I am currently listening to the second Sherlock Holmes novel, The Sign of the Four and am of course really enjoying it so far.  When I was in middle school and concerned with the Dragon Riders of Pern and the Babysitter's Club, I tried to read Sherlock Holmes, but found it too dense to cope with.  Now it perfectly suites my reading tastes and I really love attempting to come to my own conclusions prior to Holmes' expositions.  I listen to it through librivox.org, which has a huge catalog of public domain works recorded by volunteer readers available in mp3 and through iTunes completely free.  Now, sometimes you get a pretty sh*tty reader, but even with those, the passion for creating publicly available literature on tape usually manages to smooth over any choppy recording or bad pronunciation.

I'm torn on whether I like Dr. Watson or Detective Holmes better.  Dr. Watson is no slouch in the brains department, but he doesn't have the ability to amaze that Sherlock has - if he were written in the modern era, I'd jokingly call him a rock star detective.  He is so well described (physically) that I can see a clear picture of him in my mind in almost any scene of the book, eyes sharp and observant or half-lidded with thought. 

Dr. Watson is the person I would get along with.  He's the one I would ask questions of - would not be intimidated by.  He tries to make the people they meet feel comfortable, almost in apology for his brusque colleague.  He also candidly expresses his emotions and does not keep them locked away for the sake of clear, objective reasoning.  This is part of why he would never make as great a detective as Holmes.

So that's kind of where the paradox lies for me.  The things I most admire about Holmes' character are the very same things that I think make him deficient, in some ways.   He doesn't simply use the tools of observation, logic, and deduction, he has made himself an extension of these tools.  He is, in a way, a slave to them, unable to make any action on faith or intuition. 

I am willing to allow that this is the direction in which the world has gone.  The merits of faith and intuition are downplayed because they aren't quantifiable, observable, testable like cold hard facts.  I have a lot of respect for facts and hard sciences - the moreso with my first two science classes under my belt.  I have been raised with a strong respect for faith and less so for intuition, but the seeds of respect are there.

New Agers, Fung Shui-ers, and religious nuts are sometimes thought of as loonies and their views unworthy of consideration.  Only characters like Starfire live according to emotion and whim alone - if the rest of us tried it, we'd probably be dead within a week.  Nonetheless, life lived without access and use of the things internal - "gut feelings", emotions, promises, whatever - seems like living in a cold vacuum.  My personal decision from way back was to treat logic as a tool and not a way of life.  So I do.  I employ it regularly, but not in all cases.  To give an example wherein logic is useless, let's take a scene at home of me crying on the couch over something that happened during my day.  Lyndon is there to listen and his immediate reaction is to offer solutions to the problem I describe - well, that's logical.  Knock out the source and you knock out the symptoms (i.e. me, upset, crying).  This would be the Holmes route.  However, it doesn't work.  I look up through tears and ask in a quaking voice, "Why are you lecturing me??"  Now it's time for the Watson reaction: take the girl in your arms, pet her hair, and tell her everything's going to be all right.  It works!  The tears dry up, the husband gets a kiss, and the wife is soon calm and working through solutions on her own.

All the same, (and this is what makes everything okay for me), Holmes is not unfulfilled by living in what I would consider a vacuum - all of his passion is directed completely toward his own method of detection and the pursuit of difficult mysteries is all that he cares about in life.  Since that's the case and he is a happy man, I feel a lot better about liking his character and attributing his skills to him as favors rather than faults.  To me, the whole idea is a curious conundrum of what appears to be a simple and straightforward, almost two-dimensional character actually being a character of great depth that one can happily explore thoughout books and books.

Watson is much less of a mystery in himself because we see the stories through his eyes and reactions.  But he's more likeable and accessible, as I stated above.

One of the things I love so far is how two intellectuals are never in a moment afraid to use brute force to get things done.  After peering through a keyhole into a locked room and seeing what may or may not be a "devilish" scene inside, the two of them immediately throw their shoulders into the door to bust the lock and spill into the room.  No waiting for the police, no looking for a key... just "BLAM!"