Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Books

[Extollager]

I ran across this --

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/jacobs/safe-space/

-- and was reminded of a character and series of books (that's books) I got acquainted with years ago and somehow didn't keep up with. So here's a place where people can comment on the books of Rex Stout. Let's have a separate thread for television series and the like, please.

Does anyone know the original source of this painting? I've seen it before (just ran across it on Google). I have the impression that is has the approval of fans, or maybe of Stout himself.

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Hello, Extollager! That painting looks familiar to me as well, and I think I may have seen a reference to the source -- somewhere. I'll see if I can find it again.

My husband and I are both fans of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe stories, and are currently re-reading them aloud. We've just finished "Booby Trap," wherein Archie mentions a WAC sergeant wearing a "peck measure cap." I couldn't find any explanation of that complete phrase online, but did find a military "peck cap" (without the word "measure"), which looks somewhat like a baseball cap, except that the part that's hemispherical on a baseball cap is more cylindrical on a peck cap. And I found a photo (below) of a vintage WWII WAC Hobby hat (named for its designer) that looks a good bit like a peck cap. The only other WWII WAC headgear I found any references to was a garrison cap, one of those very simple military caps that folds completely flat. Therefore I have concluded that the sergeant's "peck measure cap" was actually a Hobby hat, but that Archie, being of course a male soldier, is familiar only with the terminology for male uniforms.

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

OK, I found the book that I remembered that painting of Wolfe from -- it's The Archie Goodwin Files, edited by Marvin Kaye. copyright 2005 by Wildside Press. The book consists of selected items from The Wolfe Pack's publication, The Gazette. The painting is on the back cover, and is by Kevin Gordon, copyright also 2005, but by the artist. So the painting may have been done specially for that book cover -- at any rate, that's apparently the first place it appeared. Oddly, the Acknowledgements page refers to it as a "self-portrait" -- but whether that means it's the artist's conception of how Nero Wolfe would have painted himself, or whether it's a self-portrait of Kevin Gordon as Nero Wolfe, or whether the term was simply misused here, I have no idea.

Sorry, I don't see any information regarding any "official" approval.

Added a bit later: Here is a blog post with an interview of artist Kevin Gordon regarding his painting. Gordon is a professional portrait artist (more often painting real-life corporate presidents and the like) who is also a Wolfe fan. He says he did the Wolfe portrait because he thought it would be fun, and that he "... corralled a fellow who had the requisite bulk, posed him with the required props and painted away. The face is strictly my own invention, since he didn't actually LOOK like Wolfe to me." The blog also mentions that Rex Stout's daughter Rebecca has a print of the portrait hanging in her house, which sounds like a stamp of approval to me!

 

[KiraAnn]

I haven't seen any Nero Wolfe books, but I have enjoyed watching the old American tv shows. I haven't seen the latest series from Italy.

In 1959, the Nero Wolfe show was never aired, although YouTube has the pilot. Stars Kurt Kasznar and Bill Shatner.

In 1981, the Nero Wolfe show was reimagined with William Conrad and Lee Horsley but only lasted a half season. The producer(s) really really wanted Orson Welles but couldn't come to terms.

In 2001, it was again revived and this time lasted 2 seasons. Starred Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton. Of the 3, this was my favorite.

Again, YouTube has these all.

 

[BAYLOR]

I haven't seen any Nero Wolfe books, but I have enjoyed watching the old American tv shows. I haven't seen the latest series from Italy.

In 1959, the Nero Wolfe show was never aired, although YouTube has the pilot. Stars Kurt Kasznar and Bill Shatner.

In 1981, the Nero Wolfe show was reimagined with William Conrad and Lee Horsley but only lasted a half season. The producer(s) really really wanted Orson Welles but couldn't come to terms.

In 2001, it was again revived and this time lasted 2 seasons. Starred Maury Chaykin and Timothy Hutton. Of the 3, this was my favorite.

Again, YouTube has these all.

The first book in the Nero Wolfe Series is Fer-de-lance It's pretty good Nero Wolfe and his associates are wonderful characters , you can't help but like them .

 

[Randy M.]

Stout did something rather clever with Wolfe and Goodwin, merging what we'd now call the "cozy" mystery with the hardboiled. Wolfe is Sherlockian minus the nervous energy -- I've read he was derived from Mycroft Holmes-- and much of Goodwin's patter could have come from Hammett's Nick Charles, or Philip Marlowe on one of his less harrowing days.

