I just got around to reading Pierre Bayard’s 2008 book,
Why Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong. (Bayard, the author of
How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, is a Freudian famous for injecting epistemology into literary criticism, with a special interest in middlebrow mystery fiction.)
Bayard’s entire style is a bit nonplussing. If you take things too seriously, reading him will just be frustrating. He is a fundamental skeptic--and we’re not used to applying skepticism to works of fiction. Bayard does not believe that the text is static...
Many elements presented to us in a text as established truths are actually, when looked at, carefully, only eyewitness accounts.
This skepticism allows him to look at the mystery of the Hound of the Baskervilles from outside, like any other testimony which needs to be weighed and judged. (N.B.: most of this will not much sense unless you have read the book.)
He asks, why does Sherlock Holmes fail so often? His method, observation leading to deduction leading to further observation, would seem scientific--but we are continually shown his mistakes and hurried misjudgements. But on what does deduction depend? On clues--which are what? Observed phenomena which someone deems significant. Upon the definition of a ‘clue’ hinges every one of Holmes’ cases. For instance, in “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, the detective’s investigation is set off by one man’s unverified observation of a set of pawprints. (Even on the tenth reading, I always find myself slightly suspicious of Dr. Mortimer.) Based on that single ‘clue’, Holmes forms a hypothesis.
The detective’s hypothesis rests on a figure (that of the murderer with the dog) and a motive (that of financial interest). Note that this construction eliminates other hypotheses, for instance the police’s hypothesis of accident, and that of a murder committed in a different way or for a different motive.
This hypothesis then guides Holmes to value certain observations as ‘clues’ and devalue others. The hound is perceived as dangerous, although it is never seen attacking anyone until Holmes and Watson shoot it. Selden’s death is perceived as a murder, although there is no evidence the dog or the murderer was present--and even Holmes admits that he and Watson have
...only surmise and conjecture. We should be laughed out of court if we came with such a story and such evidence.
We should also consider the absurdity of using a dog as a murder weapon in an attempt to frighten Sir Charles to death. What if it hadn’t worked on the first try?
How would Stapleton, if he had been seen, justify his presence on the moor in the company of a giant dog coated with phosphorus?
It’s also odd that Stapleton is absent from the climactic scene.
Bayard comes up with a new hypothesis. Stapleton owns the dog, which is harmless, simply because he finds it fun to scare people and likes to be left alone. Sir Charles’s and Selden’s deaths were both accidents.
Beryl Stapleton was the one who encouraged Dr Mortimer’s suspicions, attracted Holmes’s attention in London, and ultimately created the figure of the murder with the dog. All of this was her way of getting rid of her husband, so that she could marry Sir Henry, kill him, and inherit his fortune!
There are several glaring holes in this hypothesis, though. The phosphorus painted around the dog’s eyes and mouth is explained as a means of keeping track of the dog in the dark. But then why only paint its face, rather than striping its body with paint? Not to mention the bizarrerie of keeping a mythical hound in the first place.
More importantly, we are told that Beryl changed around the signs which marked a safe path through the marsh, then told her husband that his dog had gotten loose and run into the marsh. Stapleton ran after it, got lost in the dark, and drowned.
A murder without a weapon, without a threat, without an insult, where the victim puts himself to death while the other characters applaud--it would be hard to find a finer triumph in the annals of crime.
But if it was that easy, why wasn’t that enough? Why involve Holmes, Mortimer and Sir Charles at all? We are repeatedly told that it’s easy to get lost and drown in the marsh, so I see no reason the police would have suspected Stapleton’s death wasn’t an accident. Of course, if Beryl was planning to carry out the same plan with Sir Henry, it might look more suspicious the second time around. But Beryl’s plan is supposed to begin before Mortimer consults Holmes--several weeks before Sir Henry comes to Baskerville, when no one has seen him or knows anything about him.
In a larger sense, Bayard’s method raises the question of the relationship between fiction and nonfiction.
From my perspective, everything I read or hear which I cannot myself confirm from experience falls into the same category. This is hinted at when we see old-timey novels describe themselves as ‘histories’. (Tom Jones, Don Quixote, Charles XII of Sweden and Julius Caesar all get ‘histories’.) ‘Nonfiction’ histories and ‘fictional’ novels are both
unverifiable descriptions of past events. And my perception of their plausibility or lack thereof is not correlated with my belief in their ‘truth’. For instance, I find both the story of Watergate and that of “Pride and Prejudice” quite credible--on the other hand, the story of Auschwitz and that of “Bleak House” are both incredible. But I describe only the first and third as ‘nonfiction’, because other people have told me to do so.
Bayard refuses to draw a clear line between the two.
Language does not allow us to make a separation between real beings and imaginary characters, and so the integration of characters into reality is inevitable, whether one has an open mind or not.
Although wouldn’t it be cool if it did! A propos, I’ve always been intrigued by the French ‘journalistic’ use of the conditional, where
The president would have (aurait) planned to fake the moon landing...
means the president is alleged to, is thought to, or has apparently planned to fake it.
It’s incredible that by changing the grammar of a sentence and nothing else, the certainty of the sentence is undermined.
