt Fiktion? Und gehen beide nicht irgendwie ineinander über?
Besonders fasziniert mich diese letzte These, die Bayard von Thomas Pavel aufgreift. Eigentlich ist sie, so verrückt sie sich auf den ersten Blick anhören mag, doch irgendwie plausibel - für mich ist beispielsweise Benjamin Franklin oder sogar Angela Merkel nicht "realistischer", oder besser gesagt, weniger fiktional, als Sherlock Holmes oder James Bond; ich kenne alle diese Figuren nur aus den Medien, und man kann sicher nicht sagen, dass Holmes weniger Einfluss auf mein Leben hat als Franklin.
Wie immer ist Bayard herrlich unterhaltsam, mit seinem feinen, aber ausgesprochen wirksamen Humor, und einer absolut beneidenswerten Klugheit und Sinnesschärfe, die aus jedem Satz strahlt. Das mag auf den einen oder anderen vielleicht einschüchternd, arrogant oder herablassend wirken - aber Bayard kann schließlich nichts für die Minderwertigkeitskomplexe mancher Leser.
Ach, hätte ich doch im Literaturwissenschaftsstudium statt den Professoren, denen es wichtig war, die Bedeutung der Farbe blau in diesem oder jenen Text in mich hineinzuzwängen oder ihre angelesene Interpretation eines Texts dann auch noch mir überzustülpen, einen Lehrer wie Bayard gehabt. Das Studium wäre nicht so elend stumpf gewesen; ich hätte es durchgehalten statt gefrustet nach der Zwischenprüfung hinzuschmeißen und mich der Informatik zuzuwenden.
Wichtig ist nur eins - wenn man noch vorhat, ein paar der hier besprochenen Stories von Conan Doyle oder Agatha Christie zu lesen, sollte man dies vorher tun, denn es wird hier massivst gespoilert.
Wirklich faszinierend: Die Aufzählung so vieler Fehler, die Holmes im Laufe seiner Ermittlungen gemacht hat. Kaum zu glauben, dass so jemand einen solchen Ruf haben kann. Aber Holmes' Macken überspielen seine Inkompetenz grandios, das muss man ihm zugestehen.
Wie bei vielen Büchern Bayards gibt es Missverständnisse - viele Leser meinen, dass es Bayard darum gehe, Holmes (oder Conan Doyle) in Misskredit zu bringen, aus Neid, Arroganz, Besserwisserei oder sonst einem niederen Motiv. Doch in Wahrheit nutzt Bayard immer wieder solche frechen Thesen, um literaturwissenschaftliche Theorien knallig zu verpacken. Subjektivität auf allen literarischen Ebenen (Autor-Erzähler-Protagonist-Leser), die Stilfigur des "unzuverlässigen Erzählers" und die Idee, dass sich Texte vom Autor und vom Leser lösen und ihr Eigenleben aufnehmen, das ein eigenes "lückenhaftes Universum" bildet, das in sich analysiert werden kann, werden unter anderem in diesem Buch behandelt. Wo endet Realität und beginnt Fiktion? Und gehen beide nicht irgendwie ineinander über?
Besonders fasziniert mich diese letzte These, die Bayard von Thomas Pavel aufgreift. Eigentlich ist sie, so verrückt sie sich auf den ersten Blick anhören mag, doch irgendwie plausibel - für mich ist beispielsweise Benjamin Franklin oder sogar Angela Merkel nicht "realistischer", oder besser gesagt, weniger fiktional, als Sherlock Holmes oder James Bond; ich kenne alle diese Figuren nur aus den Medien, und man kann sicher nicht sagen, dass Holmes weniger Einfluss auf mein Leben hat als Franklin.
Wie immer ist Bayard herrlich unterhaltsam, mit seinem feinen, aber ausgesprochen wirksamen Humor, und einer absolut beneidenswerten Klugheit und Sinnesschärfe, die aus jedem Satz strahlt. Das mag auf den einen oder anderen vielleicht einschüchternd, arrogant oder herablassend wirken - aber Bayard kann schließlich nichts für die Minderwertigkeitskomplexe mancher Leser.
Ach, hätte ich doch im Literaturwissenschaftsstudium statt den Professoren, denen es wichtig war, die Bedeutung der Farbe blau in diesem oder jenen Text in mich hineinzuzwängen oder ihre angelesene Interpretation eines Texts dann auch noch mir überzustülpen, einen Lehrer wie Bayard gehabt. Das Studium wäre nicht so elend stumpf gewesen; ich hätte es durchgehalten statt gefrustet nach der Zwischenprüfung hinzuschmeißen und mich der Informatik zuzuwenden.
Wichtig ist nur eins - wenn man noch vorhat, ein paar der hier besprochenen Stories von Conan Doyle oder Agatha Christie zu lesen, sollte man dies vorher tun, denn es wird hier massivst gespoilert.
August 27, 2009
This slim volume takes a clever idea (re-solving the mystery of the House of the Baskervilles) and pads it out in an attempt to be able to justify the idea being presented as a full book instead of a single essay. Bayard expounds on literary theories of whether or not fictional characters can do things without the author knowing (handled pretentiously here; much more cleverly done in the fictional universes of Jasper Fforde), he has a tediously long chapter on whether or not Sherlock Holmes makes mistakes (um, yes), he actually has a chapter where he recaps other books he's written. Each of these things might have been useful to touch on in an introduction, but expanding each out to its own chapter feels like clawing for page space.
