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Rex Stout and Truth

“I think people actually love truth a lot more than a lot of people think they do. I think that people really want truth and love truth, and in a detective story, the truth is the hero of the story.”

Rex Stout discussing the popularity of mystery stories with Eleanor Roosevelt on radio, July 30, 1951. https://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2020/10/rex-stout-on-the-air/

Periodically, I take a deep dive into the world of the mystery writer, Rex Stout, to re-experience the Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin stories. My PhD advisor and great mentor Herrlee Creel once told me my thesis was coming along okay, but I’d do better in life if I wrote it in readable English. He told me to read Rex Stout and write like him. I’ve been trying ever since.

The list of authors, literary critics, academics, and statesmen who have praised the Nero Wolfe-Archie Goodwin stories ranges from John Le Care to Jaques Barzun, all the way to Henry Kissinger. Stout is read on many levels: sheer escapism, social commentary, and the study of human nature are among the reasons. I read the stories to discover the sources of Stout’s greatness; not only to learn the tricks of his trade, but also to examine his insight into the world he lived in.

Stout and Hammett, Chandler, and Macdonald

Stout is not cynically realistic like Hammett, nor is he lyrical like Raymond Chandler, and he is certainly not deeply psychological like Ross Macdonald. Hammett, Chandler, and Macdonald are firmly rooted in the west coast, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Stout is a New Yorker from the Midwest. The west coast bunch surveys humanity with clear cold eyes; on the surface, Stout is only a short step above an “Oh Gosh Golly, how sophisticated” recent arrival to the big city.

Just when I think I have pushed a pin through Stout’s chest and mounted him under glass, I notice that Stout’s Inspector Cramer has more depth in his admiration-tainted frustration with Wolfe and Goodwin’s antics than any of the Dickensian caricatures who populate Chandler’s LA, or that Archie’s wise cracks have wheels within wheels.

In Chandler, Hammett, and Macdonald’s California the police and city governments are often venal and corrupt. In Stout’s New York, Wolfe revels in luxury. He connives for big fees and repeatedly skirts ethical boundaries. Murderers whom Wolfe thinks may get off in court are forced into suicide. He lies for his own purposes. He snatches the choice bits off the serving platter ahead of his dinner guests. Honest and stolid Inspector Cramer knows all this, yet he, and we poor readers, admire Wolfe, a force for justice that transcends quotidian ethics.

This Dive

My latest dive has been into three books: Target Practice, a compilation of pre-Nero short stories; Fer-de-Lance, the first Nero Wolfe novel, published in 1934; and And Be a Villain, a post WWII novel published in 1948.

I had a purpose in mind: the Nero Wolfe novels are often said to have sprung to life fully mature in Fer-de-Lance. Was that true? I set out to compare Wolfe’s debut with Stout before and after Wolfe.

Target Practice

Target Practice is a collection of short stories published between 1914 and 1917, roughly twenty years prior to Fer-de-Lance. Frankly, I didn’t enjoy them. The words on the page were good: clear, concise, to the point. But the plots felt contrived, disconnected from the characters, and almost all the endings were more like general social comments than the inevitable consequences of the stories themselves.

Stout’s switch to writing mysteries in the mid-1930s conveniently solved his story ending issues. Mystery writers have an advantage: the ending is set. When hidden truth is revealed, the mystery is resolved and the story is over. Mysteries can still fail in many ways, but finding a resolution is seldom a challenge.

The two stories in Target that I liked best were mysteries with strong endings: “Justice Ends At Home” and “Heels of Fate.”

“Justice” has been described as proto-Archie-Wolfe. An office boy and a lawyer who work together in the story are said to be prototypes for Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe. I see the similarity, but the duo in “Justice” are bland compared to Archie and Nero. However, Stout showed much of his later flair for the tension through carefully paced revelation of the truth of deception and crime at the heart of the story.

In “Heels of Fate,” I saw more of the future Nero Wolfe. In this story, a livery stable owner has the Nero role; a country lawyer plays the Archie-narrator. The lawyer has none of Archie’s panache. The livery stable owner is decidedly not an arrogant epicure like Nero, but he sizes up a situation and schemes to deal out justice without regard to conventional ethics. “Heels” is a tight and absorbing story and, unlike most of the other stories in Target, the ending is both startling and satisfying.

