Meet
Sherlockian
Brad Keefauver

an interview with
Ron Kritter

for the
Nashville Scholars

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R Kritter: Would you please tell us a little about yourself: where you live; what you do for a living; married? family? Other interests or hobbies?

B Keefauver: My wife (Kathy Carter), the cat (Kitty), and I live in a very pleasant "Ward Cleever" neighborhood in what is very nearly the exact center of Peoria, Illinois. My present job is doing analysis and programming for a mail-order horticulture company, which provided a nice break after spending the first two-thirds of my working life in a newspaper composing room ("compositor" being the Canonical name for the job).

Other interests/hobbies? Following family blood-lines, writing novels that wind up in the closet, trading classic superhero speculations and extrapolations with my old comic-reading pals, following whatever science fiction/fantasy television show currently holds the sacred spot of "favorite," and watching movies -- I try to see one or two a week, dragging my nieces and nephews along when I need camouflage for going to Pokemon cartoons.

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RK: Is it really true that you live across an alley from Bob Burr, and it so, what's it like to have the rascally lascar as a neighbor?

BK: Well, it isn't across an alley, really, though we do call the connecting path "the Yew Alley" after the one at Baskerville Hall. The back left corners of our property lines touch, and minutes after Kathy and I signed the papers on our house, I was sawing out a section of picket fence and the Lascar was laying out brick stepping stones. A Sherlockian neighbor is a great thing to have, especially one that's always available for cat-sitting, book-borrowing, and proofreading (lots and lots of proofreading). And how many other Sherlockians get to pause in mowing their lawn to talk about The Baker Street Journal or some other bit of recent Sherlockiana? (The Lascar doesn't often get to pause in his mowing, as seven a.m. is not a prime conversational time for me.) Somebody should start a Sherlockian subdivision so more people could have this much fun.

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RK: I've noticed that lascar is a member of the crew that puts together THE HOLMES & WATSON REPORT. Tell us about the group, and the REPORT, such as when it was first published, and how the issue themes are chosen?

BK: The H&WR crew is a grand assortment of folks who do all the real work on the journal. When an article comes in, I ship it through the fence to Bob Burr for initial proofing. (He's been trying to teach me to spell for twenty years now and still shakes his head every time I write "recieve.") Bob passes the articles back across the fence to Kathy, who proofs, edits, and always asks me more questions about the articles than I can answer with a deadline bearing down. They both depend upon me to actually make their suggested corrections (which I occasionally don't, believing strongly in a writer's right to choose style and voice over "correct" grammar . . . either that, or I just don't see them now and then). Debi Pollard brings in the Sherlockian birthdays (having ample supply as birthday queen of the Hounds of the Internet). Jim Vogelsang supplies assorted other Sherlockian calendar dates along with his column each issue. (I've never actually met Debi or Jim, oddly enough, even though Jim has been a friend since our days at the Dangling Prussian.) Bill Cochran serves in the honorary position of "Consulting Editor" which means, even though I don't listen to anyone, if I did, it'd probably be Bill. And then there's an additional place of honor in our staff box that goes to whoever inspires me that issue. (Playmobil Sherlock Holmes sits on my old Mac just waiting for a second chance in that spotlight.)

THE HOLMES & WATSON REPORT was first published in March of 1997, shortly after I realized that newly affordable flatbed scanners and OCR software meant I could publish a journal without retyping all the articles. (Love publishing, hate typing.) Issue themes are chosen by sheer whimsy. On most occasions, I can't convince even our regular writers to go along with the themes, but Moriarty's recent announcement that he's turning the November issue into an October 31st issue of THE MORIARTY & MORAN REPORT seems to have set them to writing. Perhaps it's Moriarty's death threats that work so well. What an editor he would make!

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RK: You've always impressed me as a great player of the Game, and a great defender of the Game. Why is it important that the Game continue?

BK: For the reason all diversions tend to continue, I think. We have to have somewhere to go, even if just for a moment, to get away now and then. And 221B Baker Street is a great place to get away. Conan Doyle laid out the basic structure of the place, but as every ardent fan of the great detective knows, a mere sixty tales was never enough for us. All great legends (a so much better word than "fictions") have been expanded and dwelled upon by their fans, and Sherlock Holmes has one of the greatest and most unique traditions of expansion.

Even if you do nothing more than read one of the original stories, your mind is treating those printed pages like instant pudding mix: adding the milk of your experience and whipping the words into a tasty full-blown reality in your head. The very act of "seeing" what you're reading is playing the "Grand Game" at its most basic level, letting your mind retrieve the image of a bull pup when Watson mentions a bull pup (whatever your mind concieves a bull pup to be). All that the more traditional Grand Game does is take the research outside, and let you retrieve whatever data and perspectives will make the world of 221B all the more real to you.

These days we have a lot of options as Sherlockians. We can get into pastichery, Victorianism, Doylean studies, Holmes on film . . . all sorts of topics, of varying seriousness. To me, however, most of them have too many limits. The Game, with all its infinite possibilities spinning like asteroids around the solid Earth of the Canon, provides a form of mental stimulation (in other words, just plain fun) that will wear out only when the imaginations of its players do.

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RK: You've written books as well as edited the H≀ are you especially proud of a particular book you've written, and if so, which one?

BK: That old "choosing among your children" metaphor fits best here, I think. I'm fond of The Elementary Methods of Sherlock Holmes because it was the book I really wanted someone else to have already written, but they hadn't, so I did. The Armchair Baskerville Tour was the most fun to write, with its "walking around inside the story" slant. And though I probably shouldn't be overly proud of a rush job, I always take a certain guilty pleasure in the fact that I wrote Sherlock and the Ladies in 25 evenings (or "one woman a night" as I like to say).

