I read an article about Rex Stout’s sister a couple of weeks ago. Ruth Stout is allegedly a Tick Tock phenomenon these days on account of her “no-work method” of gardening, and the writer of the article was saying how ironic it was that all her books are currently in print while none of Rex Stout’s books are (because Rex was a phenomenon when they were alive, and Ruth wasn’t).
I think the article writer exaggerated for effect (or was just, you know, making things up), because you can buy a gazillion brand new Rex Stout books from bookshop.org, so it has to be “in print” (at least in some meanings of the word).
I bought an omnibus of the first two Nero Wolfe novels, and it was published in 2008, and does not seem to be a print on demand edition. But! It has not been re-typeset — it’s obviously been shot from either the negatives for a previous edition, or they’ve scanned an old paperback and used that to print this.
And that’s led to the two novels here having strikingly different typography. But it’s a pretty nice edition, anyway.
I’ve never read Rex Stout before, and I was surprised to find that the first book was published in 1934 — I assumed that Nero Wolfe was a 50s thing. So what’s it like? Typical sentence (totally at random): “Horstmann didn’t think any more of those plants than I do of my right eye.” Yes, indeed, the narrator character (Archie Goodwin) speaks in Thirties Wise Guy. It’s not that it’s unintelligible (at least not to me, but I’ve got a doctorate in 30s screwball comedy from the University Of Mycouch), but it certainly trips me up. The meaning of “it was easy to see that they hadn’t gone over it more than a thousand times” is clear, but it requires me to stop and think it over for a second.
What I’m saying is that sometimes when reading this I didn’t find the action to sometimes not being more obscure than a trip to a dark cellar — I’ve been reading a page and then I realise that I didn’t understand anything of what’s been happening.
It’s certainly amusing, but I can see why this wouldn’t go over with the kids these days no more than a zeppelin on fire. Or is that “would”? See, I confused myself.
I’m curious to see whether Stout kept up this style — the last one was written i 1975, and there’s one or two published per year, so I’m guessing not. Seems like a lot of work. I kinda want to sample a couple more of his later books, but while I liked these two novels just fine, I’m not chomping at the bit to read all of them.
Besides the wise-ass writing style, the pacing isn’t impressive — Stout’s main thing seems to be seemingly interminable interviews with suspects and witnesses. A single one can go on for 50 pages, and are dominated by Goodwin trying to make the bird sing, and it’s just not that interesting. And the plots are preposterous, but whatevs.
I found it interesting that Stout seemingly went to such lengths to convince the readers that the first novel wasn’t the first — there’s so many references to previous cases in the first book, and Stout doesn’t tell us anything about how the setup came to be. It’s like an anti-origin story, and I like that. (Because origin stories are dull.) Stout sets up the status quo from the first page, and then just runs with it. It’s smart.
Heh heh.
Oh! OK, spoilers ahead!
This is the most wilful misreading I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Literally! I mean, it’s true as it goes for that scene… but Wolfe arranges to have the guy described killed (yes, killed) for what he did. (And Goodwin was overjoyed by that.) Isn’t that a kind of mild “expression of disapproval”?
Anyway. Opinions differ.
Fer-de-Lance/The League of Frightened Men (1934/1935) by Rex Stout (buy new, buy used, 4.22 on Goodreads)