Holmes Scholarship Will Never End Analysis

The controversy itself reveals something about Holmes’s continuing purchase on the American imagination. Eighty years after his death, he still intrigues us. The comments pro and con about Holmes are more conclusions than explanations. In truth, they beg the question. That is why, even with everything that has already been written about Holmes, more needs to be said. We need to dig into his essential character and its development, for character drives action. We need to connect the life and the thought. That is the key inquiry, especially if he is to evaluated as a hero or role model. “Holmes scholarship will never end,” writes G. Edward White in his biography of Holmes, “because his life and thought are nearly infinite in their variety.”
That is one reason for this book. The Holmes debate is not over. Holmes matters today because he helped create our …show more content…
“[R]emembering that my next birthday will make me seventy,” Holmes, echoing my own thoughts, wrote to his friend in Ireland, Patrick Sheehan, “my interest is life is still so keen, I still want to do so much more work, that in the main I feel pretty cheerful.” And yet, as enthralled as I have been by Holmes, the recent criticisms of him have made me wonder if the time has come to disenthrall myself. Here I try to consider the whole man, but mainly facets of Holmes that I find especially interesting. I look at him from a personal perspective, always seeing him as a person of flesh and blood, human and alive. But if this book at times smacks somewhat of hero-worship, so be it. I do not apologize. Even with his defects and imperfections, Holmes — like other great figures of the past — is still a hero, a war hero, an intellectual hero, an authentic national