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Rex Stout (1886-1975) |
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American author, who wrote over 70 detective novels, 46 of them featuring eccentric, chubby, beer drinking gourmet sleuth Nero Wolfe, whose wisecracking aide and right hand assistant in crime solving was Archie Goodwin. Rex Stout began his literary career by writing for pulp magazines, publishing romance, adventure, some borderline detective stories. After 1938 he focused solely on the mystery field. His face, chronically red, deepened a shade. His broad shoulders stiffened, and the creases spreding from the corners of his gray-blue eyes showed more as the eyelids tightened. Then, deciding I was playing for a burt, he controlled it. "Do you know," he asked, "whose opinion of you I would like to have? Darwin's. Where were you while evolution was going on? (Inspector Crames about Archie Goodwin, in Murder by the Book, introduction by David Handler, Bantam Books, 1992, p. 1; first published in 1951) Rex Stout was born in Noblesville, Indiana, the son of John Wallace Stout and Lucetta Elizabeth Todhunter. They both were Quakers. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Wakarusa, Kansas. Stout was educated at Topeka High School, and at University of Kansas, Lawrence, which he left to enlist in the Navy. From 1906 to 1908 he served as a Yeoman on President Theodore Roosevelt's yacht. The following years Stout spent writing freelance articles and working in odd jobs – as an office boy, store clerk, bookkeeper, and hotel manager. With his brother he invented an astonishing savings plans, the Educational Thrift Service, for school children. The system was installed in 400 cities throughout the USA, earning Stout about $400,000 and making him financially secure. In 1916 Stout married Fay Kennedy of Topeka, Kansas. They separated in 1931 – according to a story, she eloped with a Russian commissar – and Stout married Pola Hoffman, a fabric designer. Stout's first writings appeared in the 1910s among others in All-Story
Magazine. He went to sell articles and stories to a variety of
magazines. A stalwart opponent of censorship, he helped to
republish Arthur Machen's barred translation of Casanova's Memoirs.
In 1927 Stout became a full-time writer. Much of his money
he had made as a businessman he lost in the Stock Market Crash.
After publishing four moderately well-received novels, among them How
Like a God (1929), an unusual psychological story written in the
second person, Stout turned to the form of detective fiction. Stout's great invention was to combine the American and British forms of detective fiction in Archie Goodwin-Nero Wolfe duo, a variation of Arthur Conan Doyle's famous detective pair Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson. Curiously, Stout declared in 1931 that "Watson was a Woman". (quoted in Murder by the Book?: Feminism and the Crime Novel by Sally Munt, Routledge, 1994, p. 27) His mentally and physically great hero, Nero Wolfe, is a 286-pound man of intellect who sees himself as an artist. Noteworthy, by the age of nine, Stout himself had been recognized as a prodigy in arithmetic and he had an IQ of 185, but the character was not a self portrait – actually Wolfe had many of the characteristics of Stout's father, who had died in 1934. Wolfe's daily beer consumption is a marvel, he has yellow silk pyjamas, and he loves orchids. He is a gourmet who eats a whole eight-pound goose in the course of a single day. At eight-fifteen Wolfe enjoys breakfast in his room on the second floor of his house on West Thirty-fifth Street; he breakfasts in bed – "orange juice, eggs au beurre noir, two slices of broiled Georgia ham, hashed brown potatoes, hot blueberry muffins, and a pot of steaming cocoa." (Over My Dead Body, introduction by John Jakes, Bantam Books, 1994, p. 159; originally published in 1940) And then he dressses (a three-piece suit, tie and yellow shirt), and then goes to his rooftop greenhouse. Wolfe's associates are occasionally invited to dinner, customarily served at seven-thirty. The extraordinary meals are prepared by Fritz Brenner, Wolfe's personal chef. Goodwin's primary
function is to serve as the ears and eyes of his eccentric employer,
not his brains. Occasionally he criticizes Wolfe's extreme political
viewpoints. The young operative was introduced in the novel Fer-Der-Lance
(1934), which appeared first as a serial in the Saturday Evening
Post. It was followed by The
League of Frightened Men in
1935. The critic and awarded mystery writer H.R.F. Keating included it
among the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published. Archie
suggests in the story that Wolfe steps out from his apartment, just on
the sidewalk, to meet a witness who is sitting in a car. Wolfe
answers: "I don't know, Archie. I don't know why you persists in trying
to badger me into
frantic sorties. Dismiss the notion entirely. It is not feasible." (Ibid., Farrar & Rhinehart, p. 124) The book was adapted into screen in 1937, directed by
Alfred E. Green. Meet Nero Wolfe (1936), loosely based on Fer-de-Lance, was
a surprise success, starring Edward Arnold. In the 1937 production
Lionel
Stander played again Archie Goodwin, but Arnold was replaced by Walter
Connolly. "Hardly any audience likes to watch a character who just sits
and thinks. . . . He [Nero Wolfe] drinks beer in the novel but hot
chocolate in the picture. That's the best explanation of what's wrong
with the film," wrote a sour critic in Variety. (Columbia Pictures Movie Series, 1926-1955: The Harry Cohn Years by Gene Blottner, McFarland & Company, 2012, p. 266) Rita
Hayworth, still as Rita Cansino, had a small role in the film. Stout
