My Publisher Released Me from My Contract.

Well I will take a look at the manuscript again later in the week and see what my next step is.  This is the publishing world.  You do what you need to do.

More on Freud and the Irish.

    Oh great Herr Doktor Freud.  Did you meet your match in those wonderful folks from the Emerald Isle?

OK, Herr Doktor.  Is psychoanalysis of no benefit because:

1.  The Irish will not listen.

2.  The Irish already have the the “talking cure.”  Isn’t a fine pub a better place than the good doctor’s sofa, you talking and him blowing cigar smoke in your face for fifty minutes.  Doesn’t that sound like a college class, with the Professor having to prepare?

3.  The Irish are master politicians.  Forget Professor Moriarty, how about a good old fashioned Irish politician.  Come Herr Doktor, here is a Christmas turkey.  Just remember to vote early and often for McKenna in the Democratic Primary.

Now if Freud said things about ones mother to John L. Sullivan, that may take on an entirely different angle.

If Freud said this, the Irish should be flattered.  I will take the pub over the sofa.

How Well Known is Sherlock Holmes in Modern Times?

    I received my edits for Chapter 13.  I am learning that Holmes is not as well known.  I should have remembered that.  Late last year, I taught one session of a friends Creative Writing class.  There were six in the class.  Only two of them had ever heard of Sherlock Holmes.

You have to wonder, do you not.  Well, I guess I need to get to work and explain some of the stories in this to keep it all alive.

Sherlock Holmes’ Cocaine Habit

I found this great posting on Holmes and Cocaine.

More on Thinking Like Sherlock Holmes

Take a look @ this site, What Sherlock Holmes Can Teach You.

More Sherlock Holmes vs House

Take a look at the following website about House

The Celtic Tiger, What Would Professor Moriarty Think?

    Not sure the good professor would have approved completely.  The loss of power of the church.  He probably would have been amazed though, at how well Ireland is doing.

Ireland has never had people wanting to immigrate to it, only emigrate from.  Economically, it is better off the the U.K.

I remember growing up with my father saying, Ireland with all its difficulties was mad for leaving the U.K.  I guess this is a guess of who’s laughing now?

Might make for an interesting time travel for the Professor.

Freud on Irishmen “This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever” (Sigmund Freud – about the Irish)

“This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever” (Sigmund Freud – about the Irish)

Take a look at the following blog post.

http://modernpsychoanalysis.blogspot.com/2006/06/ambivalence.html

I may play with my chapter on Moriarty visiting Freud even more.   Moriarty already is not fond of Freud.

I showed the quote to my Boston Irish wife.  She laughed and just said “that is because we are special.”

You know something?  She is right!

How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes.

    Watson sometimes felt Holmes was a machine.  Holmes was not one to let emotion get in the way of justice.  No grays, just black and whites.

For Holmes, humanity was a puzzle to be solved, not living beings as far as feelings were concerned.

If you read the Holmes stories carefully, everyone else has emotions and for the bad guys, that is how they are caught.

Thinking like Holmes means knowing about hard physical science, but not human social aspects.

More Holmes vs. Moriarty

    In most of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Moriarty is vaguely mentioned as the Napoleon of Crime.  No one really tries to delve into his personality.    I guess Victorians felt there was just good and evil.

I cannot imagine Conan Doyle deliberately making the arch villain Irish (along with Col. Moran) to pick on the Irish.  With a name like Doyle?

Many of us have seen the Thomas Nast cartoons with the apelike Irishman, similar to hateful African American stereotypes in the same era.   The English have their stereotypes of the Irish.  Well with Ireland as the Celtic Tiger and a higher per capita income than the United Kingdom, who’s laughing now?  The revenge of the Professor.  Ireland made it in the end, Erin Go Bragh!

I let my book write itself to a certain degree.  Even if Holmes and Moriarty do not like each other each sees the other as the only person who is their intellectual  equal.

Holmes represents the British Empire.  Moriarty the man trying to bring it down.  Who wins?  Who Loses?