|
Reader question: Please explain “dirty work” in this passage (How Sherlock Holmes changed the world, BBC.com, January 6, 2016): In 1893, author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle shoved detective Sherlock Holmes off a cliff. The cliff was fictionally located in Switzerland, over the Reichenbach Falls. But Conan Doyle did the dirty work from his home in London where he wrote. “It is with a heavy heart that I take up my pen to write these the last words in which I shall ever record the singular gifts by which my friend Mr Sherlock Holmes was distinguished,” narrator Dr John Watson says in Conan Doyle’s story The Final Problem, which appeared in The Strand magazine in December 1893. My comments: When Arthur Conan Doyle first put his pen to paper and wrote the great Sherlock Holmes stories, presumably he didn’t know how great all those tales would be to legions of fans of the famous detective in future generations. All he felt at the time was the pain of writing, the physical part of the work, thinking up the plot and writing it down, rearranging ideas and sentences, etc. Hours upon hours of monotonous work. At times, writing must have felt tedious to the author, who undoubtedly loved his work. I mean, even though he loved his work and was being creative, the tediousness involved with putting thousands upon thousands of words down to paper was inescapable. That’s the dirty work, or the dirty part of the work. | 