did not sell rights to any other books. He hated television. The phenomenally fat private eye gained wide popularity from the start. Stout wrote prolifically one Nero Wolfe adventure in a year – from the 1940s some times several – until the end of his life. Usually he finished a book in about 40 days. The first draft was the final draft. Like Isaac Asimov, he never rewrote or redrafted his stories. During the course of his career, Stout mastered a variety of literary forms, including the short story, the novel, and science fiction, among them a pioneering political thriller, The President Vanishes (1934), in which the disappearance of the US President causes a near-future crisis. In an earlier work, Under the Andes (1914, All-Story Magazine), Stout described an underground lost world of dwarf Incas. The form of detective fiction did not prevent him from touching upon political and social questions. Already in Too Many Cooks (1938), Wolfe argued for racial equality as Stout's mouthpiece. Its sequel, A Right to Die (1964), dealt with civil rights movement. During the WW II Stout cut back on his detective writing, joined the Fight for Freedom organization, and wrote propaganda, that encouraged to support Roosevelt and American involvement in WW II. Charles Lindbergh, who supported American neutrality, was one of the targets of his criticism. The Illustrious Dunderheads (1942), which he edited, featured "some of the silliest, stupidest and most dangerous statements that have ever been made by men laying claim to being leaders of the American people." (Ibid., p. xiii) He also included in the book an essay on the aims of Nazi propaganda. Moreover, Stout hosted three weekly radio shows, 'Speaking of Liberty,' and coordinated volunteer services of American writers to help the war effort. To relax from the burdens of office, FDR sometimes read Wolfe stories. During his first term as president, Dwight D. Eisenhower read Prisoner's Base (1952) while recovering from a heat attack. After the war Stout returned to his Nero Wolfe novels, and took up the role of gentleman farmer on his estate at High Meadows in Brewster, North of New York City. He served as President of the Authors Guild and of the Mystery Writers of America. In 1959 he received Grand Master Award from the latter organization. "Good. but robbery or murder, no matter what, speaking generally, you muts throughly understand that primarily you are practicing an art, not a science. The role of science in crime detection in worthy, honorable, and effective, but it has little part in the activities of a private detective who aspires to eminence. Anyone of moderate capacity can become adept with a vernier caliper, a camera, a microscope, a spectograph, or a centrifuge, but they are merely the servants of detection. Science in detection can be distinguished, even brilliant, but it can never replace either the inexorable march of a fine intellect through a jungle of lies and fears to the clearing of truth, or the flash of perception along a sensitive nerve touched off by a tone of a voice or a flicker of an eye." (Nero Wolfe in The Golden Spiders, introduction by Linda Barnes, Bantam Books, 1995, p. 12; originally published in 1953) With the outbreak of the Cold War, Wolfe affirmed his anti-communist position in The Second Confession(1949). One of the characters says: "Her second year in college she got interested in communism and went into it, but it didn't take her long to pull out. She says it's intellectually contemptible and morally unsound." (Ibid., Bantam Books, 1980, p. 5) Stout was active in liberal causes, and ignored a subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee at the height of the McCarthy era. Wolfe declared in the story 'Home to Roost' (1952) that "I deplore the current tendency to accuse people of pro-communism irresponsibly and unjustly." With Arthur Miller, Otto Preminger, Hugh Hefner, and other prominent fultural figures, Stout helped form the Committee to Protest Absurd Censorship in 1966. The Doorbell Rang from 1965 ridiculed FBI agents and its director, J. Edgar Hoover ("the big fish" in the book). In an interview Stout said: "Hoover is a megalomanic, although I detest that word. He appears totally egocentric, and in addition to other things he is narrow-minded. I think his whole attitude makes him an enemy of democracy. . . . I think he is on the edge of senility. Calling Martin Luther King the 'biggest liar in the world,' or something like that, was absurd." (quoted in Rex Stout: A Biography by John McAleer, with a foreword by P. G. Wodehouse, Little, Brown and Company, 1977, p. 457) Behind the Iron Curtain, Stout was a highly popular writer, though his books were available mostly in contraband editions. The Black Mountain (1954) sent Wolfe and Goodwin to the Balkans, where they witness corruption, cruelty, inequality, and despotism. In Over My Dead Body (1939) Stout had revealed that Wolfe was in Montenegro, which later became a part of Tito's Yugoslavia. Stout helped to form the Committee to Protest Absurd Censorship but his hawkish stance on Vietnam alienated many liberal friends from him. Between 1969 and 1973 he wrote no novels at all. Stout died on October 27, 1975. Just a month before his death he had published his 72nd Nero Wolfe mystery, having no plans bury his hero as Agatha Christie did it both with Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. In the late 1980s, the writer Robert Goldsborough started to continue the series. For further reading: Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-Fifth Street: The Life and Times of America's Largest Private Detective by William S. Baring-Gould (1969); The Nero Wolfe Cookbook by Rex Stout and the editors of Viking Press (1973); Rex Stout: A Biography by John McAleer (1977); Rex Stout: An Annotated Primary and Secondary Bibliography by Guy M. Townsend (1980); Rex Stout by D. Anderson (1984); 'Nero Wolfe: A Retrospective' by John Mc Aleer, in Fer-de-Lance (50th Anniversary edition, 1984); 'The League of Frightened Men by Rex Stout,' in Crime & Mystery: the 100 Best Books by H.R.F. Keating (1987); At Wolfe's Door by J. Kenneth Van Dover (1991); Controversial Politics, Conservative Genre: Rex Stout's Archie-Wolfe Duo and Detective Fiction's Conventional Form by Ammie Sorensen Cannon (thesis; 2004); The Mysterious Romance of Murder: Crime, Detection, and the Spirit of Noir by David Lehman (2022); Perplexing Plots: Popular Storytelling and the Poetics of Murder by David Bordwell (2022) - Nero Wolfe's address in Manhattan: West 35th Street. Sherlock Holmes's address in London: 221 Baker Street. Films: Meet Nero Wolfe (1936), dir. Herbert Biberman, starring Edward Arnold; The League of Frightened Men (1937), dir. Alfred E. Green, starring Walter Connolly; The Doorbell Rang (1972); dir. Frank Gilroy, starring Thayer David. Selected works:
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