I read Fer-de-Lance a few years ago and have The League of Frightened Men lined up for the future.

 

[Vladd67]

The first book in the Nero Wolfe Series is Fer-de-lance It's pretty good Nero Wolfe and his associates are wonderful characters , you can't help but like them .

I read a amazon review of Fer-de-lance where the reviewer complained how bad this book is compared to the rest of the series, and how incomplete the characters are. I thought he does know this was book 1 right?

 

[BAYLOR]

Stout did something rather clever with Wolfe and Goodwin, merging what we'd now call the "cozy" mystery with the hardboiled. Wolfe is Sherlockian minus the nervous energy -- I've read he was derived from Mycroft Holmes-- and much of Goodwin's patter could have come from Hammett's Nick Charles, or Philip Marlowe on one of his less harrowing days.

I read Fer-de-Lance a few years ago and have The League of Frightened Men lined up for the future.

I read a amazon review of Fer-de-lance where the reviewer complained how bad this book is compared to the rest of the series, and how incomplete the characters are. I thought he does know this was book 1 right?

There was at one point , A Nero Wolfe Comic Strip , The edition of Her-de-Lance that I had had a. sample of it in the back of the book

 

[Vladd67]

There was at one point , A Nero Wolfe Comic Strip , The edition of Her-de-Lance that I had had a. sample of it in the back of the book

If you get the kindle version it has a couple of the frames at the end of the book.

 

[Vladd67]

I am actually buying one kindle book a month, I have just finished book 11 of, I believe, 47.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

One reason why Rex Stout did not have all kinds of emotional baggage attached to his main characters was so that a reader could pick up any of his books in any chronological order and be able to read the story without generating any kind of confusion as to how a widowed person now has a dead person as their living spouse, smoking after not smoking, drinking or not drinking, etc. He did change the props and background news so from a event timeline, the series does move through time and that can be seen by reading the stories out of sequence but in no way changes the overall story lines.

 

[Vladd67]

One reason why Rex Stout did not have all kinds of emotional baggage attached to his main characters was so that a reader could pick up any of his books in any chronological order and be able to read the story without generating any kind of confusion as to how a widowed person now has a dead person as their living spouse, smoking after not smoking, drinking or not drinking, etc. He did change the props and background news so from a event timeline, the series does move through time and that can be seen by reading the stories out of sequence but in no way changes the overall story lines.

Also they refer to cases never included in the books.

 

[Randy M.]

One reason why Rex Stout did not have all kinds of emotional baggage attached to his main characters was so that a reader could pick up any of his books in any chronological order and be able to read the story without generating any kind of confusion as to how a widowed person now has a dead person as their living spouse, smoking after not smoking, drinking or not drinking, etc. He did change the props and background news so from a event timeline, the series does move through time and that can be seen by reading the stories out of sequence but in no way changes the overall story lines.

Also they refer to cases never included in the books.

Both of these were the accepted practice in detective fiction of the time period. Dorothy Sayers played with it a little, letting her detective get married toward the end of the series (not sure if it was planned as the end, but it was), as did Margery Allingham about the middle of her series. And pretty much for the reason you give, Robert, so the series could be picked up anywhere and read in any order. See also, Ellery Queen, Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and pretty much all the other ones I can think of who started writing between the 1920s and the 1980s.. The practice of building one book off of previous books, of working a time-line of events is relatively recent, I think.

I do wonder who started it. Or maybe it was a sort of organic thing where several writers didn't treat the books episodically.

 

[BAYLOR]

Both of these were the accepted practice in detective fiction of the time period. Dorothy Sayers played with it a little, letting her detective get married toward the end of the series (not sure if it was planned as the end, but it was), as did Margery Allingham about the middle of her series. And pretty much for the reason you give, Robert, so the series could be picked up anywhere and read in any order. See also, Ellery Queen, Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and pretty much all the other ones I can think of who started writing between the 1920s and the 1980s.. The practice of building one book off of previous books, of working a time-line of events is relatively recent, I think.

I do wonder who started it. Or maybe it was a sort of organic thing where several writers didn't treat the books episodically.

Could it be Evan Hunter's 87th Precinct novels ?

 

[Randy M.]

That's certainly a possibility.

