Rex Stout

I began reading Rex Stout at the prompting of Herrlee Creel, the great Chicago sinologist. Creel insisted that his students write well, not only well by academic standards, but by his own standards. He was a great writer himself. He frequently railed against journalists – a word he pronounced with a sour expression – but his own books often made their way to the New York Times best seller list and are written in simple elegant language that was appealing both to scholars and ordinary readers.

Chicago was, and I imagine still is, one of those schools where the title “Doctor” is only accorded to physicians, not PhDs. Calling a professor anything but Mister was the mark of an outsider. When I began taking classes from Mr. Creel, I was a typical undergraduate, filled with academic jargon and vocabulary I had picked up from my first dip into a grown-up intellectual community.

“What do you read, Mr. Waschke?” Mr. Creel said as I entered his office in the the Oriental Institute on the floor above exhibit halls filled with winged bulls topped with human heads. The meeting was to review a paper I had submitted for my senior thesis. Mr. Creel had a reputation for being hard on students, which was why I requested him as an advisor. I had no sense whatsoever back then.

I stammered out the names of a few books I had read recently for classes, the most impressive I could think of.

His look was withering. “You would do better to read Rex Stout. Read him, write like him.” He went on to say that the paper was acceptable, but poorly written. He pointed out some of the worst abuses and we discussed a few points, but he approved the paper for honors, which was all I wanted.

I left the Oriental Institute with a light heart. It was a winter quarter day where the sky matched the gray neo-gothic buildings on the Chicago Quad and a few flakes of snow fluttered down in the breeze off the Lake Michigan.

I headed north on University toward the apartment I shared on 53d and Dorchester. In those days O’Gara’s book store was on 53d and I stopped and found a handful of used paperbacks by Rex Stout. I kind of knew that Nero Wolfe was Rex Stout’s detective because my Dad subscribed to Saturday Evening Post while it was still a real magazine and Nero Wolfe stories appeared there. O’Gara approved of my choices– I think he suggested I pick another one off the shelf that was his favorite and I think I followed his recommendation.

When I got back to the apartment, I started to read. For the rest of the week, I barely kept up with classes, I was so drawn into the world of Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe.

I haven’t completely left. I don’t have all of the stories and novels, but I have most of them and I have read every one several times. And I still haven’t learned to write like Rex Stout.

Warring States

Filbert Catkins in January

The Indian civilization of the northwest reminds me of the Warring States (476 – 221 BCE) period in China. The Warring States was a dark interlude in the train of China’s history, which, unlike Western history, is a continuous sequence of dynasties. The government in China today is in a succession of dynasties that goes back at least to the Shang Dynasty whose traditional end was 1122 BCE. The Shangs left a literary legacy of inscriptions on ox scapulae and turtle shells that are an early form of the Chinese characters that are used today. The Shang was followed by the Western and Eastern Zhou dynasties. The Zhou left a few books and lengthy inscriptions on wonderful bronze castings. The Warring States were the last two hundred or so years of the Eastern Zhou. My mentor, Herrlee Creel, was one of the first historians to make use of Zhou bronze inscriptions, and I spent a few delightful years under his direction studying the Warring States, the chaotic period when the power of the Zhou kings was no longer adequate to establish order in the north China plain.

The Warring States is almost always described as a period of cruelty, treachery, and unprincipled ambition. The orderly civilization that Chinese historians saw in records of the Zhou dynasty disintegrated into a cluster of warring small states, each trying to get the best of the others. But the Warring States was the period when the great schools of Chinese philosophy and political theory became established. Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism, and military strategy all evolved rapidly while the states warred. Revenge, spite, and bloody battles are found on every page of the history of the period, along with intense intellectual ferment and a desire to return to the orderly days of the Zhou.