The re-solving of the mystery itself is pretty great, albeit a fairly small part of the total book. It takes a lot of things that didn't quite sit right with me when I was reading the novel, and fits them together in an alternate theory that holds up as a superior resolution to the mystery.
I would say, if you're interested in this book, pick it up and read the chapter where he details his alternate Baskervilles solution and skip the rest of it.
Two stars.
The re-solving of the mystery itself is pretty great, albeit a fairly small part of the total book. It takes a lot of things that didn't quite sit right with me when I was reading the novel, and fits them together in an alternate theory that holds up as a superior resolution to the mystery.
I would say, if you're interested in this book, pick it up and read the chapter where he details his alternate Baskervilles solution and skip the rest of it.
Two stars.
November 6, 2020
I think this author really likes to listen to himself. It seems to me that his main argument is that in the world of fictional works, only a fraction (say 25%) is put down in words, the reader supplies the rest with their imagination and knowledge (which is why you can never read the same book twice [you gain knowledge and imagination and thus fill the book's world just slightly differently each time] and why you'll never read the same book as your friends). And because the author cannot control the majority of the book's world, the author doesn't really know what is happening. Ok, let's just take that there are an infinite number of worlds that make up any one book. If that's the case, then surely there is at least one where the author got the ending right. And if there is a world where the author got it right, then why challenge how they came to the conclusion? Because every possible conclusion can be challenged and be proven to be both wrong and right. It seems an exercise in futility to me.
That being said, this is interesting to read if for no other reason than to entertain a different viewpoint. It is interesting how a different conclusion can be reached with the same information, the same words. And the book makes some good points, one being that people put so much stock in Sherlockian logic when, if we look at the stories, he is often either wrong or comes to no conclusion. Another being that a hound is a very silly way to murder someone (but I always figured that was more for atmosphere than actual logic).
If you like analyzing stories, you'll probably enjoy this read. Personally, I enjoy just riding along with fictional stories more than actually deciding if it's logical (because I figure, it's fiction: if you're reading it, you've already made a pact that this is not truth/actual facts, that it is made-up).
So, all of that being said, his conclusion is quite a fun one. And it is his conclusion alone that bumps this up to 3 stars. I think if he had spent less time pontificating about how fictional this fictional world and its elements are, I'd have been hooked.
That being said, this is interesting to read if for no other reason than to entertain a different viewpoint. It is interesting how a different conclusion can be reached with the same information, the same words. And the book makes some good points, one being that people put so much stock in Sherlockian logic when, if we look at the stories, he is often either wrong or comes to no conclusion. Another being that a hound is a very silly way to murder someone (but I always figured that was more for atmosphere than actual logic).
If you like analyzing stories, you'll probably enjoy this read. Personally, I enjoy just riding along with fictional stories more than actually deciding if it's logical (because I figure, it's fiction: if you're reading it, you've already made a pact that this is not truth/actual facts, that it is made-up).
So, all of that being said, his conclusion is quite a fun one. And it is his conclusion alone that bumps this up to 3 stars. I think if he had spent less time pontificating about how fictional this fictional world and its elements are, I'd have been hooked.
September 9, 2018
I made the mistake of thinking this book was a parody. Unfortunately, it was not.
While touted as a love-letter to crime novels, this book seeks to destroy one of the best loved crime novels. Basically, I got the impression that the author genuinely dislikes the Hound of the Baskervilles and wanted to re-write the novel how he thought it should be written, because obviously Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - the author - didn't actually know who committed the crime. On top of that, the author spent a lot of time trying to discredit Sherlock Holmes, not only during this mystery, but most of his work. While trying to show how ridiculous his deductions were during the book, he credits other fictional work as scientific proof.
The book is slow going considering much of the book is either a summary of the ACD story or whole portions of the actual text.
One thing not mentioned in the summary is that this reads like a book needed to pass a psychology class, the author attempting to explain how it was possible for Conan Doyle to miss the "obvious." And then trying to turn the Hound of the Baskervilles into a ghost story.
Basically, if you didn't like the original story, go ahead and read this "re-opening." But if you, like I, love the original story, don't waste your time.
While touted as a love-letter to crime novels, this book seeks to destroy one of the best loved crime novels. Basically, I got the impression that the author genuinely dislikes the Hound of the Baskervilles and wanted to re-write the novel how he thought it should be written, because obviously Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - the author - didn't actually know who committed the crime. On top of that, the author spent a lot of time trying to discredit Sherlock Holmes, not only during this mystery, but most of his work. While trying to show how ridiculous his deductions were during the book, he credits other fictional work as scientific proof.
The book is slow going considering much of the book is either a summary of the ACD story or whole portions of the actual text.
One thing not mentioned in the summary is that this reads like a book needed to pass a psychology class, the author attempting to explain how it was possible for Conan Doyle to miss the "obvious." And then trying to turn the Hound of the Baskervilles into a ghost story.
Basically, if you didn't like the original story, go ahead and read this "re-opening." But if you, like I, love the original story, don't waste your time.
February 9, 2019
Eigentlich eine schöne Idee für einen 100-Seiten-Essay, leider auf 200 Seiten aufgebläht: Das erste Viertel enthält eine sicher hilfreiche Zusammenfassung des Doyle-Romans, das letzte Viertel enthält das, was der Titel verspricht: Eine alternative Deutung der Handlung.
