[The Secret Marriage of Sherlock Holmes and Other Eccentric Readings] [Author: Michael Atkinson] [August, 1996]

by Michael Atkinson, Unknown Author

The Secret Marriage of Sherlock Holmes is about reading, a process that we take for granted. But Sherlock Holmes, the cultural icon to whose exploits Michael Atkinson gives new readings, became famous by taking nothing for granted. Holmes's adventures can be read in new ways, including ways that he himself would have found startling, but which can give contemporary readers satisfaction. In clear, accessible prose that will engage specialists and lay readers alike, Atkinson engages in a series of flirtations with nine of Arthur Conan Doyle's favorite detective fictions, using the tools of modern literary theory, from depth psychology to deconstruction. Bluebeard, the kundalini serpent, and Conan Doyle's mother pop up alongside Jung, Nietzsche, and Derrida as guides to new understandings of these classic stories. Just as Holmes uses treatises on tobacco ash and tattoos to give fresh readings to puzzling facts, Atkinson employs widely different critical strategies to unravel the mysteries of reading itself. What a delightful book! This is surely the most interesting writing you will ever read about Sherlock Holmes, but it is much more. Michael Atkinson gives us literary criticism at its best: the sheer fun of watching a bold and imaginative reader breathe into well-loved, but well-worn, fictions new and enchanting life. Atkinson's mind races as nimbly as Holmes's own, and he makes the stories our hansom cab through human nature itself. A tour de force! ---Norman N. Holland, author of Murder in a Dephi Seminar A book that speaks directly to readers. . . Atkinson sees far beneath the surface of the Sherlock stories to provide fascinating commentary. ---Cincinnati Post Atkinson demonstrates a love and knowledge of the Holmes stories. . . I would recommend The Secret Marriage of Sherlock Holmes enthusiastically to any lover of the Canon who is prepared to have their perceptions widened. ---Mystery Writers of America Michael Atkinson is Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Cincinnati.

Hardcover

First published October 27, 1996

About the author

A son of Long Island and a father of three, I love very good beer, shellfish of any sort, Italian opera in the summertime, and movies. I own more books than I do any other one thing. I love writing, though, making sentences. In addition to my books, I've written, and still write, film criticism, cultural attack, book reviews and essays for The Village Voice, The Believer, Sight & Sound, The Guardian (U.K.), In These Times, The Boston Phoenix, SPiN, Film Comment, Modern Painters, Moving Image Source, IFC.com, The Forward, Maxim, The Progressive, The American Prospect, The Poetry Foundation, The Criterion Collection, Turner Classic Movies (tcm.com), The L Magazine, LA Weekly, and elsewhere.

I have also written a certain amount of unproduced TV, and one pilot that was in fact shot and then vanquished, despite extraordinary notoriety,
BABYLON FIELDS, which can be easily Googled.

My first novel, set in 1956 Key West and ending up in the Cuban mountains with Che and Fidel, HEMINGWAY DEADLIGHTS is the first of a projected series, gallivanting around in the most famous literary biography of the 20th century with a nod to history but also a robust jones for truth, irony, cocktails and culprits.

The second volume, HEMINGWAY CUTTHROAT, finds Hemingway investigating the very real murder of Jose Robles in 1937 Spain.

For #3... methinks Paris.

Not incidentally, at least not to me, I'm also a widely published poet, the winner of Word Works' Washington Prize in 2001, a runner-up for the National Poetry Series in 2001 and 1998, a selectee for The Best American Poetry 1993 (eds. Louise Gluck & David Lehman, Collier/Macmillan, 1993), a recipient of a fellowship in poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts, 1988-89, etc. My poems have been in Epoch, Crazyhorse, The Threepenny Review, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry Northwest, Ontario Review, The Laurel Review, Poetry East, The Seneca Review, Cimarron Review, Chelsea, Chicago Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Seattle Review, Graham House Review, New Orleans Review, Kansas Quarterly, Mudfish, Willow Springs, Massachusetts Review, and many other journals.

Lastly, I find pride in the fact that my children can find Timbuktu on a map, I vote anti-imperialist whenever it is possible to do so, and I believe deeply in the existence of human stupidity.