Fer-de-Lance

When I began to read Fer-de-Lance, I was surprised. Archie and Nero are there, but not fully formed. Archie’s wit and style show only rare hints of what is to come. Nero is crafty, claims to be an artist and a genius, but he is not the great man he becomes in the ensuing books.

The iconic brownstone house and office doesn’t have the rich texture that appears later. There’s no red chair for Wolfe’s client or the huge custom chair for Wolfe’s bulk. The giant globe is still to come. The Wolfe posse is present, but barely. Fred Durkin, Saul Panzer, and Orrie Cather appear, but no Inspector Cramer. Purley Stebbins is a name only. There’s a newspaperman, but he’s not Lon Cohen. The posse has few of the enduring characteristics they take on later. Saul Panzer, New York’s greatest freelance operative, is not a freelance. He’s on retainer with Wolfe.

Most surprising was the writing itself. Raymond Chandler is known for his startling similes. For example, “a face like a building superintendent was watching the work and looking as if it was breaking his heart,” from the first paragraph of The Lady in the Lake. Much of the humor in Archie and Nero comes from Archie’s apparent non-sequiturs that reflect deep knowledge.

The arch non-sequiturs are largely absent from Stout’s pre-Nero era, but appear in Fer-de-Lance. An example: “the house was brand-new, wood with panels and a high steep slate roof, one of the styles I lumped all together and called Queen William.” That’s Archie talking.

Both Stout’s Archie and Chandler’s Marlowe twist our sensibilities. Marlowe flaunts his jaded vision while Archie mocks his own knowledge and taste.

Many of Wolfe’s characteristics appear in Fer-de-Lance. Throughout the series, Archie is the detective who digs out evidence, passing on information, evidence, witnesses, and suspects to Wolfe, who is the active hunter, directing the search, manipulating evidence, setting traps, and, in many cases, meting out judgement and punishment. Ultimately, a Nero Wolfe novel is a recount of Wolfe’s quest for truth from evidence that Archie gathers.

To my taste, Stout’s word craft, characterization, and scene construction in Fer-de-Lance took a step back from the quality of the short stories, although the overall construction is better and Stout’s sure hand with dramatic tension moves the story on. Stout said he changed his entire approach to writing with Fer-de-Lance. Maybe he had to relearn some of his style.

And Be a Villain

I won’t say much about And Be a Villain. During WWII Stout vigorously supported the war effort on radio and the Writer’s War Board and devoted less time to writing mysteries. And Be a Villain is a product of Stout’s post-war burst of stories. It is the first of the Arnold Zeck trilogy in which Archie and Wolfe confront and eventually defeat Zeck, a coldly calculating gangster with a vast organization.

Villain has all the features of a fully realized Wolfe novel. Wolfe’s posse appears in full regalia. The brownstone is complete. Archie wise cracks his way through a mess of unpleasant characters and awkward situations. Wolfe is high-handed. He ignores Zeck’s threats; when the truth comes out, Wolfe sidesteps Zeck’s wrath.

Stout’s statement to Eleanor Roosevelt quoted above is a great insight into the success of the Wolfe-Archie mysteries. Stout’s relatable characters help, the wit and humor that touches almost every page contribute, but Wolfe’s intent pursuit of truth is the principal attraction.

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Nero Wolfe Mystery. By Marv???

 I have more fiction to offer in addition to the beginning of my Chicago detective novel. A while back, I wrote a short story that uses Rex Stout’s cast of characters and style from a  Nero Wolfe mystery, although I could not help letting my personality slip in. And I admit, to impertinence in stealing from Grand Master Stout.  If I did my job well, the readers will enjoy the story, although I would be gobsmacked if anyone mistook it for the real thing. Read it here.

Readers with a sharp ear will hear more than a little Rex Stout Nero Wolfe mystery in my Fenton Herzman and Reggie Haskell.

The Nero Wolfe Mystery

A little background for those who are interested. Rex Stout started writing the Nero Wolfe mysteries in the 1930s and he continued until he died in 1975. He created a repertoire of characters that appear in most of the novels: Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, of course, but also NPYD Homicide Division Inspector Fergus Cramer, chef Fritz Brenner, freelance operative Saul Panzer, tomboy femme fatale and ballroom dancer Lily Rowan, and more. Part of Stout’s charm is the comfortable familiarity of the setting and characters.

