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Welcome goonlings to the Awful Book of the Month! In this thread, we choose one work of Resources: Project Gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org - A database of over 17000 books available online. If you can suggest books from here, that'd be the best. SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/ - A very helpful Cliffnotes-esque site, but much better, in my opinion. If you happen to come in late and need to catch-up, you can get great character/chapter/plot summaries here.  For recommendations on future material, suggestions on how to improve the club, or just a general rant, feel free to PM me. Past Books of the Month [for BOTM before 2016, refer to archives] 2016: January: Three Men in a Boat (To say nothing of the Dog!) by Jerome K. Jerome February:The March Up Country (The Anabasis) of Xenophon March: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco April: Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling May: Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima June:The Vegetarian by Han Kang July:Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees August: Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov September:Siddhartha by Herman Hesse October:Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse November:Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain December: It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis 2017: January: Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut February: The Plague by Albert Camus March: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin April: The Conference of the Birds (مقامات الطیور) by Farid ud-Din Attar May: I, Claudius by Robert Graves June: Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky July: Ficcionies by Jorge Luis Borges August: My Life and Hard Times by James Thurber September: The Peregrine by J.A. Baker October: Blackwater Vol. I: The Flood by Michael McDowell November: Aquarium by David Vann December: Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight [Author Unknown] 2018 January: Njal's Saga [Author Unknown] February: The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle March: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders April: Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio de Maria May: Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov June: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe July: Warlock by Oakley Hall August: All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriott September: The Magus by John Fowles October: I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara November: Arcadia by Tom Stoppard December: Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens 2019: January: Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky February: BEAR by Marian Engel March: V. by Thomas Pynchon Current:  The Doorbell Rang by Rex Stout Book available here: https://www.amazon.com/Doorbell-Rang-Nero-Wolfe/dp/0553237217 A&E television production here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UvZDRXVBUo About the book: quote:Nero Wolfe is a fictional character, a brilliant, oversized, eccentric armchair detective created in 1934 by American mystery writer Rex Stout. Wolfe was born in Montenegro and keeps his past murky. He lives in a luxurious brownstone on West 35th Street in New York City, and he is loath to leave his home for business or anything that would keep him from reading his books, tending his orchids, or eating the gourmet meals prepared by his chef, Fritz Brenner. Archie Goodwin, Wolfe's sharp-witted, dapper young confidential assistant with an eye for attractive women, narrates the cases and does the legwork for the detective genius. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero_Wolfe quote:Rachel Bruner, a wealthy Manhattan widow, has recently incurred the wrath of the FBI. After reading a book called The FBI Nobody Knows, a prominent critique of the many unethical practices of the Bureau, she has mailed 10,000 copies of it to prominent figures across the country. Having endured several incidents of harassment and prying, she offers to hire Wolfe to persuade the FBI to leave her alone. Although initially hesitant of making a powerful enemy, Wolfe is persuaded over Archie’s objections when Bruner offers a $50,000 retainer and then doubles it to $100,000, as well as a fee and any expenses he may incur. He is also sympathetic to both Bruner’s plight and the arguments made in the book, and decides not to withdraw in the face of what he sees as heavy-handed and bullying opposition tactics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doorbell_Rang quote:The Nero Wolfe stories take place contemporaneously with their writing and depict a changing landscape and society. The principal characters in the corpus do not age. Nero Wolfe's age is 56 according to Rex Stout, although it is not directly stated in the stories.[a][1]:383  quote:
quote:Time, "The Grand Race" (book review)[13] (November 5, 1965) — Stout once said all that he thinks is important to say. A good mystery writer, he wrote, merely tells the reader: "Let's run a race. Here goes my mind, I'm off, see if you can catch me." In Doorbell, even FBI fans will have to admire his agility. About the Author(s) quote:Rex Todhunter Stout (/staʊt/; December 1, 1886 – October 27, 1975) was an American writer noted for his detective fiction. His best-known characters are the detective Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin, who were featured in 33 novels and 39 novellas between 1934 and 1975. quote:In the fall of 1925, Roger Nash Baldwin appointed Rex Stout to the board of the American Civil Liberties Union's powerful National Council on Censorship; Stout served one term.[2]:196–197 Stout helped start the radical Marxist magazine The New Masses, which succeeded The Masses and The Liberator in 1926.