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Stout did something rather clever with Wolfe and Goodwin, merging what we'd now call the "cozy" mystery with the hardboiled. Wolfe is Sherlockian minus the nervous energy -- I've read he was derived from Mycroft Holmes-- and much of Goodwin's patter could have come from Hammett's Nick Charles, or Philip Marlowe on one of his less harrowing days.

My cousin prefers hard-boiled mysteries, while I prefer cozies -- but we both love Wolfe & Archie!

I've heard a number of people (including myself) say that Wolfe is far more similar to Mycroft Holmes than to his brother, but I've never heard any hint that Stout intentionally modelled him on Mycroft. He did say that Wolfe just showed up in his head one day, fully formed.

My own wishful theory is this: Maybe little Rex had heard his parents speak nostalgically of a fellow they had known back in Noblesville, Indiana (where Rex was born), saying things like "if only Nero Wolfe were here to figure out what to do." As an adult, Stout didn't consciously remember those conversations, but his childhood mental image of Wolfe was still lurking in the back of his brain. (I like this theory because I have relatives in the Noblesville area, and some of them are named Wolfe.)

I read a amazon review of Fer-de-lance where the reviewer complained how bad this book is compared to the rest of the series, and how incomplete the characters are. I thought he does know this was book 1 right?

I started out reading the Wolfe books out of sequence (beginning with my father's copy of The Doorbell Rang), and after reading the entire corpus a few times, I do think the first few books feel different from the subsequent ones -- not worse exactly, but not cut from quite the same cloth.

One reason why Rex Stout did not have all kinds of emotional baggage attached to his main characters was so that a reader could pick up any of his books in any chronological order

As Randy M. said while I was typing this post, that may have been typical of the genre at that time. It recently occurred to me that that's one reason I prefer the original Star Trek and Next Generation to the subsequent spin-offs -- each episode had a self-contained point to make, rather than contributing to a continuing story arc.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Back when we were first married, my husband and I were friends with a married couple who lived quite nearby at the time, and the husband had a large number of the Nero Wolfe books. I know it can't have been all of them, because at that time (a quick Google tells me) the last two or three hadn't been published yet, and it might not even have been all of them written and published at that date, but there were a great number of them, and I believe that I borrowed and read all that he owned. I only remember bits and pieces of the plots—it was about fifty years ago, after all—but I remember the two main characters quite vividly. And I must have liked them, because as soon as I'd finished two or three that I had borrowed, I would return those and borrow a few more.

I do remember that I didn't read them in any particular order—just grabbed those that looked most interesting to me at the time, going by the back cover copy—so I can vouch that reading them out of order caused no confusion, and didn't detract from my enjoyment at all.

I've often thought about rereading them, but never did. The fact that I didn't own the books and they were not handy when I thought that it might be fun to read them again and find out if I enjoyed them as much—that probably had a lot to do with it. (Although they were no doubt all there in our local libraries, which I used to visit often, and I could have picked them up any time over the decades before my eyes got to the point where reading printed books was hard. But I never thought about it when I was there.) And by now, half a century later, I wonder if I would remember the solutions to the mysteries, once I picked up the books and they starting jogging my memory—so it might be a lot like experiencing them for the first time. Maybe I will reread them one of these days, and see if they've aged well.

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

... half a century later, I wonder if I would remember the solutions to the mysteries, once I picked up the books and they starting jogging my memory—so it might be a lot like experiencing them for the first time. Maybe I will reread them one of these days, and see if they've aged well.

I first read these books because my father wanted the out-of-print hardcover editions, so I frequented used-book stores, and whenever I found a book, I'd read it before forwarding it to him. That must have been about 35 years ago. When Daddy passed on, I inherited his collection, and continued filling in the blanks till I had everything in one form or another. I think I've re-read them all at least once or twice.

I can't say what your experience would be, of course, but I remember "how it turned out" for only a few, so re-reading them is almost like reading them for the first time. And it's my impression that they have aged remarkably well (though a younger person might disagree). Wolfe is still a misogynist at heart of course, but he's not obnoxious about it. I find occasional bits of dialog in the war-years stories a bit jarring, but the stories themselves are still good.

And @Extollager -- just noticed there's a typo in the thread title!

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Seems like a lot of us didn't notice that. Extollager couldn't fix it (most people's editing powers lapse a while after posting) but being on Staff, I can. So "Rext Stout" has now been amended to "Rex Stout."

Thanks for pointing it out.