Mark's Pages

January 21, 2010:

Holmes. Beloved by my mother, and Commander Data.

Pedestrian English. Prejudice and stereotype: race, class, gender, nation: narrator Watson the smug Victorian bourgeois, perfect in his confidence and lack of self-reflection.

Psychologically interesting. Holmes the half-human, sexless, a kind of bohemian ascetic who chastises the flesh with fasting and opiates. Obsessive-compulsive disorder, even high-functioning Autism. Romanticism: the genius-cripple.

Puzzles which are really not so much entertaining as elitist, where in the end the fun derives principally from Superbrain's condescending glee.