Dazwischen findet sich wenig Interessantes, das dafür oft wiederholt, und der immer wieder vor sich her getragene Stolz auf die eigene Erfindung der "Kriminalkritik", das Prinzip, Krimis anders zu lesen als vorgesehen - als sei das nicht erstens ohnehin dem Krimi inhärent (denn dort gibt es ja schon traditionell zwei Geschichten, die wirkliche und die dem Leser vorgegaukelte) und zweitens eine über hundert Jahre alte Tradition. 1911 begann Ronald Knox mit "Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes" das, was Holmes-Aficionados "The Game" nennen: Die Werke gegen den Strich lesen, Fehler entdecken. Seit 1946 veröffentlicht das Baker Street Journal Aufsätze dazu, und zu Lücken und Unklarheiten in The Hound of the Baskervilles gibt es etliche. (Auch außerhalb des Holmes-Kanons oder Krimigenres gibt es viele ähnliche Werke.)
Interessant ist Bayards Beitrag dazu allemal. Aber das Ignorieren jeglicher anderer Beiträge zum Thema stört; die Emporhebung herkömmlicher literaturwissenschaftlicher Gedanken zu etwas Einzigartigem stört. Und wenn Bayard eine Beschreibung der Reichenbachfälle zitiert und danach schreibt: "Ein Ort, der, wie nicht zu übersehen ist, das Bild einer sumpfigen Landschaft heraufbeschwört", dann ist das einfach Käse - mag aber an der Übersetzung liegen; in der englischen steht "drenched landscape", was eher passt, aber so oder so ist der Bezug zum Moor so weit hergeholt, dass man ihn allenfalls mit etwas bescheidenerem Tonfall akzeptieren würde.
Zweieinhalb Sterne, weil an sich gute Idee, nur nervige Ausführung.
Dazwischen findet sich wenig Interessantes, das dafür oft wiederholt, und der immer wieder vor sich her getragene Stolz auf die eigene Erfindung der "Kriminalkritik", das Prinzip, Krimis anders zu lesen als vorgesehen - als sei das nicht erstens ohnehin dem Krimi inhärent (denn dort gibt es ja schon traditionell zwei Geschichten, die wirkliche und die dem Leser vorgegaukelte) und zweitens eine über hundert Jahre alte Tradition. 1911 begann Ronald Knox mit "Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes" das, was Holmes-Aficionados "The Game" nennen: Die Werke gegen den Strich lesen, Fehler entdecken. Seit 1946 veröffentlicht das Baker Street Journal Aufsätze dazu, und zu Lücken und Unklarheiten in The Hound of the Baskervilles gibt es etliche. (Auch außerhalb des Holmes-Kanons oder Krimigenres gibt es viele ähnliche Werke.)
Interessant ist Bayards Beitrag dazu allemal. Aber das Ignorieren jeglicher anderer Beiträge zum Thema stört; die Emporhebung herkömmlicher literaturwissenschaftlicher Gedanken zu etwas Einzigartigem stört. Und wenn Bayard eine Beschreibung der Reichenbachfälle zitiert und danach schreibt: "Ein Ort, der, wie nicht zu übersehen ist, das Bild einer sumpfigen Landschaft heraufbeschwört", dann ist das einfach Käse - mag aber an der Übersetzung liegen; in der englischen steht "drenched landscape", was eher passt, aber so oder so ist der Bezug zum Moor so weit hergeholt, dass man ihn allenfalls mit etwas bescheidenerem Tonfall akzeptieren würde.
Zweieinhalb Sterne, weil an sich gute Idee, nur nervige Ausführung.
August 18, 2024
Eeek. This was NOT for me! I was a huge Sherlock Holmes fan in my earlier days…. I enjoy Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s works…. All of them. They are works of FICTION- sometimes based on legends or loosely based on criminal cases of the time in and around London, England.
When I first saw this book available on Libby & read a brief description- I thought it would be humorous or satirical. Basically I thought I was going to listen to a funny story about why Sherlock Holmes was wrong….
BUT this author wrote this book in GREAT detail to prove that Sherlock Holmes didn’t solve “The Hound of the Baskerville” correctly…. That the real criminal went free. This author presents an entire case of how his theories are correct while Sherlock Holmes’ theories & eventual solution to the “who done it” were wrong….. 😂😂😂 I guess I’m not intellectual enough to understand why someone should write an entire novel to prove that a work of fiction couldn’t be correct.
Not my cup of tea. I’m a Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson fan.
When I first saw this book available on Libby & read a brief description- I thought it would be humorous or satirical. Basically I thought I was going to listen to a funny story about why Sherlock Holmes was wrong….
BUT this author wrote this book in GREAT detail to prove that Sherlock Holmes didn’t solve “The Hound of the Baskerville” correctly…. That the real criminal went free. This author presents an entire case of how his theories are correct while Sherlock Holmes’ theories & eventual solution to the “who done it” were wrong….. 😂😂😂 I guess I’m not intellectual enough to understand why someone should write an entire novel to prove that a work of fiction couldn’t be correct.
Not my cup of tea. I’m a Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson fan.
January 14, 2016
Sadly, this is not a very amusing read. Unlike "The Physics of Superheroes", a book with a similar idea of applying real world reasoning to a world of fiction, this book takes itself a bit too seriously. I will say however that when Bayard's version of the crime was fleshed out in the final chapters I could not disagree with his findings. Annoying as it is, his theory does make a lot of sense.
