DEFENDING MEYER

What? Two weeks and no printed defense of Nicholas Meyer regarding Ronald F. Wilkerson’s simplistic and wrongheaded charge that Meyer “has made a career out of trashing other people’s literary characters . . . and the entire city of Lawrence, Kan., in ‘The Day After,’ ” and therefore has no valid vote against colorization (Calendar Letters, Jan. 18)?

Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle’s admitted “self-poisoner by tobacco and cocaine,” was a habitual user and abuser of both substances. To deny (as Wilkerson does) that Holmes was a drug addict is, at the least, to do an odd and unconvincing dance around the term “addiction.”

Meyer’s exploration (in “The Seven-Per-cent Solution”) of the depth and possible consequences of Holmes’ addiction is a perfectly valid, well-researched literary theme.