In the short story The Final Problem by Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes falls to his death from a precipice into the rapids below, fighting his arch enemy, the evil Professor Moriarty. Thus, the author tried to end the saga of Sherlock Holmes, one of the most famous detectives of all time in fiction. The purpose, apparently, was that Conan Doyle wanted to explore other genres of writing and his popular detective was taking up all his time. Hence Holmes was done away with. However, Conan Doyle had not reckoned with the love and attachment of the readers for his creation. They were having none of it. They cancelled their subscriptions in thousands to the Strand magazine, where the Holmes stories were being serialised. They wrote to the beleaguered author, expressing their anguish and anger. This, in the 1890s, was genuine public outrage, more than a century before social media made it so easy and superficial.
Conan Doyle was finally forced to relent and in a subsequent short story, Holmes was resurrected. For the interested, the details of the resurrection are in the story The Adventure of the Empty House. At the time when I first heard this anecdote, my reading world revolved around Enid Blyton. My uncle, who told me the story, was probably hoping to broaden my reading horizon. I recollect that what fascinated me then were the details of how Holmes was convincingly brought back to life, after being pronounced dead earlier. However, today, after many decades, what fascinates me is the readers’ total identification with the fictional sleuth and his adventures, to the extent that they refused to accept his untimely death and insisted that the author retract.
On thinking it over, it seems obvious that this level of identification is essential for a work of fiction to be successful. The poet Coleridge first used the expression “willing suspension of disbelief” to describe the state that enables the reader to immerse himself in the poet’s world and enjoy it. This is implicit in the appreciation of any creative endeavour and becomes readily obvious in the case of novels, movies and such. However, the level of suspended disbelief that allows us to immerse ourselves in the make-believe world and enjoy it also has its flip side sometimes.