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RK: Along with lascar you are a member of the Baker Street Irregulars; how important is this famous group to you and to your interest in the Great Detective?

BK: Ah, the Irregulars. I have to watch my words here, as whenever I mention the Irregulars in public I seem to get into trouble with someone. Will I? Let's see.

The Baker Street Irregulars is an organization that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and it's very important to almost all of them, myself included. Why? Because it's the nexus of all things Sherlockian. (Our English, Canadian, Danish, Japanese, etc., brethren may disagree with me, of course.) Sherlockians from all over the world converge on New York City for the BSI celebrations of Holmes's birthday. The Baker Street Journal will always be seen by many as the core publication in Sherlockiana whether or not it can keep an editor or a schedule. Beyond that nexus concept, however, opinions start to diverge. And my opinion is definitely one of the more divergent ones. I believe, for example, that an organization of over three hundred people is no longer a simple dinner party, and cannot go on inviting and investituring people on the whims of a single individual, no matter how sweet a guy he is. I believe that an international organization like the BSI needs to hold events in more cities than just one. I believe that three hundred of the best Sherlockians on the face of the planet should be able to come up with something a little more interesting to the Sherlockian world at large than the same journal and the same dinner that sixty Sherlockians or less did (supposedly a lot better according to many BSI) sixty years ago.

See why I always get in trouble? The BSI is important enough to me that I get my blood up, get up on my soapbox, and irritate the very same people that I should be doing my best to help out. It's like having a werewolf curse. Or Tourette's Syndrome. Or being a werewolf with Tourette's Syndrome. But I'll tell you, I'm buying my plane tickets this week for BSI weekend 2001. And come November, I'll be sending Mike Whelan my check for the dinner by overnight mail. I did a practice run on finally returning to the weekend in 1999, got zapped out by Y2K in 2000 (yeah, it was a fizzle, but pre-Y2K hysteria in the business world sure wasn't), and this year, I'm headed back to the BSI dinner after more than a decade to check things out.

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RK: What are a few of your favorite tales from the Canon, and why are they your favorites?

BK: My favorite story tends to change from year to year, and currently "Speckled Band" is leading the pack. I tend to favor the more supernaturally flavored tales, wherein Holmes brings in the light of reason to overcome the darkness and fear that have taken over people's lives. "The Speckled Band," for example, brings Holmes into confrontation with a seeming wizard -- a man who consorts with gypsies and strange creatures, who has unnatural strength, and who can kill at a distance, leaving no trace. We know whodunnit from square one, it's just a question of how Holmes will stop this monster and deal with his mysterious powers. "The Speckled Band" is the sort of tale Doyle wrote well even when Holmes wasn't involved -- a classic chiller. "Devil's Foot," "Sussex Vampire," and, of course, "Hound" all top my list. "Final Problem" has to be a favorite, too, even though Moriarty is explained in very mundane terms for a true Prince of Darkness.

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RK: Why do you think the Canon is read year after year, generation after generation all over the world? What makes it not only a classic, but a classic that's READ.

BK: The reason that the Holmes tales are so readable is the fact that they were pop culture to begin with. Doyle didn't write them to get in lit books, he wrote them for the masses. It's a little sad to think that they're not really pop culture anymore, as Sherlock seems to have become the generic brand for detectives in the public eye, and most people have no clue as to his personality beyond the hat and lens. You know we're in trouble when "Elementary, my dear Watson" is in danger of being replaced by "No ****, Sherlock!" as the popular non-Canonical catch-phrase. (Trivia of the future: "Did you know that Dr. Watson really *didn't* say, 'No ****, Sherlock'? Unbelievable, but true!")

Without some new reaffirmation of the true Holmes in current pop culture, be it movie, television, or novel (and I mean a *seriously* popular movie, TV show, or novel -- a real chart-topper, like "Seven Percent Solution"), the "casual fan" base is probably going to erode as the baby boomers start to die off. But I have faith in ol' Sherlock. He'll inspire someone to bring about that reaffirmation, just as he has so many other times in the last century.

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RK: There are many social activities that make up the Sherlockian life; which events do you like to attend?

BK: I love workshops and symposiums and any other weekend concentration of Sherlockians that doesn't happen in the dead of winter in a cold, cold city. They give me a great excuse to visit places like Minneapolis, Santa Fe, Tampa, Toronto, or even Dayton, Ohio. I'm not the sort of person that likes going to the same place over and over again, and the Sherlockian world offers a great variety of destinations. When you run into the same people in Toronto that you saw in Santa Fe and again in Minneapolis, you realize who the hardcore gypsies of Sherlockiana are. They're a great bunch.

John Bennett Shaw started a grand tradition with his original workshops, and a great variety of folks have done good work following in his footsteps.

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RK: You are an eminent member of the Hounds of the Internet; how did you come up with "The Birlstone Railway Smash" as your nom?

BK: Well, I started flipping through Bill Goodrich's "Good Old Index" looking for cool Canonical words, and I stumbled on "Birlstone Railway Smash," a very non-American way of describing a train wreck. It was love at first sight. Taken one way, it sounds like a locally successful vaudeville performer. Taken in its full Canonical glory from The Valley of Fear, "I've never seen such injuries since the Birlstone railway smash," it sounds like a failed pro wrestler or, of course, a train wreck. On a given day, I might feel like any one of those descriptions suit me, so the nom seemed to fit.

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You might also enjoy Keefauver's report of the BSI Dinner and BASH, held simultaneously on January 4, 2001 in New York City: Read it here.

If you have comments regarding this article, please reply HERE. Thanks.
The Nashville Scholars of the Three Pipe Problem
(page created July 30, 2000 -- http://www.nashvillescholars.net/interviews/keefauver.htm)

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