That having been said, his overall reasoning is flawed at best. He makes assumptions based apparently solely on the french translation of the book. Which is, like the language itself, slightly more romanticized and makes more allusions to the moon and the apparent wolf-like properties of the Great Detective and are not apparent in the original English. One would think Bayard would have omitted such parts had he found they dd not fit in with the original novel, as his reasoning stems a lot more from how he believes Doyle felt about his creation than the narrative itself at times.
While there are, as previously stated no real flaws with Bayard's ultimate theory based on the narrative itself, his attitude towards both the reader and the original author is one of almost smug superiority. He paints himself up as being wiser than most for having figured it all out. A quality that would have been much better suited had his theory been based on facts and not an interpretation of a fictional story. Regardless of how good it is.
That having been said, his overall reasoning is flawed at best. He makes assumptions based apparently solely on the french translation of the book. Which is, like the language itself, slightly more romanticized and makes more allusions to the moon and the apparent wolf-like properties of the Great Detective and are not apparent in the original English. One would think Bayard would have omitted such parts had he found they dd not fit in with the original novel, as his reasoning stems a lot more from how he believes Doyle felt about his creation than the narrative itself at times.
While there are, as previously stated no real flaws with Bayard's ultimate theory based on the narrative itself, his attitude towards both the reader and the original author is one of almost smug superiority. He paints himself up as being wiser than most for having figured it all out. A quality that would have been much better suited had his theory been based on facts and not an interpretation of a fictional story. Regardless of how good it is.
September 10, 2021
This is such a fun and thought-provoking book. It is a loving retelling of Hound, and also a brilliant scholarly exercise. Bayard writes very well, with accuracy and imagination and a. writer's ear for a good turn of phrase. This intellectual examination thereby reads like a thriller- almost the equal to its famous precursor and subject. The idea was popular at the time- to re-read a classic novel from a perspective that alters its meaning dramatically but not through forcing one's views upon it, just by taking a fresh look at the evidence. Extraordinarily, this tale comes to quite a different conclusion. Elementary.
January 27, 2023
Interesting deconstruction of The Hound of the Baskervilles as well as a good introduction to deconstruction itself.
It would be cool if someone made a movie of this version.
It would be cool if someone made a movie of this version.
January 23, 2020
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 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.
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 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.
April 28, 2017
Pierre Bayard is a university professor and a psychoanalyst, and this explains both his arrogance and the unnecessary length of this book full of pompous twaddle. There are however some positive aspects, so I'll try not to ignore them.
At first, this book seems to be a sort of war against Conan Doyle. But the author couldn't restrain himself to demonstrate that the interpretation of the facts in "The Hound of the Baskervilles" doesn't hold much water, he aims higher than that, and it takes several long detours to get there.
He wastes reader's time be detailing "the Sherlock Holmes method," as if there was a need for that. He even makes lists of cases where Holmes failed to find the criminals, cases where Holmes allows the murderers to escape, and other cases of negligence, severe mistakes and other incongruities. There are even "a certain number that remain simply unsolved, either partially or completely." Bayard concludes: "The idea that the infallible Holmes sometimes makes mistakes does away with the notion that any superior authority may be entirely entrusted with deciding true and false; it makes the truth inherently unstable." On the contrary, making Holmes more human, more error-prone should be seen as a sensible choice for Conan Doyle to make.
But Bayard seems to that person that is unable to enjoy watching any police procedural, for he always finds tons of logic faults in every single one of them (not that he would be completely wrong). He also finds that Oedipus didn't kill Laius, that Poirot's reasoning in Agatha Christie’s "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" also is full of errors, and that Claudius is the real murderer in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. (Note that Bayard also wrote Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?: The Mystery Behind the Agatha Christie Mystery and Enquête sur Hamlet : Le Dialogue des sourds.)
I'd have loved to have faced a book where the reader is shown how a crime writer's logical construction missed some possible logical alternatives or how the "official story" is too far-fetched and a much simpler scenario could explain everything, especially in the whodunit genre. Bayard eventually manages to come up with a brilliant interpretation to "The Hound of the Baskervilles," but he spoils everything with his attempts of academically psychoanalyze Conan Doyle!
Because, you see, he couldn't help asking the rhetorical question, "Does Sherlock Holmes Exist?". The purpose was to demonstrate that "although fictional characters might not possess a material reality, they certainly have a psychological reality, which undeniably leads to a form of existence. ... What’s more, many of us are deeply marked by literary characters, to the point where we are no longer able to tell the difference between reality and fiction. ... In this state, the subconscious fails to recognize the fictive quality of literary characters and comes to see them as just as real as the inhabitants of our world, and perhaps even more so." The fact that when Doyle kills Holmes in 1893 in “The Final Problem” there was a huge public outcry allows the author to parade his psychoanalytic knowledge: "How can we explain that the death of a fictional creation could have such effects, unless we suppose that he is not entirely fictional? ... One explanation can be found in the concept of identification: to say that we identify with a literary character is to say that, on a subconscious level, we become that character for a time; the character offers an idealized image of ourselves and thus provides a plausible incarnation of what we would like to be, or of what others would like us to be." No wonder that Freud comes to the rescue (id, ego, superego).
This leads to Conan Doyle allegedly having said, “If I don’t kill Holmes, he will kill me.” Notwithstanding that Doyle repeatedly intended to give up writing Holmes story in order to devote himself to the other writings of his (which absolutely nobody ever reads or even remembers today), creating this hatred between the real Doyle and the fictional Holmes is probably a sign that Pierre Bayard is not entirely sane. The analysis of why Moriarty was needed might make sense, but finding that even in the revived series of Holmes stories Conan Doyle was constantly hating his character is pure lunacy. (Maybe he hated the public and his editor, but not something that doesn't exist; by hating Holmes, Doyle would actually have hated himself.)