[6] He had been told that the magazine was primarily committed to bringing arts and letters to the masses, but he realized after a few issues "that it was Communist and intended to stay Communist", and he ended his association with it.[2]:197–198 Themes This one we can tackle as lightly or as seriously as folks want. It's a fun escapist story but there's a lot of meat on these bones if we want to dig in. Up to y'all. A few possible points to start some conversations: - There's a lot to talk about with how Stout manipulates genre conventions. Most genre mysteries fall into one of two categories; either "cozy" mysteries featuring a genius superman detective (Sherlock Holmes, Batman) or tough noir featuring hard-bitten private eyes (Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe). This is a little of both but not quite either. Wolfe is a genius but he's also an immense pompous misogynist goon who never leaves his house; Archie is almost the prototypical wise-cracking PI gumshoe but he's not "hard-bitten" at all, rather the reverse, eternally upbeat and optimistic. Similarly, compare Archie and Wolfe with Holmes and Watson; which one is the great detective here, which the bumbling assistant? - setting; time and place. Every Nero Wolfe novel was set contemporaneously in New York in the year written. Since Stout wrote, on average, a book a year for about forty five years, that means the Wolfe novels, if read in chronological order, give a really interesting picture of mid-century America from the 30's to the 70's. To the modern reader, they seem like historical fiction; each novel has a lot to say about the year it was written in. -- politics; the political role of popular fiction. Pacing Read as thou wilt is the whole of the law. Please post after you read! Please bookmark the thread to encourage discussion. As this is a mystery, please use spoiler tags for plot points! References and Further Reading An excerpt from The FBI Nobody Knows, essentially the first major publication to significantly criticize the FBI: quote:He explained that he still had a great fondness for the organization itself. He admired and respected the many fine fellow agents whom he had met during his tour of service. They were, he felt, an exceptional group of high-class men, and he felt proud of the fact that he had belonged, that he had been one of them. He retained, too, a devotion to the ideal of the FBI, a faith in the possible reality of the image that had lured him into its service. Compounded of such strands was his enduring love. https://www.questia.com/read/98550588/the-fbi-nobody-knows (seems to be full text online) The Burglary, The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI (describing the citizen activist burglary that revealed the COINTELPRO program -- note that this would not be known until several years after The Doorbell Rang was written and set). The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler The Wolfe Pack, the Official Nero Wolfe Literary Society Archive materials regarding The Doorbell Rang The [heavily redacted] actual FBI file on The Doorbell Rang they didn't like it Contemporaneous review of The Doorbell Rang, with lengthy comments by Rex Stout on his writing process and on the reaction the book had garnered Final Note: Thanks, and I hope everyone enjoys the book! Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Apr 4, 2019 |
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Apr 1, 2019 04:39
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[reserved] If you like mysteries like this, please check out our excellent ongoing thread for mystery novels, which got way too close to dropping into the archives last month and deserves more traffic than it gets Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Apr 1, 2019 |
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Apr 1, 2019 04:40
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Oh, I'm looking forward to this one. Was toying with the idea of revisiting some Wolfes after I read your posts in the detective fiction thread and this is one of the best.
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Apr 1, 2019 16:37
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anilEhilated posted:Oh, I'm looking forward to this one. Was toying with the idea of revisiting some Wolfes after I read your posts in the detective fiction thread and this is one of the best. One of? I plan on re-reading this one as well.
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Apr 1, 2019 16:43
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I love mystery novels, but haven't ever read a Nero Wolfe book, so this is as good an excuse as any. Looking forward to this one.
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Apr 1, 2019 16:53
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I always loved the Nero Wolfe novels.* To this day, though, I'm not always quite sure** which ones I've read and which I haven't. I was sad to see the Timothy Hutton / Maury Chaykin series die after just 1 series. *I discovered them over a decade after I read Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I., fantasy series. The first several books, starting with the second, show the influence as clearly as possible. So if you ever think "could I read Nero Wolfe, but in a fantasy version?", check out Bitter Gold Hearts and Cold Copper Tears. **I mean, yeah, I've definitely read the first 10-15 and then a bunch of others, including this one, but I think there are at least another dozen I've never read.
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Apr 1, 2019 17:56
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I'll join in. I read a couple of the books years ago, and remember thinking how, despite Nero Wolfe being the title character and attention-grabber, so much of it is about Archie being low-key excellent.