An old brownstone in midtown Manhattan is a much a part of the stories as any of the characters. The building has a penthouse greenhouse where Wolfe retreats morning and afternoon on a schedule that is not to be changed or interrupted. The globe in Wolfe’s office is the largest anyone has ever seen. Wolfe knows the precise location of every volume on his floor to ceiling book shelves and a peephole is hidden behind a trick painting.

I like to think of Stout’s characters as deep caricatures—more realistic than burlesques, but magnified beyond life; often comic, but facing profoundly serious issues. The putative main character, Nero Wolfe, is a genius detective who prefers eating and raising orchids to detecting. Archie Goodwin’s real job is to goad Wolfe into action. Archie is the true center of the stories, a wise-cracking innocent whom some critics compare to Huckleberry Finn. He does Wolfe’s leg work, and more.

A&E produced a Nero Wolfe television series in 2001 and 2002 starring Timothy Hutton and Maury Chaykin. There have been several radio, movie, and television productions based on Nero Wolfe, but I like the A&E series best. It’s as faithful as television ever is to an original and the sets are lavish chiaroscura that remind me of a Merchant Ivory film. I recommend seeing it if you have a chance. I have a DVD set of the entire series.

There was a Canadian CBC radio series that is good listening, but it is hard to find. The voice characterizations are superb, and, if you have the right kind of imagination, the sets are more vivid than A & E. Try here.

Like almost every Nero Wolfe mystery, my story begins with a potential client at the door. It’s close to lunch time. Archie tries to send him away, but the client is insistent and, in some way, disturbing. Archie relents and parks him into the front room to wait, locking the door so he can’t wander. Wolfe, of course, won’t see him. While Wolfe is on the phone, Archie checks on the client and finds him dead. Wolfe is annoyed but, uncharacteristically, he allows Archie to call 911 after a ten minute head-start on lunch instead of insisting on delaying until the meal is over. Archie gets a hunch that Wolfe has something up his sleeve. He’s right.

I wrote my Nero Wolfe mystery over five years ago for a few self-indulgent laughs. I reread it the other day. I had forgotten the story entirely. I was surprised that I enjoyed reading it, so maybe a few folks will enjoy it too. Wolfe’s lunch is heavy but the story is light.

I called it  Lunchus Interuptus.

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Could You Love A New Chicago Detective Story?

In these late pandemic days— I hope these are late days— I have been preparing for another run at a Chicago detective story. My Chicago was a city of riots: the Martin Luther King riots and 1968 Democratic Convention. A corrupt, racist, and vibrant city run by a political machine.

I’ve been writing and rewriting the same book about Chicago for a decade, learning, and trying the patience of the kind people who have read my earlier attempts.

I’m on about the tenth draft, I quit counting years ago, and this version feels better than any of the previous. I’ve lost control. The book has begun to speak in its own voice. I understand that is a good sign, but it is unnerving to sit down at a keyboard and have the text dictate my thoughts.

My Chicago

“My Chicago was a city of riots: the Martin Luther King riots and 1968 Democratic Convention. A corrupt, racist, and vibrant city run by a political machine.”

I took the train to Chicago to go to college on scholarship in the fall of 1967. It was a little cheaper than flying.

When I lived in Chicago, I was unconsciously ambivalent. One part of me was delighted. Every day, something was new. I was shocked by fellow students who were better grounded in or quicker to grasp the mathematics and theory of chemistry and physics and astounded by the insight offered by deeper and more rigorous analysis. And I startled myself with outbursts in history and humanities classes that got me praise and admiration.

But I was also deeply troubled. On the South Side, I talked on the street with black kids who had, only a few years before, lived in the rural south where their lives were like my grandfather’s Waschke Road, lacking electricity and plumbing, and more primitive than the modestly mechanized dairy farm I grew up on. We shared calluses and scars from shovels, hoes, and manure forks. I was shocked, and, I regret to say, ashamed, to realize, that in some ways my life on Waschke Road was closer to the South Side streets than the affluent middle and upper class lives of my classmates at the university. I hid this. From my classmates and myself.

But the world of my black neighbors was also far different from mine. I had come to the city as a privileged participant in the meritocracy that would give me what I thought was a bright future. The neighborhood blacks looked at the university as a source of janitorial and housekeeping jobs, not learning and advancement. They had no voice in why they were on the South Side. They arrived because their parents had heard about work in the steel mills. They had no choice but to quickly learn to navigate the dangerous streets of Woodlawn and Englewood.