The invention of the “Holmes complex” is necessary to the author, otherwise he couldn't have written this: "The Hound of the Baskervilles is thick with symptoms of the Holmes complex; page after page bears the traces of the conflict that set Conan Doyle against his character and of the hatred that grew in him till he reached the point of deciding to put Holmes to death."
All this mumbo-jumbo is irrelevant to the logical analysis of the main facts in "The Hound of the Baskervilles" that can have a much better explanation than the one presented by Holmes, I mean by Doyle. (There's such a fluidity that instead of saying that Doyle is at fault, almost always Holmes is wrong, as if Holmes were indeed a real person, and totally independent of Doyle at that!)
Boyard goes to such lengths as to find occurrences where Holmes is compared to a hound or to a wolf. Sure thing, Holmes is not the murderer in any of his cases, but Doyle hates him so much, you see.
Hinting to Agatha Christie's Towards Zero, Boyard explains how a murder can hide another murder (this reminds me of the classical French sign "Un train peut en cacher un autre," equivalent to the more prosaic "2 Tracks" in the US). But when a murderer has such a plan and the writer just exposes either how the murderer gets away with it or how the sleuth thwarts such a plan, everything is just normal. In the case of "The Hound of the Baskervilles," the problem is that we don't know how Conan Doyle managed to write such a crappy story, and Boyard doesn't bother to explore any possible explanations!
Both because "intellectual rigor requires that all hypotheses be examined, beginning with the simplest, before choosing among them" and because there are so many explanations that don't stand to a rigorous analysis, we are persuaded that a much neater explanation exists for everything that happened (and whatever happened, because not everything must have the meaning that was suggested by the main characters). There is another murderer and... there is another murdered person!
And yet, the most interesting (psycho)analysis simply isn't there. Did Conan Doyle have the intention to give this book a different ending, and then he succumbed to the temptation to a more fantastic interpretation of the facts? Was Doyle so much affected by his stupid interest in spiritualism that he simply sabotaged his own work? Or maybe Doyle, if he really hated Holmes that much, tried to set a real-world trap to a fictitious individual: I suggest that he expected to receive furious letters from readers saying that Holmes was wrong, that things most likely have a different explanation, and so on. I am actually surprised that nobody noticed the implausibility of the arguments that made this story—nobody until Pierre Bayard, that is. But it took more than one century for anyone to challenge it!
Bottom line: some brilliant logic spoiled by a stupid arrogance and pretentious attempt at psychoanalysis; even worse as it fails to address the most important question: why is "The Hound of the Baskervilles" not following a logical approach instead of this phantasmagoric one?
This being said, I expect "Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" to be a similar bore, so I'll be left without the clue to a major failure in one of Agatha Christie's most famous novels.
At first, this book seems to be a sort of war against Conan Doyle. But the author couldn't restrain himself to demonstrate that the interpretation of the facts in "The Hound of the Baskervilles" doesn't hold much water, he aims higher than that, and it takes several long detours to get there.
He wastes reader's time be detailing "the Sherlock Holmes method," as if there was a need for that. He even makes lists of cases where Holmes failed to find the criminals, cases where Holmes allows the murderers to escape, and other cases of negligence, severe mistakes and other incongruities. There are even "a certain number that remain simply unsolved, either partially or completely." Bayard concludes: "The idea that the infallible Holmes sometimes makes mistakes does away with the notion that any superior authority may be entirely entrusted with deciding true and false; it makes the truth inherently unstable." On the contrary, making Holmes more human, more error-prone should be seen as a sensible choice for Conan Doyle to make.
But Bayard seems to that person that is unable to enjoy watching any police procedural, for he always finds tons of logic faults in every single one of them (not that he would be completely wrong). He also finds that Oedipus didn't kill Laius, that Poirot's reasoning in Agatha Christie’s "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" also is full of errors, and that Claudius is the real murderer in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. (Note that Bayard also wrote Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?: The Mystery Behind the Agatha Christie Mystery and Enquête sur Hamlet : Le Dialogue des sourds.)
I'd have loved to have faced a book where the reader is shown how a crime writer's logical construction missed some possible logical alternatives or how the "official story" is too far-fetched and a much simpler scenario could explain everything, especially in the whodunit genre. Bayard eventually manages to come up with a brilliant interpretation to "The Hound of the Baskervilles," but he spoils everything with his attempts of academically psychoanalyze Conan Doyle!
Because, you see, he couldn't help asking the rhetorical question, "Does Sherlock Holmes Exist?". The purpose was to demonstrate that "although fictional characters might not possess a material reality, they certainly have a psychological reality, which undeniably leads to a form of existence. ... What’s more, many of us are deeply marked by literary characters, to the point where we are no longer able to tell the difference between reality and fiction. ... In this state, the subconscious fails to recognize the fictive quality of literary characters and comes to see them as just as real as the inhabitants of our world, and perhaps even more so." The fact that when Doyle kills Holmes in 1893 in “The Final Problem” there was a huge public outcry allows the author to parade his psychoanalytic knowledge: "How can we explain that the death of a fictional creation could have such effects, unless we suppose that he is not entirely fictional? ... One explanation can be found in the concept of identification: to say that we identify with a literary character is to say that, on a subconscious level, we become that character for a time; the character offers an idealized image of ourselves and thus provides a plausible incarnation of what we would like to be, or of what others would like us to be." No wonder that Freud comes to the rescue (id, ego, superego).