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Apr 1, 2019 20:01
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ulmont posted:I was sad to see the Timothy Hutton / Maury Chaykin series die after just 1 series. Yeah, I just got the DVDs for the complete series (both seasons) off of Ebay. Apparently it was A&E's highest rated show at the time it was cancelled, but they had to make room for more Dog the Bounty Hunter bullshit. You can find a number of them on Youtube but most of them have been weirdly tweaked and edited to confound the copyright algorithms. edit: quote:Maury Chaykin reflected on the cancellation of Nero Wolfe in a 2008 interview. "I'm a bit jaded and cynical about which shows succeed on television. I worked on a fantastic show once called Nero Wolfe, but at the time A&E was transforming from the premier intellectual cable network in America to one that airs Dog the Bounty Hunter on repeat, so it was never promoted and eventually went off the air." Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Apr 2, 2019 |
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Apr 1, 2019 20:15
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Yeah, the A&E adaptation isn't perfect, but it's good and it's lovely. It was seeing it on TV originally that got me into the books.
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Apr 1, 2019 20:48
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Rex Stout is a better detective name than Nero Wolfe imho
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Apr 2, 2019 13:27
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Rex Stout is a better detective name than Nero Wolfe imho It's always struck me as amusing that Nero Wolfe's description is basically Rex Stout, i.e. King Fat.
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Apr 2, 2019 14:36
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Rex Stout is a better detective name than Nero Wolfe imho I had always assumed it was a pen name until I started doing the background research for the BotM post, but it's his real name. I guess when you're born awesome you don't need to change Anyway speaking of names quote:"A number of the paintings of René Magritte (1898–1967), the internationally famous Belgian painter, are named after titles of books by Rex Stout," wrote Harry Torczyner, Magritte's attorney and friend.[2]:578[g][h] "He read Hegel, Heidegger and Sartre, as well as Dashiell Hammett, Rex Stout and Georges Simenon," the Times Higher Education Supplement wrote of Magritte. "Some of his best titles were 'found' in this way."[17] Magritte's 1942 painting Les compagnons de la peur ("The Companions of Fear") bears the title given to The League of Frightened Men (1935) when it was published in France by Gallimard (1939). It is one of Magritte's series of "leaf-bird" paintings, created during the Nazi occupation of Brussels. It depicts a stormy, mountainous landscape in which a cluster of plants has metamorphosed into a group of vigilant owls.[18] Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Apr 2, 2019 |
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Apr 2, 2019 14:37
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i repeat here my analysis of what i feel is a central question:Tree Goat posted:nero wolfe is initially described in Rex Stout's character notes as weighing 272 pounds (123 kg), but his weight fluctuates somewhat throughout the course of the series (usually described as in a fraction of a ton, e.g. "his eighth of a ton bulk."
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Apr 2, 2019 17:00
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Tree Goat posted:i repeat here my analysis of what i feel is a central question: If we similarly adjust the $100,000 retainer fee in The Doorbell Rang for inflation, then Wolfe is being offered approximately eight hundred thousand dollars in today's currency (based on inflation from 1965 to present). Therefore, on a dollars-per-pound basis, Wolfe has increased in value over time.
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Apr 2, 2019 17:26
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nero wolfe is both a dollar and pound bargain
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Apr 3, 2019 03:23
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I just got to the part with the crates and I am so excited for what's going to happen here. I have only the slightest idea what's going on, but it's already really clever.
Somebody fucked around with this message at 11:58 on Apr 3, 2019 |
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Apr 3, 2019 03:32
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You know, I do have the Nero Wolfe Cookbook, if anyone is particularly struck by a meal description here and wants a recipe, I'm more than happy to oblige.
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Apr 4, 2019 18:49
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I have that also, and I really wanted to make the strawberry omelette but literally everybody I know refused to eat it.
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Apr 4, 2019 23:37
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Rand Brittain posted:I have that also, and I really wanted to make the strawberry omelette but literally everybody I know refused to eat it.  I want to try the Saucisse Minuit at some point but the prospect of roasting a whole goose and a whole pheasant only to turn them into sausages just seems daunting. I don't even know where I would buy a pheasant to roast. I don't have a copy of the cookbook yet. It seemed like it might be a lot like the recipes in Julia Child -- recipes that assume you either have a whole weekend to cook them OR have kitchen staff to cook them for you. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Apr 5, 2019 |
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Apr 4, 2019 23:59
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I like the "turn up a palm" gesture that Stout writes a lot. Like:quote:I turned a palm up. “Look, Mrs. Bruner. Mr. Wolfe couldn’t possibly tackle it without something in writing.
