ABSTRACT
Sherlock Holmes was always involved his shady matters of good and evil, and his career–newly presented, as he has been, by novelists and film directors, as a hopeless drug addict or an un-controllable neurotic— has updated his relevance to sharp-eyed observers of the contemporary scene including, especially, the censors. Blue pencils have become sharper as various government offices where well-instructed officials have arrogated to themselves the power to keep language pure and metaphorical reference safe and sound. In Russia, the translations have a traditional reliability and have for generations been favorite and bestselling reading matter. The subject is evidently a very sensitive matter in Moscow; the television producers were reprimanded, and the passage was censored. In a book published in 1969, and then seized and banned by the censors, Bohumil Hrabal predicted his own fate. Holmes would have spotted the difference, and Watson might have told the tale of “Closely Watched Authors,” or why the censor barked at midnight.
