Shapeshifters

There is new staging of Sherlock Holmes dramas going forward just now on PBS (9 pm Eastern Time on Sunday, with I think one more Sunday to run). It is a modern Sherlock, set today, with everybody using cellphones of the latest design till hell won't have it. Sherlock is still an incredibly observant sleuth (now "consulting detective") but got up rather antiquely in a long overcoat with tails that flap wildly as he runs, an odd hairdo (very bushy); he is very young and very strong, an athlete, although still wispy, and addicted to nicotine and caffeine but not cocaine. (It was cocaine in the old days, wasn't it?)

I bring him up because the new Sherlock strikes me as an example of a grossly familiar character (fictional in this case) who has undergone a "shapeshift," of what I see as the classic type: he is the same but also different; the old and new Sherlock blend together in the mind's eye.

About seven years ago, I wrote a biography for older children of Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, which was published by Boyds Mills Press. It has sold modestly ever since. (AA has long fascinated me as a 75-year-old instance of a new "spiritual movement," a late example of the kind of "healthy minded religion" Willliam James wrote about in this 1905 masterpiece, "The Varieties of Religious Experience." I am working on a companion bio of Dr. Bob Smith. Both men are deceased, so the anonymity thing is no longer in force, but both were unknown to the general public when they died.

There have been a dozen or so bios of Bill written since his death in 1971, only one that I know of about Dr. Bob, who died in 1950. This was "Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers." published by AA itself. Both men have had shapeshifts forced upon them as they emerge into a modest kind of celebrity status. Bill is now a sage of almost Confucian proportions; admittedly this is a function of AA members mostly, who meditate and discuss in meetings his considerable writings, published by AA and others; although it spills over a little into the general culture. Bob is less well known both to AAs and the public, but he looks more and more like a modern saint, who sought and actually achieved a true anonymity such that he is not easy to describe at length. But he is venerated by AAs anyway for his great personal impact on AA. Both men have had "shrines" dedicated to them: Bill at his birth place in East Dorset, Vermont and Bob at his work place in Akron, Ohio.

That leads me into discussing "Celebrity Status" today, which is for next time, or soon anyway. I'll have to begin with Lindsay Lohan, won't I?