TELLER OF TALES: THE LIFE OF ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE; Daniel Stashower; Henry Holt; $32.50.The conflict that helped make Sir Arthur Conan Doyle one of the best-known and most dissatisfied authors was evident when he chose a surname for his celebrated character Sherlock Holmes.
As told in Daniel Stashower's wonderful biography "Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle," Doyle worshipped two men who were polar opposites in their views of "the science and ethics of spiritualism."
One was Daniel Home, a prominent medium who was said "to have the ability to float in the air, travel vast distances in the blink of an eye and raise heavy objects without touching them." To Doyle, Home was "a truly great man." But Doyle also greatly admired Oliver Wendell Holmes, the American scholar and writer, and father of the jurist, who was "so tolerant, so witty, so worldly wise." However, Holmes considered spiritualism to be "nothing less than a 'plague.' "
The influence of both men on the creation of Sherlock Holmes reveals an inner struggle that was solved by making the detective "a perfect reasoning and observing machine," while allowing Doyle to transform himself into the champion of spiritualism.
But that was not Doyle's only conflict. To him, Sherlock Holmes was a nuisance. He wrote: "I believe that if I had never touched Holmes, who has tended to obscure my higher work, my position in literature would at the present moment be a more commanding one."
So Doyle wrote several historical novels, for which he did extensive research. He tried to emulate Sir Walter Scott, and the results are disappointing. In those works, it isn't clear which characters are dead and which are alive. After each of his historical failures, Doyle returned to his despised Sherlock Holmes. It took him less than a month to write a Holmes novella, and less than a week to write a Holmes short story -- but all of their characters are very much alive, even the dead ones.
More than a century ago, Greenhough Smith, editor of the Strand magazine, noted "the ingenuity of plot, the limpid clearness of style, the perfect art of telling a story" when describing Doyle's writing. This is the legacy left by Doyle.
As for the rest of his literary production (besides his wonderful short stories without Sherlock Holmes), they are as forgotten today as are his forays into spiritualism.