Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was the creator of the London based "consulting detective" Sherlock Holmes. Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories featuring Holmes, the first of which was published in 1887, and almost all of which are narrated by Holmes's friend, Dr. John H. Watson. The character of Holmes was inspired by two men, Dr. Joseph Bell and Sir Henry Littlejohn, the former for his noteworthy perceptiveness, able to "draw large conclusions from the smallest observations," and the latter for his use of forensics in crime detection.
There isn't a lot of background information on Holmes, as almost all his stories are related by Dr. Watson, but we get an estimate of Holmes being born in 1853 or 1854 dude to him being 60 years old in "The Last Bow," which was set in 1914. Holmes was college-educated, his specialty being chemistry, and although it is never specified if he graduated from university, his first amateur cases came from university classmates. Holmes then worked as a consulting detective for six years before taking in Watson as a roommate, which is when the stories begin at 221B Baker Street.
Holmes's stories are usually frame narratives, a summary of Holmes's adventures written from Watson's point of view, which Holmes feels sensationalizes his craft and doesn't objectively portray the science of the cases. Watson was present for 17 of the 23 years Holmes was in practice, and although Holmes had a pretty cold exterior, Watson was his best friend.
As far as Holmes's personality, Watson described him as "bohemian," "eccentric," and stated he had a total disregard for contemporary standards of order or cleanliness. Watson downplays Holmes's use of cocaine and morphine, although he is morally against it, as well as looks the other way when Holmes is less than upstanding in his crime-solving methods. Holmes is described as arrogant with a dispassionate demeanor, although when working a case he shows "remarkable passion" and has a "flair for showmanship" when preparing elaborate traps to expose culprits.
Holmes's primary detection method is abductive reasoning, which is basically a hybrid of guessing and common sense based on keen observation skills, now deemed "Holmsian deduction." Holmes is a big fan of disguises, and apparently so good at being under cover he even fools Watson on some occasions. Along with Holmsian deduction, Holmes uses forensic science to solve his cases, including collecting trace evidence, ballistics, questionable documents, and toxicology based on his extensive chemistry knowledge for blood and poison analysis.
Relevance to Against the Day:
Lew Basnight is a Sherlock Holmes-esque detective, which we haven't gotten to yet in the reading, as he apparently ends up in California and has a Holmesian adventure. From what we have read, there are parallels between Holmes and Basnight, the biggest one so far, beyond the fact they're both detectives, is their drug use. Holmes favored cocaine to "activate" his mind, whereas Basnight was all about cyclomite. We'll read a reflection of Basnight's in upcoming chapters, in which he speaks of bilocation and how his other self, "the Sherlock Holmes type of sleuth" is out capturing criminal masterminds who are basically no different than Scarsdale Vibe and others like him. Due to Pynchon's affinity for genre-poaching, my abductive reasoning leads me to infer that Basnight reading will reflect Doyle's writing style and be a Holmesian adventure.
Sources:
http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://steampunkscholar.blogspot.com/2009/07/against-day-by-thomas-pynchon-part-3.html
Against The Day
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_Holmes
http://www.sherlockholmesonline.org/
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