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Rex Stout Does Not Belong in Russia: Exporting the Detective Novel

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Wesleyan University The Honors College Rex Stout Does Not Belong in Russia: Exporting the Detective Novel by Molly Jane Levine Zuckerman Class of 2016 A thesis submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors in the Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Program Middletown, Connecticut April, 2016 Foreword While browsing through a stack of Russian and American novels in translation on a table on Arbat Street in Moscow in 2013, I came across a Russian copy of one of my favorite books, And Be a Villain, by one of my favorite authors, Rex Stout. I only knew about this author because my father had lent me a copy of And Be a Villain when I was in middle school, and I was so entranced by the novel that I went out to Barnes & Noble to buy as many as they had in stock. I quickly ran out of Stout books to read, because at the time, his books were out of print in America. I managed to get hold of most copies by high school, courtesy of a family friend’s mother who had died and passed on her collection of Stout novels to our family. Due to the relative difficulty I had had in acquiring these books in America, I was surprised to find one lying on a book stand in Moscow, so I bought it for less than 30 cents (which was probably around the original price of its first printing in America). When I went back to Russia in 2015, I noticed that every bookstore had at least five Stout novels in translation on its shelves. At this time in America, I had been to several bookstores that had zero Stout books on their shelves. This phenomenon was curious, but I did not fully see the extent of Stout’s popularity in Russia until a Russian friend, taking a literature in translation course at our Russian university, had me help him with his homework and I recognized in the exercises a passage from one of Stout’s novels. I then asked around the university, and while most of my professors had heard of him, that was nothing unusual, as most people my parents’ age in America had also heard of Rex Stout. What piqued my interest beyond all else was when I discovered that Rex Stout was the second most printed author in i all of Russia in 2014—Dostoevsky ranked twelfth on this list. This is when I sat down and decided that I would dedicate my senior thesis to my favorite author and his two favorite detectives, Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin, and why the heck Russians liked them so much. ii Abstract and Methods In my research, I seek to answer the following questions: Based on the inherent contradictions between a Western detective novel and Communist Russian society, why were Rex Stout’s detective novels popular in the Soviet Union? What was the political appeal of the novels’ plots during different periods in Russian history, from the Soviet Union to the present? What influence has Stout’s Nero Wolfe series had on Soviet and Russian culture? I will begin answering these questions by detailing a brief history of the detective genre in Russia. I will then explain the role that Stout as the author played in the most important political themes of his books in the American detective corpus, including all pertinent references to Communism and Russia. The next section will introduce the role of his books in Russia, with the context for their content already discussed, and then will analyze some general theories on how Western detective novels in translation affected Russian culture and the literary scene. I will intersperse quotations from people that read Stout during the Soviet period and how they felt about him in reference to his most political novels. Many will be taken from the Russian online Nero Wolfe fan site, which I discovered during my initial research. On the site, I found many members willing to talk with me through their discussion forum about Stout’s influence on their lives. The makeup of the forum is such that anyone can become a member and start a new topic or add comments to a previously discussed topic. This forum consisted of all Russian speakers, but not all necessarily from Russia itself. My initial query on the forum about Stout in Russia led to an explanation that members came from Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Kazakhstan, iii Armenia, Estonia, and more, and that limiting my topic to Russia was too narrow in several users’ opinions. I took this into account in my research, but did not have the time or space to delve into Stout in every country mentioned, and made up for this by including some information on his Russian language publications in the wider Soviet bloc in more general terms in Chapter Four. In my thesis, I will be referencing the forum discussion generated by my initial questions posted to the discussion, “Nero Wolfe, Archie Goodwin, and all that is connected with them,” as well as draw on other comments made in various discussion threads pertinent to my writing.1 I will use the users’ comments to provide a contemporary reaction to Stout’s books from the perspectives of those who either read his books in Russian during the Soviet Union or after 1990, but who still read his books today in Russian translation. The thesis will continue with an explanation of how Stout’s books influenced specific Russian writers in terms of plots and characters, and then how his books manifested themselves in different formats, like the online fan clubs, the cookbook, and the television show. I will conclude by discussing the overall implications of the impression that Stout left on Russian culture through his almost forty years of popularity in Russia. 1. Comments will be attributed to the author with their username or full name as they iv Table of Contents Foreword........................................................................................................................i Abstract and Methods................................................................................................iii Table of Contents.........................................................................................................v Acknowledgements....................................................................................................vii Chapter One: Rex Stout and the Hard-boiled Detective Novel What is the Detective Genre..............................................................................1 Stout’s Beginnings in America...........................................................................6 The Detective Novel’s Beginnings in Russia.....................................................8 Stout’s Use of the Capitalist Model in his Nero Wolfe Series.........................12 The Creation of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin...........................................17 Chapter Two: Stout Critiques American Politics and Society Anti-German Attitudes and a Change of Habit in Writing..............................23 Stout and World Federalism............................................................................27 Stout and Racism..............................................................................................29 Chapter Three: Stout and His Characters Hate the “Commies” Battling Stereotypes and Promoting Democratic Liberties.............................32 Stout’s Anti-Communism Enters His Novels....................................................36 The Rosenberg Trial ........................................................................................55 Wolfe and Archie Enter Yugoslavia.................................................................57 Chapter Four: Wolfe and Stout Enter Soviet Russia How Stout the Anti-Communist was Published in the USSR...........................66 Stout Critiques Yugoslavia from America........................................................68 Soviet Critics take Offense at Stout’s Plots......................................................73 Chapter Five: Why Russians Love that Stout Hates the FBI The Doorbell Rang...........................................................................................88 Chapter Six: How Stout’s Popularity Continues after the Fall of Communism Stout’s Detective Novels in Post-Soviet Russia.............................................107 The Russian Begin Writing Their Own Detective Novels..............................115 Russian Intellectual Backlash Against the Rise of Mass Culture and the Detective Novel..............................................................................................120 Chapter Seven: Stout’s Novels Influence New Russian Detective Novelists Aleksandra Marinina Critiques Russian Politics and Society.......................128 A Confluence of Circumstances: The Non-Coincidental Similarities Between Anastasia Kamenskaia and Nero Wolfe..........................................133 v Darya Donstova and the Unnamed Others....................................................156 Chapter Eight: Stout’s Influence in Contemporary Russia Goes Beyond the Literary How Food and Translation Fit Together.......................................................162 Stout’s Fan Base Goes Online and Eastward................................................170 The Russian Nero Wolfe Television Series....................................................173 Conclusion................................................................................................................179 Appendix Statistical Records of Printed Materials in Russia in 2014...........................188 Stout Collections 2000s by Russian Publishing Houses................................190
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