Patische (n): An artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way…
You can tell when a property has passed from an individual to a communal property when other writers and creators start to reference it. While the process starts with copying something successful, there’s much more to it than that. Homage, parody, and patische not only rely on the audience’s familiarity with the source material, but require it. The story simply won’t work as well unless the audience has the original firmly in mind. It’s a sign that a character or novel has seeped into the public consciousness, even when many of the audience may not have been exposed to them directly. The character is so familiar, that the audience need not have read the original stories to understand an homage.
Ask yourself: how many people recognize Sherlock Holmes and how many have read the original stories? Even accounting for the recent TV program, many more people are familiar with Holmes and his tropes than have read the original 56 stories. (See also Tarzan and his 24 original novels).
So, Holmes and company are ripe for patische and are practically synonymous with it. But what’s the difference between patische and parody? In an article for Writer’s Digest, Timothy Miller explores the form.
“The SNL sketch with Jeremy Irons guessing all his birthday presents is certainly a parody, but does The Great Mouse Detective qualify as pastiche?” Miller asks. “Or The Name of the Rose?”
The dictionary definition covers a lot of ground, including official Holmes spin-offs like the Mycroft Holmes and Enola Holmes stories. Even so, fans argue about what is or is not an acceptable patische. How many Holmesian elements must be included and how closely to the original writing style must the homage hew?
But why Holmes of all characters? Why not Poirot or Auguste Dupin? Miller blames the mysterious London fog. “For it’s in mystery that pastiche thrives,” he writes. “In mistaken identities, disguises, doppelgangers. It’s offstage in the wings. It’s in the edges of your vision where shadows flit, and Sherlock Holmes is almost nothing but shadow. His talk is all aphorism and explication.”
The character himself is shrouded in mystery. The original tales reveal very little of Holmes’ past or family, or Watson’s. Watson is Holmes’ loyal right hand, but his motives are unexamined. Mycroft is called “the most indispensable man in England,” but is mentioned in only four stories. Holmes’ greatest love interest, Irene Adler, appears in exactly one, as does Moriarty, his greatest villain.
It’s in that mystery that patische thrives, Miller says. “Because the writer can mold them to suit his or her fancy,” he explains. “We could never achieve these gymnastics with Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina, with Leopold Bloom or Holden Caulfield. We know them inside out. They are set in stone. The less said in Doyle’s canon, the better, wider spaces for pastiche.” In fact, Doyle himself invited such speculation, by referring to cases he never wrote.
Finally, and best of all, Holmes died and came back to life, meaning he can die a thousand deaths in a thousand stories and still be available for the next.