This leads to Conan Doyle allegedly having said, “If I don’t kill Holmes, he will kill me.” Notwithstanding that Doyle repeatedly intended to give up writing Holmes story in order to devote himself to the other writings of his (which absolutely nobody ever reads or even remembers today), creating this hatred between the real Doyle and the fictional Holmes is probably a sign that Pierre Bayard is not entirely sane. The analysis of why Moriarty was needed might make sense, but finding that even in the revived series of Holmes stories Conan Doyle was constantly hating his character is pure lunacy. (Maybe he hated the public and his editor, but not something that doesn't exist; by hating Holmes, Doyle would actually have hated himself.)
The invention of the “Holmes complex” is necessary to the author, otherwise he couldn't have written this: "The Hound of the Baskervilles is thick with symptoms of the Holmes complex; page after page bears the traces of the conflict that set Conan Doyle against his character and of the hatred that grew in him till he reached the point of deciding to put Holmes to death."
All this mumbo-jumbo is irrelevant to the logical analysis of the main facts in "The Hound of the Baskervilles" that can have a much better explanation than the one presented by Holmes, I mean by Doyle. (There's such a fluidity that instead of saying that Doyle is at fault, almost always Holmes is wrong, as if Holmes were indeed a real person, and totally independent of Doyle at that!)
Boyard goes to such lengths as to find occurrences where Holmes is compared to a hound or to a wolf. Sure thing, Holmes is not the murderer in any of his cases, but Doyle hates him so much, you see.
Hinting to Agatha Christie's Towards Zero, Boyard explains how a murder can hide another murder (this reminds me of the classical French sign "Un train peut en cacher un autre," equivalent to the more prosaic "2 Tracks" in the US). But when a murderer has such a plan and the writer just exposes either how the murderer gets away with it or how the sleuth thwarts such a plan, everything is just normal. In the case of "The Hound of the Baskervilles," the problem is that we don't know how Conan Doyle managed to write such a crappy story, and Boyard doesn't bother to explore any possible explanations!
Both because "intellectual rigor requires that all hypotheses be examined, beginning with the simplest, before choosing among them" and because there are so many explanations that don't stand to a rigorous analysis, we are persuaded that a much neater explanation exists for everything that happened (and whatever happened, because not everything must have the meaning that was suggested by the main characters). There is another murderer and... there is another murdered person!
And yet, the most interesting (psycho)analysis simply isn't there. Did Conan Doyle have the intention to give this book a different ending, and then he succumbed to the temptation to a more fantastic interpretation of the facts? Was Doyle so much affected by his stupid interest in spiritualism that he simply sabotaged his own work? Or maybe Doyle, if he really hated Holmes that much, tried to set a real-world trap to a fictitious individual: I suggest that he expected to receive furious letters from readers saying that Holmes was wrong, that things most likely have a different explanation, and so on. I am actually surprised that nobody noticed the implausibility of the arguments that made this story—nobody until Pierre Bayard, that is. But it took more than one century for anyone to challenge it!
Bottom line: some brilliant logic spoiled by a stupid arrogance and pretentious attempt at psychoanalysis; even worse as it fails to address the most important question: why is "The Hound of the Baskervilles" not following a logical approach instead of this phantasmagoric one?
This being said, I expect "Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" to be a similar bore, so I'll be left without the clue to a major failure in one of Agatha Christie's most famous novels.
July 20, 2019
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, 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.
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, 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.
May 13, 2023
A rather fresh look at a classic murder mystery, examined in light of the author (Arthur Conan Doyle) and the character (Sherlock Holmes) and the relationship between the two.
Conan Doyle killed off Holmes in 1893 when he wrote "The Final Problem", a short story that describes the struggle between Holmes and his arch-enemy Moriarty that ends with their death over the Reichenbach Falls. Conan Doyle had written for many years that he was anxious to be done with Holmes, to kill him off and never write of him again. But Holmes' public demanded more stories about him, and eventually in 1901 "The Hound of the Baskervilles" was released in serial format. The time of the action takes place BEFORE Holmes' death. But the return of the detective signaled an inevitable bowing to the demands of the public.... and Conan Doyle once again continued writing Holmes stories.
What if there are clues to Conan Doyle's dislike of Holmes in the first book written after he tried to kill off Holmes? What if there are clues to a different homicide in the book? What if Conan Doyle seems to set his "hero" up for mistake after mistake after mistake.... and the reader can now find those mistakes and account for them?
That is the premise of this book. Interesting, and fun.... it does not change my mind about who Conan Doyle determined to be the murderer.... but it is an interesting romp into the life of an author and a character they create. For love ever after.... or maybe for something else??
Conan Doyle killed off Holmes in 1893 when he wrote "The Final Problem", a short story that describes the struggle between Holmes and his arch-enemy Moriarty that ends with their death over the Reichenbach Falls. Conan Doyle had written for many years that he was anxious to be done with Holmes, to kill him off and never write of him again. But Holmes' public demanded more stories about him, and eventually in 1901 "The Hound of the Baskervilles" was released in serial format. The time of the action takes place BEFORE Holmes' death. But the return of the detective signaled an inevitable bowing to the demands of the public.... and Conan Doyle once again continued writing Holmes stories.