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Apr 6, 2019 03:43
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Sax Solo posted:I like the "turn up a palm" gesture that Stout writes a lot. Like: Yeah, Stout writes Archie in a really dry, charming way that communicates a lot of character in every word. I can see why Wodehouse was such a fan.
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Apr 6, 2019 15:23
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Ben Nevis posted:Yeah, the A&E adaptation isn't perfect, but it's good and it's lovely. It was seeing it on TV originally that got me into the books. If you view it as Wolfe adapted for a theater troupe, and then somebody filmed it, it really clicks.
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Apr 7, 2019 00:43
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One thing that may be difficult for a modern audience to wrap its head around is how controversial a book like this was at the time, when Hoover was still extremely popular. Stuff like COINTELPRO or the harassment of MLK didn't come out till much later. This book was published in 1965. For context, quote:In May of 1964, J. Edgar Hoover had led the FBI for four decades. A bachelor with no family obligations and little in the way of outside hobbies or interests, he had no inclination to step down. Except that federal employment regulations required him to leave the post when he turned 70 on his next birthday. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/05/10/j_edgar_hoovers_bipolar_legacy_133848.html https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/jan/01/j-edgar-hoover-secret-fbi Just ten years before, in 1954, quote:78% told Gallup they had a favorable opinion of the director, with only 2% having an unfavorable opinion. quote:Americans were positive about Hoover right to the end, with about three-quarters in 1971 rating the job he had done as excellent (41%) or good (33%), another 10% calling it fair, and just 7% poor or bad. https://news.gallup.com/vault/210107/gallup-vault-edgar-hoover-fbi-american-communists.aspx Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 12:54 on Apr 7, 2019 |
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Apr 7, 2019 03:22
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This is one of the Wolfes I hadn't read yet (although I'd seen the Chaykin/Hutton adaptation). What I find most interesting about it to start is how Stout doesn't bother making the case for the FBI abusing their powers. Bruner has read a book, and it's called The FBI Nobody Knows, and here we go. He just assumes you either started with his view of the organization, or read the book. As always, Wolfe is a pleasure to listen to. "I am neither a thaumaturge nor a dunce." "'Afraid?' I can dodge folly without backing into fear." It's also a lot of fun to see Archie reach for any opportunity to annoy Wolfe, within certain rules they've both silently laid out for one another.
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Apr 7, 2019 17:43
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Xotl posted:What I find most interesting about it to start is how Stout doesn't bother making the case for the FBI abusing their powers. Bruner has read a book, and it's called The FBI Nobody Knows, and here we go. He just assumes you either started with his view of the organization, or read the book. This is what makes Stout a really enjoyable accidental historian and sets him apart from being "just a whodunit writer". anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Apr 8, 2019 |
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Apr 8, 2019 19:56
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I finished the book this weekend and it was fantastic and surprisingly political. I'm so used to cozy mysteries, where they usually don't even mention that the government exists if they can help it. Excellent writing, too. It's definitely gotten me excited to check out other Nero Wolfe books.
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Apr 8, 2019 20:04
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MockingQuantum posted:I finished the book this weekend and it was fantastic and surprisingly political. I'm so used to cozy mysteries, where they usually don't even mention that the government exists if they can help it. Excellent writing, too. It's definitely gotten me excited to check out other Nero Wolfe books. This probably is peak political for the Wolfe books. At the low end, especially the early ones in the 1930's, they're pretty much straight cozies. Then they get gradually more and more political through the 1940's (wartime, post-war) and 1950's (red scare, etc.) and then by the time we hit the 1960's and 1970's they're more like this one, expressly political. The one written in 1964 is basically "Murder in the SNCC" and I almost picked it instead but it has some cringe-inducing "1960's white author trying really hard not to be racist!" stuff in it, whereas this one felt more broadly enjoyable. anilEhilated posted:That's the thing about Wolfe's Manhattan: Stout set the stories in the year they came out in and that book was controversial and - I imagine - subject to heavy discussion; Stout did not need to explain the controversy because he and a lot of his readers have lived through it. And not just in the obvious authorial-intent way. Like, it can be really interesting just to read the depiction of the era -- twenty dollars being a huge bribe for a working person in 1934's Fer-de-lance, for example, or the short story set during the 1946 meat shortage, or the way Wolfe constantly carps about the tax rate as it changes, etc.
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Apr 8, 2019 20:16
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:This probably is peak political for the Wolfe books. At the low end, especially the early ones in the 1930's, they're pretty much straight cozies. Then they get gradually more and more political through the 1940's (wartime, post-war) and 1950's (red scare, etc.) and then by the time we hit the 1960's and 1970's they're more like this one, expressly political. It's actually pretty surprising it even takes that long, by all accounts wasn't Stout very vocally politically-minded for his entire career? Hieronymous Alloy posted:And not just in the obvious authorial-intent way. Like, it can be really interesting just to read the depiction of the era -- twenty dollars being a huge bribe for a working person in 1934's Fer-de-lance, for example, or the short story set during the 1946 meat shortage, or the way Wolfe constantly carps about the tax rate as it changes, etc. Related to this, I appreciate the book's little nods to the theoretical realities of private detecting that a lot of mysteries glaze over. I don't remember the specifics but the bit where Archie talks about Wolfe having to take any job that came along because it was the new year, because if it had been the end of the last year he would have lost so much on taxes that he'd only be getting half the pay anyway. As a former full-time freelancer that bit spoke to my soul in a way it really shouldn't have.
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Apr 8, 2019 20:41
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I was surprised by how much of the moment to moment tension was just Archie's schedule. Gotta do this in the morning; gotta do that before lunch; gotta phone so and so from here. It makes the minor inconveniences stand out and puts a limit on how much seems possible. Archie seems to be good at just about every element of his job but he can't *always* take the time to ditch a tail.
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Apr 9, 2019 02:59
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I'm glad I picked this up because it's surprisingly engaging. I might have to pick up some more afterwards. Is it recommended to go to the beginning, or continue from this point?
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Apr 9, 2019 14:15
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OscarDiggs posted:I'm glad I picked this up because it's surprisingly engaging. I might have to pick up some more afterwards. Is it recommended to go to the beginning, or continue from this point? This question came up in the general mystery fiction thread yesterday, this was my thought on it: Hieronymous Alloy posted:Depends on how much you read I think. If you're willing to sit down and read forty books in a row then taking a month and reading all of them in order is worthwhile. If you're a more a book a week type person then I'd just hit some highlights; Prisoner's Base, Golden Spiders, maybe the Trouble in Triplicate and Three Witnesses and Death Times Three short story collections. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3876922&pagenumber=2#post494066028 Sax Solo posted:I was surprised by how much of the moment to moment tension was just Archie's schedule. Gotta do this in the morning; gotta do that before lunch; gotta phone so and so from here. It makes the minor inconveniences stand out and puts a limit on how much seems possible. Archie seems to be good at just about every element of his job but he can't *always* take the time to ditch a tail. This is a neat point, yeah. Cellphones killed a lot of plots! It also speaks to how well Stout is writing the setting. Archie doesn't just "drive over to the [plot address]; he knows it takes thirty minutes to drive from the brownstone to [plot address] at this time of day if he takes one set of streets and twenty if it takes a different one, etc. He knows the routes and the traffic patterns. There are a few passages in Nabokov where he writes about how good writers spend time on the details and bad writers avoid or duck them. Stout spends time on the details, because the granularity matters. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 14:30 on Apr 9, 2019 |
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Apr 9, 2019 14:23
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one thing that i like to keep in mind when i read stout or chesterton or christie etc etc are borges' rules for detective stories, from "the labyrinth of the detective story and chesterton" (here's the only copy of the full essay i could find in front of a pay wall: https://corehi.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/los-laberintos-policiales-y-chesterton.pdf ) quote:A.) A discretional limit of six characters. The reckless infraction of this law is responsible for the confusion and tedium of all detective movies. In every one we are presented with fifteen strangers, and it is finally revealed that the evil one is not Alpha, who was looking through the keyhole, nor Beta, who hid the money, nor the disturbing Gamma, who would sob in the corners of the hallway, but rather that surly young Upsilon, whom we'd been confusing with Phi, who bears such a striking resemblance to Tau, the substitute elevator operator. The astonishment this fact tends to produce is somewhat moderate. in my memory at least, stout often violates these maxims, or at least bends them. B is the most often violated as far as i can recall: saul panzer will have uncovered some evidence before the big meeting that eliminates a subject that would otherwise be in the running, and we get access to this detail only as the other characters do. or wolfe will have more or less figured things out but will keep archie (and so us) in the dark until a more opportune moment. i think that's okay, however. noir stories rely on this sort of informational asymmetry in a way that parlor mysteries don't (a noir protagonist is very often a sap, or plays one until he puts all the pieces together), and it's interesting to see the friction in the stories when the genre conventions butt heads.
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Apr 13, 2019 07:01
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Tree Goat posted:
Yeah, one of the really interesting things for me about the Wolfe books is that they're not always he formal puzzles of more standard detective fiction -- and that's ok. In this one particularly, of course there's a murder in it, but the murder and the murder-puzzle are almost peripheral, the olive in the martini -- a necessary garnish, but not really why we're here. We're here for Archie turning up a palm, and Wolfe being pompous then doing something brilliant to justify his pomposity, and Fritz, and the brownstone, and no discussion of business at dinner, and orchids from nine to eleven and from four to six.
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Apr 13, 2019 14:09
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Yeah, a Wolfe story is rarely a whodunnit, but more of a "how will Wolfe trap the one who dunnit," with a garnishment of "how will Archie get Wolfe off his keister and working".
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Apr 13, 2019 14:16
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This book in particular makes the whodunit almost a subplot. But it is really important. The irony of Archie breaking into Sarah Dacos' apartment and manipulating evidence raises all kinds of insights. The relative importance of private vs. public abuses, situational ethics that make an action good in one circumstance and wrong in another, and the slippery slope. This is a very good example of Rex Stout showing, not telling, especially with Wolfe's complete non-reaction to Archie's discovery other than to make sure it doesn't endanger Wolfe's plan. It's also striking how mercenary they are about the whole thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGWRAa5uTUQ
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Apr 13, 2019 15:22
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Tree Goat posted:one thing that i like to keep in mind when i read stout or chesterton or christie etc etc are borges' rules for detective stories, from "the labyrinth of the detective story and chesterton" That is definitely my least favourite element of the Wolfe stories. Also, was there ever a story in which Archie explains why Wolfe uses him instead of Panzer as the everyday help? Because everyone in the stories seems to agree that Saul is a wunderkind and pretty much unbeatable at anything he's asked to do. Then again, he isn't asked to do everything, and if I had to guess I'd think that Stout would have explained it as Archie having the ability to deal with women and to prod Wolfe when needed in a way that even Wolfe recognizes is necessary from time to time. But I do wonder, having recently embarked on a Wolfe binge and seeing Saul save the day again and again. EDIT: well, that answers the social part of the question. The moment I posted this I then read three lines further into "Ballet for One" and Archie says that Panzer was "the best field man in the world for everything that could be done without a dinner jacket". Xotl fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Apr 14, 2019 |
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Apr 14, 2019 05:43
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Xotl posted:That is definitely my least favourite element of the Wolfe stories. Archie gives a few explanations for why Saul doesn't have his job. Part of it is that Saul prefers to work freelance and independently (that's explicitly stated in more than one story). Part of it also appears to be that Archie's "job" isn't just Detectivery; it's also things like needling Wolfe into taking jobs, charming people into coming back to Wolfe's apartment, etc. My overall interpretation is that Saul is best at Detective Stuff but Archie is best at Wolfe Management. That "prefers to work freelance" reads to me as "doesn't want to deal with Wolfe's bullshit."
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Apr 14, 2019 05:49
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Saul would do everything Wolfe asked for excellently, but Archie will disobey Wolfe when Wolfe is being dumb, and that's more important. Also Wolfe won't live with someone smarter than him.
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Apr 14, 2019 18:15
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Ya'll are overthinking it. Saul is there to rope in characters and facts in the last five pages that weren't in the book before. Whenever Saul shows up it means Rex thought to himself, "Goddamnit, I wrote myself into a corner again. How the hell am I going to weasel out of this?" Rex Stout is one of my favorite mystery authors, but even he isn't exempt from their sins.
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Apr 15, 2019 03:33
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i'd say it's less that saul is there just to be a clue ex machina, but as a place for stout to do clue-related sleights of hand outside of archie's pov. i'm rereading "the mother hunt," for instance, and there saul is brought in very early on (as an abortive tail for a someone who gets away before he arrives) and as a fred/orrie wrangler as part of a laborious process of crossing out suspects. he gets work done (and is described as "the second best detective in the city") but it's mostly in service of reducing the number of suspects and adding constraints so when wolfe gets his epiphany there's some grounding there.
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Apr 15, 2019 03:55
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