 
Choose another writer in this calendar:
by name: by birthday from the calendar.
TimeSearch |
Rex Stout (1886-1975) | |
|
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. Stout started his literary career for the pulps, 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 of Goodwin in Murder by the Book, 1951) Rex Stout war born in Noblesville, Indiana, as the son of John Wallace Stout and Lucetta Elizabeth Todhunter. They both were Quakers. Stout was educated at Topeka High School, Kansas, and at University of Kansas, Lawrence. From 1906 to 1908 he served in the United States Navy as a Yeoman on President Theodore Roosevelt's yacht. From 1916 to 1927 he worked in odd jobs - as an office boy, store clerk, bookkeeper, and hotel manager. His most astonishing achievement was the invention of banking system for school children. The system was installed in 400 cities throughout the USA. In 1916 Stout married Fay Kennedy of Topeka, Kansas. They separated in 1933 and Stout married in the same year Pola Hoffman of Vienna. Stout's first stories appeared in the 1910s among others in All-Story Magazine. He went to sell articles and stories to a variety of magazines. In 1927 he became a full-time writer. Stout lost his money had made as a businessman in 1929. After publishing four moderately successful 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 mentally and physically great hero is Nero Wolfe, the 286-pound detective. 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 - "orange juice, eggs au beurre noir, two slices of boiled Georgia ham, hashed brown potatoes, hot blueberry muffins, and a pot of steaming cocoa." (from Over My Dead Body, 1940) 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. 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. Wolfe answers "I don't know why you persists in trying to badger me into frantic sorties." The book was adapted into screen in 1937, directed by Alfred E. Green. Meet nero Wolfe (1936) had been a surprise success, starring Edward Arnold. In the later attempt 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," wrote a sour critic in Variety. '"Wolfe grunted. "Nothing is as pitiable as a man afraid of a woman."' (from Champagne for One, 1959) 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. 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. During the WW II Stout cut back on his detective writing, joined the Fight for Freedom organization, and wrote propaganda. He hosted three weekly radio shows, and coordinated volunteer services of American writers to help the war effort. 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. "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." (from The Golden Spiders, 1953) Stout was active in liberal causes, and ignored a subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee at the height of the McCarthy era. In later years he alienated many liberal friends by his hawkish stance on Vietnam - his contempt for communism was denounced frequently in his works. Stout died on October 27, 1975. - The writer Robert Goldsborough has continued Nero Wolfe' adventures from the late 1980s. 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); Crime & Mystery: the 100 Best Books by H.R.F. Keating (1987); At Wolfe's Door by J. Kenneth Van Dover (1991) - Nero Wolfe's address in Manhattan: West 35th Street. - Sherlock Holmes's address in London: 221 Baker Street - See also: Jacques Futrelle, American mystery writer who died on the Titanic 15 April 1912 - Films: Meet Nero Wolfe (1936), dir. by Herbert Biberman, starring Edward Arnold; The League of Frightened Men (1937), dir. by Alfred E. Green, starring Walter Connolly; The Doorbell Rang (1972); dir. by Frank Gilroy, starring Thayer David - For further information: Nerowolfe.org - Selected works:
Other works:
© 2002 |
