I've been thinking about trying to form my own sort of order of the Holmes canon (yes, I've been very inspired by other current Holmesian content) since I'm trying to get back into the annotations that I used to do and I'm at a loose end as to what to do with my life at the moment, but I really find it difficult to read the stories as examples of chronology, if that makes sense.
I've obviously been proven wrong time and time again as many people have wrote their theoretical canon chronologies, but part of me seriously feels that that's impossible. If they were supposed to have an order, ACD/Watson would have wrote it that way (again, my own personal opinion, I'm not trying to impose rules in the fandom because that would make all this boring). But, since he's our favourite unreliable narrator, he mixes up dates, changes them- sometimes he tells us, sometimes he let's us figure it out for ourselves.
There's the whole idea of the game, the 'true' meaning of the Holmes books and what ACD was trying to tell us. I, of course, am inclined to think that the mysteries aren't the main story, it's Holmes and Watson's relationships that are supposed to be focused on, so dates just aren't important to me. I don't believe Watson when he feels the need to include exactly when something happened, because it looks like he's establishing an alibi. Diverting attention from something.
And, I don't know, maybe I am taking it too seriously, but half the time I read the 'cases' and I doubt they even happened (as in, within Holmes' London)- a good example is obviously The Blanched Soldier wherein two men are kept apart from each so they don't endanger their reputation... a very diluted version of events, I know, but a brief example of my feelings on this. The cases are metaphorical, symbolic- cover ups.
I'm being extremely cryptid because I'm reevaluating my reading of the canon, and finding it surprisingly easy to ignore virtually everything Watson tells us to find a deeper story running through it all (not that there's anything wrong with serial crime stories- that's why I started reading in the first place).
I plan on actually forming a little bit of work on this- I doubt it'll go any further than this blog, but it'll be entertaining nonetheless, and I hope that at least a few people will understand where I'm coming from.