What if there are clues to Conan Doyle's dislike of Holmes in the first book written after he tried to kill off Holmes? What if there are clues to a different homicide in the book? What if Conan Doyle seems to set his "hero" up for mistake after mistake after mistake.... and the reader can now find those mistakes and account for them?
That is the premise of this book. Interesting, and fun.... it does not change my mind about who Conan Doyle determined to be the murderer.... but it is an interesting romp into the life of an author and a character they create. For love ever after.... or maybe for something else??
November 9, 2020
I really want to discuss this book with other acadafen people. (Is that still a thing? I miss LJ.) It is so very clearly a discussion of concepts of fandom, only through an academic lens which knows nothing about fandom and is using academic terms to describe things which fans have long since assumed.
It's an interesting look at *The Hound of the Baskervilles*, one which I thoroughly enjoyed. (If you want the gist of the story without reading the book, I suggest the excellent LA Theatre Works audio play of *The Hound of the Baskervilles*.) It's clearly based in academia, but uses relatively plain language, and is easy to follow for the layperson.
However, there are two hilarious points in the book where the author (who is writing in French) makes points using the support of the story, from French translations. The book's translator kindly gives us their own notes, noting while the French translations use these images to convey similar meanings as the English version has, the specific metaphors the author is hanging part of their thesis on... don't exist in the original version.
Still, it's a fun read, and a lovely take on a lovely story.
It's an interesting look at *The Hound of the Baskervilles*, one which I thoroughly enjoyed. (If you want the gist of the story without reading the book, I suggest the excellent LA Theatre Works audio play of *The Hound of the Baskervilles*.) It's clearly based in academia, but uses relatively plain language, and is easy to follow for the layperson.
However, there are two hilarious points in the book where the author (who is writing in French) makes points using the support of the story, from French translations. The book's translator kindly gives us their own notes, noting while the French translations use these images to convey similar meanings as the English version has, the specific metaphors the author is hanging part of their thesis on... don't exist in the original version.
Still, it's a fun read, and a lovely take on a lovely story.
September 8, 2024
I listened to a digital audio version of Sherlock Holmes was wrong. I wanted to listen to it because its only a little over 4 hours long.
I have not read any Sherlock Holmes books. Though I have seen Sherlock Holes movies and TV shows. So I am not familiar with The hound of the Baskervilles.
When I started listening to the book I thought why did I pick this book to read. This book is not going to the least bit interesting. The book proved me wrong. I thought it was very interesting to listen to.
I have never given much thought to if the plot of a mystery makes sense or not. Well at least I did not when I was younger. I think I am a little more critical of mysteries now. I found the discussion of mistakes in Sherlock Holmes mysteries interesting.
One thing that surprised me was learning that when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes in 1893 there was a big uproar from fans. And I found the discussion in the book about fictional characters becoming more than fictional to fans interesting. I had never thought about that.
So I found Sherlock Holmes wrong to be fun to listen to and a good use of over 4 hour of my time.
I have not read any Sherlock Holmes books. Though I have seen Sherlock Holes movies and TV shows. So I am not familiar with The hound of the Baskervilles.
When I started listening to the book I thought why did I pick this book to read. This book is not going to the least bit interesting. The book proved me wrong. I thought it was very interesting to listen to.
I have never given much thought to if the plot of a mystery makes sense or not. Well at least I did not when I was younger. I think I am a little more critical of mysteries now. I found the discussion of mistakes in Sherlock Holmes mysteries interesting.
One thing that surprised me was learning that when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes in 1893 there was a big uproar from fans. And I found the discussion in the book about fictional characters becoming more than fictional to fans interesting. I had never thought about that.
So I found Sherlock Holmes wrong to be fun to listen to and a good use of over 4 hour of my time.
September 26, 2025
Bayard macht vom Recht eines jeden Lesers Gebrauch, den Text nicht der Deutungshoheit des Autors zu überlassen. Sein humorbefreiter Ansatz, die deduktive Ermittlungsmethode Sherlock Holmes grundsätzlich in Frage zu stellen und zu verwerfen mit der Begründung, wer sich einmal irre, der kann sich ständig irren, ist allerdings aus meiner Sicht unsinnig.
Bayard rekapituliert die Geschehnisse in Arthur Conan Doyles bekanntestem Roman ausführlich, bevor er dann mit seiner Kritik ansetzt. Man würde sich wünschen, dass er stilistisch nicht so weit hinter den Gegenstand seiner Kritik zurückfiele und weniger rechthaberisch sei.
Dass Sherlock Holmes selbst gelegentlich Fehler und Irrtümer eingesteht, finde ich als Leser sehr sympathisch, da dadurch anstrengende Züge seiner Person (Arroganz, übernatürliche Scharfsinnigkeit) angenehm abgemildert werden. Dass Bayard Holmes nun gerade daraus einen Strick dreht und sämtliche Ermittlungen in Frage stellt, ist weder aufschluss- noch hilfreich.
Nach einem guten Drittel hatte ich keine Lust mehr, dieses rechthaberische, schlecht geschriebene Büchlein weiterzulesen.
Bayard rekapituliert die Geschehnisse in Arthur Conan Doyles bekanntestem Roman ausführlich, bevor er dann mit seiner Kritik ansetzt. Man würde sich wünschen, dass er stilistisch nicht so weit hinter den Gegenstand seiner Kritik zurückfiele und weniger rechthaberisch sei.
