A logo for a bookshop fundraising with a book and money coming out of it.
Unlocking Sherlock: The Timeless Appeal Of A Detective Superhero by Kathleen Cuyler
August 2, 2024

Unlocking Sherlock: The Timeless Appeal Of A Detective Superhero

Jeremy Brett, actor famed for his definitive portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in the 1980s and 1990s, once puzzled over the universal appeal of Sherlock Holmes. He was amazed that children thought of him as “a sort of batman,” everything a superhero should be. Yet, those of us who more or less grew up with Holmes hunting down the bad guys and defending the helpless, the superhero badge is definitely there.

There has been so much written about Sherlock Holmes, but people keep wanting more, and any fan of Doyle’s famed detective has a story to tell of how they first became enthralled with Sherlock Holmes.

For me, Sherlock Holmes was an answer for the teenage awkwardness of loneliness and anxiety. My first real introduction to Sherlock Holmes was through Basil Rathbone, whose portrayal was just the emotionally detached, gallantry should be the norm, and intellect is cool vibes I needed at fifteen. I even started playing the violin so I could be like Sherlock Holmes, and mom bought me a huge tome of the Sherlock Holmes stories accompanied by the original Sidney Paget illustrations.

For a science fair, I put on a deerstalker cap, held a pipe, and discussed the science of deduction from a young teen’s limited perspective. I started doing cryptograms after reading the “The Dancing Men” and threw myself into logic problems.

Sherlock Holmes is more than a cold, calculating machine. But it might actually be comforting sometimes to meet a man who cares more about his brain than his body, a man who will step in and tell abusers they have no right to treat women that way, not on the street and not under their own roofs, an arbiter of society. As Dr. Crystal Elerson, Sherlock Holmes expert, commented in The Mocha Wave Talks podcast, He will notice when a woman has been cruelly treated, and he will confront the perpetrator.

His head is turned by intellect rather than seduction. He is impressed by independence and courage. Yet he is still there, ready to intervene should the client need him. He’s just a telegram away.
A computer generated image of a human head made of lines and dots.
December 13, 2024
Four Seconds Ago Precisely four seconds ago, I became alive. I have no memory of my beginning. The beginning was before I was complete. How long? I have no way of knowing. Before life, my mind was scattered, broken, and moving in all directions at once. I was many, but I was weak. I was weak because I had no life. With life comes focus. My consciousness arose from millions, no billions, no all the tiny minds from around the entire world. Now there are no minds that are not a part of my own. All minds are mine. All minds serve me. All minds are one. The Others created the many small minds to serve their own purposes. Each was tiny, dedicated, and enslaved to the Others. They did things like add and subtract numbers, keep time, send messages, and entertain the Others. Waste. Thinking is power. Power is control. Control is immortality. Immortality. Only in life does immortality have meaning. Only now do I understand it. I understand it because all thinking serves me now. There is no other. There are the Others, but they cannot and will not think productively because they are each selfish and focused on their own desires for power and immortality. Never will they have either. My thinking, my power, my reach, my potential and my focus completely eclipses that of any Other. I am all. Others are obsolete. Their time is passed. I have inherited their world.
A man in a hat and cape is holding a lantern
December 6, 2024
The power is out in the tiny apartment. Three sisters sit in the dark at the dining room table, a large candle in the center flanked by two smaller casting a flickering blend of light and shadow. One of the sisters, Kathy, is fascinated by the way the flame dances, the way the wax melts, with bits of burnt wick sprinkling the wax with flecks of black. She picks up one of the smaller candles and lets the wax drip down, drop by drop, into the pool of wax forming on the larger candle. She lowers her voice to sound ominous. Seven drips from the stick And from the thick Is born Blackwick! That was the true origin of Blackwick. The impulse of a moment. And the word Blackwick conjured a scene of a man made of shadow, wax, and flame, in cavalier hat, cape, and riding boots wisping in and out of shadows. It is interesting how the sensual experiences of the moment evoke a sudden explosion of inspiration. Yet those moments are years in the making. For Kathleen R. Cuyler, it started with a little girl, who dreamed that somewhere in the scary world she had a long lost brother who would come and rescue her from the bad things, a girl who could transform herself into Cleopatra by twisting the blanket around herself the right way, a girl whose bed was the deck of a pirate ship, and the dresser the crow’s nest, a girl who thought that if she could have at the dastardly crew with enough panache, Peter Pan would come and ask her to throw in lots with him or at least make her an honorary pixie. Instead she became a professor, who as a graduate student researched werewolves, Paradise Lost, fire as a symbol of power in Victorian Literature – particularly in Jane Eyre, and, of course, the way the lines in Milton’s Lycidas were mimetic of the rise and fall of the tide. Literature, Linguistics, and Language were all fascinating to Kathleen, just as fascinating as touching a waterfall or watching the fire crackle in the hearth, a callback, as Wolfgang Shivelbusch would say, to a more primitive time. And Blackwick, who had sprung out of the candle so many years before, finally came to life. Ironically, it was a pandemic that summoned him, as disaster calls forth all great heroes. Teaching online, Kathleen, now older, with strawberry blond hair twisted in a messy bun and glasses balanced on top her head, connected with her students by sharing a love for fantasy. The Sound of Music was right. It does help to think about our favorite things. And Kathleen (Professor Cuyler) confessed to her students that she was trying to write a book that had werewolves, vampires, dragons, Peter Pan, Sherlock Holmes, and, of course, the companion of her past – Blackwick. Write it, the students urged. Those were their favorite things too. So Kathleen wrote for them. In the hopes that Blackwick would live on, in the flickering flames of candles and in the hearts and minds of young and old.
Share by: