Cprivate'lives Spies, •Nr Good Guys
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Cf'he cprivate'Lives ofcprivate~yes, Spies, i-mefighters, ~ •nr good guys 78~~ .2~ by Otto Penzler PROPERTY O F ORT}-1 A f~ ~<t-. i ~SAS r~t:.Ci (..~>~.c,~ Li8f<ARY HARRISON, ARKANSAS Grosset & Dunlap A Filmways Compan-y Publishers • New York NOTE: The books in the bibliographies are first American editions, and filmographies are complete for English language sound films. Copyright© 1977 by Otto Penzler All rights reserved Published simultaneously in Canada Library of Congress catalog card number: 77-80370 ISBN: 0-448-14325-9 (hardcover) ISBN: 0-448-14326-7 (paperback) First printing 1977 Printed in the United States of America ~ro'WOlfe ~-~ herlock Holmes was not the changed facts, dates, names and other elements S first detective, but he was the of his detective's history to suit the exigencies of -.::-s t character to become more real than the the newest book. :"'.es h-and-blood personages of his time. The only StilL more is known about Wolfe's life than ·her detective in literature about whom that is about most other detectives, thanks to the e is Nero Wolfe. A few other detectives may narrative efforts of his assistant and chronicler, _e greater in that they have solved more Goodwin, who represents (particularly in the .::omplex cases, and a few may even be more early books) the dominant form of American :amous in distant regions of the world, and a detective fiction for many years, the "Hard Iew may sell more books, but none has achieved Boiled SchooL" just as Wolfe represents the .3.n emotional rapport with readers to equal that classic English form, the puzzle story solved by f Rex Stout's fat man. an eccentric armchair detective. In book after book, from 1934 to 1975, Stout Archie is not merely a stupid, worshipful .vove a pattern of intricate detail that brought acolyte, employed solely to feed the ego of the :he eccentric detective and his tough, wise detective and ask foolish questions for the -racking assistant, Archie Goodwin, to life. The benefit of dull readers. Archie is an excellent ld brownstone on West 35th Street exists, detective on his own, a tough, cynical man of al most as clearly as 221B Baker Street. action, able to do many things beyond the power Wolfe and Holmes follow paths that cross at of Wolfe, just as Wolfe's intellect towers over more than one point. Much like the greatest Archie's. In an unusual and healthy relationship, detective of them all, Wolfe has inspired a the talents of the two men complement each devout fandom that speculates on unrevealed other to produce the best detective agency in details of his past, combing books for evidence, New York-and the best dialogue in mystery fi lling in gaps with inferences, suffering fiction . .-T ustration at the hands of an author who Wolfe, of course, is still the mastermind, and ~/2? ./11?"* I Archie has no choice but to stumble blindly to remain reticent about his biography. along, as much out of his depth as Dr. Watson Sometimes the confusion is Archie's, although or Captain Hastings. The difference is that is impossible to deny that his memory is super: Archie doesn't care for it very much, and takes and he is less susceptible to errors of omission no pains to disguise the fact. or commission than Polton, Watson, Hastings He is not above calling Wolfe a "hippo" or a or Dupin's anonymous chronicler. " rhinoce ros," nor is he reluctant to quit when Little is revealed about Wolfe's ancestry, for he has had too much. He once tells Wolfe, "You example, but that is not Archie's oversight so are si mply too conceited, too eccentric, and too much as it is Wolfe's sense of privacy. There i: fa t to work for! " Not the reaction of the typical some evidence, and a widely held belief, that Boswell o f crime lite rature. Wolfe is the illegitimate son of a liaison Neither Wolfe nor Archie age during the between Holmes and !h e woman in his life, Ir e~= forty-one-year history of their affairs, nor do Adler. Knowledgeable students of detective the other recurring characters who populate fiction will have no difficulty in noting the their world. striking physical similarities of Wolfe and Stout was a fast writer, completing a novel in Holmes' older brother, Mycroft. four to si x weeks, and he did not revise. Like most other creators of memorable Although his prose suffered not at all, his hard detectives, Stout did not intend for his books - facts sometimes strayed, which may account for undergo intense scrutiny, or to serve as subje - the ambiguity of Wolfe's and Archie's for profound scholarship. His purpose in wri birthplaces, some fuzziness about Wolfe's early the books was more noble. They were concei ... yea rs, a nd some characters' undergoing a name to give pleasure. change from one book to another. "If I'm not having fun writing a book," he Other facts are deliberately, not inadvertently, said, "no one's going to have any fun readin obscured. They are not the lapses of Stout; they There can be no doubt that Rex Stout had are the flummery of Wolfe himself, who prefers enormous fun writing his books about Nero' Every day, with a degree of constancy that yellow shirt (to be always fresh, he wears h· does not fall short of incredibility, is a ritualistic shirts each day), he steps into his private agenda of small details, unwaveringly adhered to elevator to the rooftop greenhouse which with a single-mindedness that borders on fanati houses 10,000 orchid plants. Many of the p - cism, for the occupants of Nero Wolfe's New are valuable; two (the famous Black Orchids York City brownstone house. (The number, on are unique. For the next two hours, Wolfe Manhattan's West 35th Street, is either 506, attends to the orchids (he calls them his co - 618, 902, 909, 914, 918, 922, 924 or 938, bines) with the assistance of Theodore according to which of Archie Goodwin's Horstmann, the best orchid nurse alive bu t chronicles one believes, though it is quite likely whose personality is suggestive of sour mi none of these, the various numbers serving to At 11:00, Wolfe takes the elevator down - ~iw a rd I prevent an increase of traffic among idle the first floor and the combination office-si .=·a nder (I tourists.) room, where he greets Archie the same wa_ For Wolfe, the day begins between 8 and 8:15 every morning: "Good morning, Archie, di A.M., when his cook, Fritz Brenner, brings the sleep well?" He places a fresh spray of ore - Follo"' breakfast tray to his room. The tray probably the vase on his desk, then settles into "the -·scussi< contains peaches and cream, eggs (but never chair in the world he really approves of" a :. -ritical c fried), green tomato jam, and hot chocolate addresses himself to the requirements at ha :!I1 til fo1 (never coffee or tea at breakfast). such as mail, germination records, etc. - r two Wolfe may eat in his bed (a large affair with a Lunch is served at precisely 1:15, and it is : nclud, headboard of streaky enselmo, a black silk serious matter. Wolfe maintains that "a sto r-offee i canopy and a matching coverlet), or he may pad long empty thins the blood and disconcer ts - begir barefoot in " half an acre" of bright yellow brain." There is little danger either of his ost co pyj amas across the room to a table by the thinning or his brain's being disconcerted. oon ir window and eat there. While slowly eating, he Archie claims that one of Wolfe's major o =- · :ometi reads two newspapers. tions to atom bombs is that they might di a ding After dressing in a three-piece suit, tie, and people eating. -ext). P. 202 PRIVATE LIVES OF PRIVATE EYES .... - ...... _.. • "'[~'f~a~~ H- Edward Arnold (center) portra yed th e co rpulent private eye only in Meet Nero Wolfe. Lionel Sta nder {/eft} , usuall y cast as a villain, is Archie . Victor ]ory is a nervo us visitor. Following a comprehensive lunch, at which If he had a choice, not only the typical day discussion of business is permitted only under would pass that way-every day would, with critical conditions, Wolfe returns to the office nothing more urgent than conversation, reading, ntil four, when he returns to the plant rooms orchids, eating and drinking beer (he has cut for two more hours; then the day's business is down-to five quarts a day). oncluded from 6 to 7:15, when dinner is served. Responsibilities, however, intrude. Salaries for C offee is had in the office, where Wolfe is likely Archie, Fritz and Theodore, taxes and :o begin a conversation (on anything, from the maintenance on the old brownstone, the orchids, ;nost commonplace to the importance of the new expensive food and incidental costs require a ;noon in Babylonian astrology) or read a book minimum monthly income of $10,000 for Wolfe sometimes three books at the same time, to survive. That is why he is a private detective. ;eading a few pages of one, then a few of the Unlike Holmes, who accepts cases for the :1 ext). At midnight, he turns in. mental stimulation, or Philo Vance, who finds it Nero Wolfe 203 anyone else, knows it and is excessively ..., ith his we immodest about it.