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The Athens County Public Library will host a Sherlock Holmes fan event. 

Athens Public Library will host a Sherlock Holmes fan event

Sherlock Holmes is a character that has been around for generations and has been portrayed more than 250 times in media interpretations of his stories.

Athens Public Library, 30 Home St., will host an event for fans of the literary character. The event will feature a guest speaker, a Sherlock-themed game and Donkey Coffee beverages. Joe McLaughlin, an associate professor of English, will discuss the history of Sherlock Holmes from the 1880s and 1890s. Afterward, attendees can play a game of Sherlock Jeopardy and meet other fans.

“I have been fascinated with the fact that a detective from the Victorian period is, a hundred years later, more popular than ever,” Todd Bastin, adult programming Coordinator at the Athens Public Library, said in an email.

Aliza Ali, a junior studying biological sciences pre-med and world religions, said she has read Sherlock Holmes stories since she was in sixth grade.

She said she remembers starting with “A Study in Scarlet” and loving it because Holmes and Watson were just becoming friends and hadn’t had adventures yet.

McLaughlin said he’s going to talk about the themes of those early Sherlock stories and relevant history of London and British culture that plays into them.

Bastin said he hopes more college students and twenty-somethings will come to these “multimedia fan events.” They hope to draw more people in by having fun activities and allowing cosplay.

The other two organizers who worked with Bastin put together Jeopardy questions that are supposed to be “stimulating trivia teasers” that aren’t too hard and draw from the original stories and popular media adaptations.

Throughout the years, Ali has grown more connected to Sherlock’s “humanness” and she likes how realistic Doyle wrote those stories.

Bastin believes that Sherlock is an influential character because everyone uses “the power of reason” to solve problems in their lives. Readers also relate by seeing the character struggle to solve mysteries, instead of answers always coming easily.

McLaughlin said Doyle had a way of reinventing adventure stories to work well in urban settings which makes them stand out. The shenanigans of Sherlock Holmes benefit from taking place in London since it’s such an international place and much of the story elements rely can be foreign.

“Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, much like Shakespeare, has given future artists a lot of agency with Sherlock Holmes by allowing a sense of ‘I can put them in a different setting,’” Ali said.

The most current adaptations that fans and others alike know are the Robert Downey Jr. films and BBC Sherlock which stars Benedict Cumberbatch.

The actors portraying the character have put their own spin on him because much can be interpreted differently and still embody the same characteristics. Cumberbatch’s interpretation has more room for creativity since Sherlock is placed in the modern era.

“Downey’s Holmes is wonderfully even comically human, less like the lethal cybernetic intellect of Cumberbatch’s version,” Bastin said.

Other adaptations stray away from Doyle’s layout and try to make him the embodiment of a stereotypical English man with enough years on him to back his wealth of knowledge.

“The (adaptations) that want to paint Sherlock Holmes as this stuffy, old, British gentleman are just off,” McLaughlin said. “Sherlock Holmes is a relatively young character (and) is a relatively flamboyant and theatrical character.”

The mystery genre has been greatly impacted by Doyle’s work.

“Everything, in some sense, is measured against Sherlock Holmes,” McLaughlin said.

@marvelllousmeg

mm512815@ohio.edu

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