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Author: Nicholas Meyer

Links:

    -Nicholas Meyer (Wikipedia)
    -FILMOGRAPHY: Nicholas Meyer (IMDB)
    -The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (Wikipedia)
    -The Seven-Per-Cent Solution [film] (Wikipedia)
    -The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) (IMDB)
    -The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (Book) (Baker Street Wiki)
    -ESSAY: NICHOLAS MEYER ON THE GREAT ESCAPE OF ART (AND THE ART OF DETECTIVE FICTION): "I write Sherlock Holmes stories for the same reason I read them, to divert my attention from the terrifying issues that plague the rest of my waking hours." (NICHOLAS MEYER, 4/24/24, CrimeReads)
    -
    -PODCAST: Season 06 | Episode 13: NICHOLAS MEYER: Writer / Director (Writer/Director Nicholas Meyer discusses a few of his favorite movies with Josh Olson and Joe Dante., 3/13/23, Trailers from Hell)
    -PODCAST: The Chatter Podcast: “The Day After” with Nicholas Meyer (David Priess, April 28, 2022, Lawfare)
    -PROFILE: Nicholas Meyer Puts Sherlock Holmes on the Couch: Nicholas Meyer returns with The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols, his first Sherlock Holmes novel in 26 years (Lenny Picker, Aug 30, 2019, Publishers Weekly)

Meyer came up with a different way to make creative use of Holmes after a fellow student asked whether his father followed Freud’s methods. Not knowing anything about Freud, Meyer came home and posed that question to his father. “He told me that it’s no more possible to discuss psychology without discussing Freud than it is to discuss the discovery of America without discussing Columbus.” When the older Meyer explained that his work involved listening to both what his patients said, and how they said it, in order to find clues about what was at the heart of their problems, Meyer piped up: “That sounds like being a detective.” When his father concurred, a light bulb went off in Meyer’s head—he realized that Holmes had always reminded him of his father.

That epiphany led Meyer to learn about Freud. “His narrative voice was reminiscent of Watson’s, and, at one point, Freud himself described his following the labyrinth of a patient’s mind as being ‘Sherlock Holmes-like.’?” Given that Freud and Conan Doyle were contemporaries who had both written about cocaine, Meyer wondered whether they had known each other. Once Meyer learned that Conan Doyle had studied ophthalmology in Vienna for six months, he was convinced he was on to a good idea.

But that idea remained undeveloped for years, until after Meyer had moved to California to try his hand at screenwriting. The 1973 Writers’ Guild strike left him with a lot of free time, and friends encouraged him to get going on the Holmes-Freud novel he’d been talking about.

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D. (1974) - Nicholas Meyer (12/24/45 -) (Grade:B+)