“…unlike my black neighbors, I looked ahead to the luxuries of a privileged life.”

I learned to ride the Illinois Central commuter train to the Loop, shop at Marshall Fields and Carson Pirie Scott, venture into Alfred Dunhill’s on upper Michigan for pipe tobacco and a look at pipes I could not possibly afford, but, unlike my black neighbors, I looked ahead to the luxuries of a privileged life.

Why I have written a Chicago detective story

“I set out to grill a fillet seasoned with salt and pepper. I ended up with a complex and high-spirited shrimp and andouille jambalaya infused with mouldering corruption.”

When I started, I sat down to write a story that I would like to read. That goal still holds, but retirement, three books on computing, a national scene filled with tumultuous bombast and unrest, and the inward wrench of pandemic lockdowns have all had their impact. I set out to grill a fillet seasoned with salt and pepper. I ended up with a complex and high-spirited shrimp and andouille jambalaya infused with mouldering corruption.

After 71 years of eating and breathing regularly, I ought to have myself down as tight as ring shank nails, but I have learned that good writing is about who you might become and only partial revelation of who you are and what you see in the people around you. Both revelation and aspiration are helpful. In each draft, the story became both closer to and more distant from life. Both directions, in some perverse way, are improvements. Eventually, the book became itself rather than me.

I always wanted to write stories, although I didn’t think about a Chicago detective story until I was older. The baby boom stretched our rural school that had neither space nor funds for pre-school or kindergarten. Before first grade, I followed along with my mother as she read stories to me and my little sister. A little picture dictionary was all I needed to teach myself reading before I ever saw a school room. When I entered first grade, no one told the teacher that I already read books at home and when I tried to tell her, I was shushed. She had other concerns.

“I got the idea that becoming a writer was a dream, but not a possibility because writers started as ordinary kids with friends, not outsiders wandering the side lines.”

I had far better books to read at home than the bizarre Dick and Jane readers at school. Suburban Dick, Jane, Mother, Father, Spot, Puff, and Baby Sally could have been watercolors beamed from outer space, except Martians or Venusians would have been more interesting.

Consequently, I don’t remember engaging much during my first few years at school. I didn’t need attention and lived in a distant realm; I don’t know what my teachers thought of me. Other kids avoided me, and I didn’t try to join them. I was not unhappy, and I got used to being a lone outsider. I got the idea that becoming a writer was a dream, but not a possibility because writers started as ordinary kids with friends, not outsiders wandering the side lines.

By the time I got to high school, I was thoroughly immersed in the sciences, like most boys in the 1960s.

In Chicago, I switched majors from mathematics to Chinese classical history, for reasons still unclear to me. Before the big switch, I took a class in what was then called Information Science and learned the rudiments of computer programming. Changing majors elevated me from an average student to graduating with honors and a fat fellowship to continue Chinese studies in Chicago.

While in graduate school, I began to read Rex Stout, because my PhD advisor told me I should read and emulate Stout to clarify of my writing style.

Writing this Chicago detective story

Fast forward, fifty years. I have read nearly everything Rex Stout ever wrote, some pieces many times. I deserted from a career as a professor of the Chinese classics and completed an apprenticeship in carpentry. Later, I enrolled in classes that lead to a degree in computer science and a 30 year career in software development, just when the digital revolution stood up and began to kick its legs.

An opportunity for early retirement popped up and I still wanted to write stories, more specifically, I wanted to write mysteries like Rex Stout’s. And I wanted to write a Chicago detective story. I was still an outsider, I had learned to cook so I could stay in the kitchen instead of mingling, learned to seize positions that gave me set roles that did not require much social interaction.

So I asked myself: why not try? I still doubted that an outsider with esoteric tastes and training could write a Chicago detective story that would appeal to much of anyone, but I was game, and when I start something, I fight to the bitter end, and that accounts for the last decade of struggle. Not that I’ve won, but I have accomplished something I am proud of.

Publishing

The Chicago detective story will have a new title, which I have not yet chosen, and will be offered for sale here on Vine Maple Farm. I’ve tried to find a traditional publisher, and I that might be possible, but becoming a publisher will be an interesting and instructive project for me and my twin grandsons, who voted for the first time last November. Christopher, the technical brother, is building the sales page. His more literary twin, Matt, is working on marketing. I plan to publish a free chapter or two here, and I intend to write more about why I think it is worth reading.