The Warring States period was ended by the leader of the warring states, Chin. Chin unified the states into as single state in 221 BCE, recalling the glory of Zhou. Unfortunately, the first ruler of the unified state was a cruel tyrant and could not hold power. He was replaced by the Han Dynasty, which was the first dynasty for which we have a detailed written history. From the Han on, recording of dynastic history was an important function of government. This began a long succession of great historic dynasties. Although the current regime in China may not be ready to acknowledge it, they are the current representative of a long line of mighty dynasties.

I believe that the modern world that we enjoy today owes as great a debt to Warring States China as it does to the golden age of the Greek philosophers. Surprisingly, Socrates ( 469 BCE–399 BCE) and Confucius (551 BCE – 479 BCE) were almost contemporaries.

But back to the Indians of the Pacific Northwest. Before the coming of the white men, the Bostons as they were called, the northwest Indians lived in idyllic splendor. Unlike the Indians of plains who had to scramble for survival, on the northwest coast, food was abundant. Swarms of salmon, halibut, and sea mammals were easily harvested and preserved. Clams, oysters, crabs, and other seafood were lying on the beach. There was no struggle to survive.

The Indians were able to skip agriculture and move on directly to a settled life of huge long houses and mighty totemic art. And they warred continuously, fighting over territory, fishing grounds, and slaves. They were a collection of warring states. It is easy to speculate on what they could have accomplished if they had a written language, or a more organized religion, or indigenous iron, but that kind of speculation only leads to a round of back patting among Europeans who reaped the supposed benefits.

Why Call This Site the Vine Maple Studio?

Long ago, before I struggled all the way out of my teens, Herrlee Creel, Edward Kracke and the other sinologists of Hyde Park on the south side of Chicago shanghaied me from a normal life into the cult of the traditional Chinese scholar, my neglected true calling. The scholar in my dream spends his life working for the the lao bai xing, the people of the land, as a virtuous imperial official, then retires; forced by his stubborn refusal to compromise his lofty Confucian ideals, he retreats to a rustic setting, to study and write disinterestedly on topics that strike his fancy. There are several Chinese phrases for the scholar’s writing room, but they are all conventionally translated “studio.” The old farmhouse that we inherited from my parents is my studio, and the vine maple groves are on every side.

The furnishing of a scholar’s studio evolved into an art form in China. Mundane objects, such as rat whisker pokers used to prod pet crickets to sing on command became elegant objects of art.Water containers, brush racks, and paper weights all became respected symbols of scholarly virtue. Scholars kept their pet crickets in gourds meticulously grown in molds to assure perfect lines and in the summer, they brought out intricately carved ivory open work cages. Scholars also liked rocks and by the T’ang dynasty (7th C.) precise technical terms had already appeared for describing the thinness, wrinkling, holes and other characteristics of the rocks piled on a scholar’s desk.

The “four treasures of the scholar’s studio”wenfang-si-bao (wenfang si bao), – writing brush, ink stick, ink stone, and paper – occupy the heart of the scholar’s studio. Chinese characters were written traditionally with brushes that resemble western artists paint brushes. Chinese ink sticks are pieces of hardened natural resin mixed with lamp black. Often, ink sticks are molded into artistic shapes with interesting inscriptions. The ink stick is ground on a fine abrasive ink stone with water to form ink. Most ink stones have a little well where the prepared ink accumulates. The more ink that is ground into the water, the darker the ink. Before a Chinese scholar writes, he must grind ink. The fourth treasure of the studio is paper. The Chinese invented paper and the traditional scholar had many varieties to choose from, but in a remote studio, he made do with what he could get, or even made his own.

The Vine Maple Studio is my scholar’s studio. I don’t keep crickets, but I have a few rocks on my desk, and I have a few Chinese writing brushes, an ink stone, and a stick of ink, but I have never practiced writing with a brush for more than a few minutes. I do occasionally write a few Chinese characters, but I use whatever I happen to have– pencil, ballpoint or fountain pen, or crayon, and I have a hard enough time starting writing without grinding ink. Still, I call it it my studio.