Letters to the Editor
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I remember
When I was 12, I was in bed for more than a week with the mumps -- oddly enough, my room at the time was actually in a garret, right under the roof peak, complete with a narrow dormer window. I read all of Conan Doyle during that period of half-delirium, begging my parents to bring me a new supply from the library as I chewed my way through the available supply.
At some point in my thirties, remembering how mesmerizing those stories had been, I tried re-reading them. God, what a disappointment! Was there ever a worse writer than Conan Doyle? I'm talking in the technical sense, of course -- like Philip K. Dick, he was far better at engaging the reader's imagination than he was avoiding a clunk in the middle of a sentence.