Dass Sherlock Holmes selbst gelegentlich Fehler und Irrtümer eingesteht, finde ich als Leser sehr sympathisch, da dadurch anstrengende Züge seiner Person (Arroganz, übernatürliche Scharfsinnigkeit) angenehm abgemildert werden. Dass Bayard Holmes nun gerade daraus einen Strick dreht und sämtliche Ermittlungen in Frage stellt, ist weder aufschluss- noch hilfreich.
Nach einem guten Drittel hatte ich keine Lust mehr, dieses rechthaberische, schlecht geschriebene Büchlein weiterzulesen.
September 17, 2020
Danger: SPOILERS
Blah, blah, blah. The author rambles on for 150 pages before getting to the point of this book, that there is evidence within The Hound of the Baskervilles which (if the reader has an active imagination) indicates the final murder attempt of Henry Baskerville was the work of someone else.
Holmes is portrayed as a doofus who never thought too highly of Watson yet blindly accepted his interpretation of many events. The real doofus is reader who takes in this author's premise.
I was left with two questions if the author's argument is true, that Bryl is the killer -- why didn't Holmes notice that whatever knots Beryl used were ones she could have tied herself, and why did Stapleton flee into the moor on a marked path and then go off the path to his death?
If anyone should want to read this book I would suggest they skip to the final 38 pages.
Blah, blah, blah. The author rambles on for 150 pages before getting to the point of this book, that there is evidence within The Hound of the Baskervilles which (if the reader has an active imagination) indicates the final murder attempt of Henry Baskerville was the work of someone else.
Holmes is portrayed as a doofus who never thought too highly of Watson yet blindly accepted his interpretation of many events. The real doofus is reader who takes in this author's premise.
I was left with two questions if the author's argument is true, that Bryl is the killer -- why didn't Holmes notice that whatever knots Beryl used were ones she could have tied herself, and why did Stapleton flee into the moor on a marked path and then go off the path to his death?
If anyone should want to read this book I would suggest they skip to the final 38 pages.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 12, 2017
Part literary criticism and fiction theory and part a dissection of Holmes' deductions. While the author has some plausible reasoning for who the real murderer was, he neglects explaining a major clue involving the ancestry of the novel's victims and killer which renders his argument insufficient. While readers interested primarily interested in the analysis of HOUNd might find the literary criticism and fiction theory tedious and irrelevant, I found in them new ideas for exploring literarature. As another reviewer points out, the author gives spoilers for two Agatha Christie mysteries that he fails to warn readers about!
February 24, 2020
Bayard, like many Sherlockians before him, conceives a clever alternative explanation to a Holmes story. Unlike other Sherlockians before him, he sees the need to pointlessly steep his version in a watery broth of low-grade literary theory. A reader could skip the 140 pages leading up to the author's 40-page retelling and not have missed anything interesting except Bayard's translator inserting footnotes to point out errors in his reasoning. It's fair justice to Bayard that my copy of this book, bought for a $1 at my local library, is plastered across with a huge stamp that says "WITHDRAWN."
March 16, 2021
Ok, I'll bite- show me where The Hound of the Baskervilles goes wrong.
This book is an interesting concept, which is rather marred by being too padded out. All you really need is the first and last chapters, to remind how Sherlock Holmes solves the case, and to show how this author would have solved it instead. That makes for a fun little read, but more as an essay than a tome.
The rest is dense, and I didn't absorb it, though I'm sure the author wanted me to take something from it.
Ah well.
This book is an interesting concept, which is rather marred by being too padded out. All you really need is the first and last chapters, to remind how Sherlock Holmes solves the case, and to show how this author would have solved it instead. That makes for a fun little read, but more as an essay than a tome.
The rest is dense, and I didn't absorb it, though I'm sure the author wanted me to take something from it.
Ah well.
September 5, 2022
Départ lent, il y a des longueurs. Je regrette d'avoir lu Le chien des Baskerville juste avant, Pierre Bayard nous raconte toute l'histoire dès le début! Mais j'ai beaucoup apprécié sa nouvelle interprétation de l'histoire avec un meurtrier différent, il y a quelques éléments non plausibles mais sa version est plus crédible que celle de Doyle, à mon avis. C'est tout un tour de force! Le meilleur de ce livre est donc à la fin, quand Pierre Bayard se livre à son interprétation.
August 10, 2025
Very interesting long form essay proving that the murder in The Hound of the Baskervilles has been solved incorrectly. There's such a big chunk of text in the middle spent on philosophising on the subject of fictional characters' reality, I started to worry author's answer would be that Baskervilles were murdered by Moriarty, but no, author's idea is very persuasive and perfectly logical.
Caution, though, this book spoils two Christie's novels — "Murder of Roger Ackroyd" and "Towards Zero".
Caution, though, this book spoils two Christie's novels — "Murder of Roger Ackroyd" and "Towards Zero".
October 26, 2018
I thought this was going to be some lighthearted read about a guy making fun of Sherlock Holmes and how awful he is. But this is actually an in depth piece of literary criticism on Sherlock as a character. Parts of it were rather dry, and it took a long time to get to the point, but I still enjoyed (and mostly buy) the author's conclusion about who the real murderer is.
November 2, 2019
Not quite as brilliant as Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?, which was Bayard’s tour de force, but this is nevertheless a skilful and perspicuous deconstruction of The Hound Of The Baskervilles that lays bare the many flaws and inconsistencies in Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic Sherlock Holmes novel and presents an alternative reading of the story.
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