Showing posts with label Rex Stout. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rex Stout. Show all posts

29 July 2015

Be Yourself, Or Someone Just Like You





First, about that title.  Stephen Stimson lives in Bellingham, as do I.  (In fact, he coined our unofficial municipal slogan: the City of Subdued Excitement.)  Mr Stimson used to run a store called Lone Wolf Antiques, and one day I strolled by and saw the entire front window of the shop covered by a piece of brown paper bearing the remarkable words of today's title.  And that's all the explanation you are going to get from me.
Now for the main topic. Lawrence Block was recently interviewed by Tripwire Magazine and I recommend you go to his site and read the whole thing.     It's all great, but there was one piece that caught my attention in particular.

The interviewers brought up the Leo Haig novels, Block's pastiche of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books.  Then they asked if he had read Robert Goldsborough's novels, authorized continuations of the Nero Wolfe series.  Here is his reply:

I read two early on and didn’t care for them. I gather he’s improved some, and makes a good job of writing like Stout. But, you see, there’s the thing in a nutshell; Stout didn’t try to write like Stout.

As I recall I stomped my feet and shouted: "Exactly!"

I'm not here to pick on Mr. Goldsborough, or Ace Atkins,  Ann Hillerman,  Felix Francis, or anyone else who has inherited a franchise. What I am reaching for is this: I get uncomfortable when a young writer is advised to try copying someone else's style.  I can understand doing it as an exercise, or for a pastiche, but keep it up too long and it can only stunt your growth.  Rex Stout was trying to find his own voice, not copy someone else's.

I recently read a book by Elmore Leonard called Charlie Martz and Other Stories.  They are previously unpublished, and you can understand why Leonard chose to keep them that way.  Most of them are interesting primarily as a peek into the laboratory, a chance to watch Leonard looking for his voice.  (Compare them to the tales in When The Women Came Out To Dance, stories he wrote when he was at the top of his form.)  You can see a glimpse here and a touch there of Leonard, but he wasn't quite there yet.

I would be happy to hear what you have to say about this subject but before we get to the comments, there is one more detail.  When I told my wife about Block's remarks she smiled and said "Zusya."

Zusya was a Hasidic rabbi in the nineteenth century.  He was apparently a "wise fool," like Nasrudin, Diogenes, or Saint Francis, a spiritual leader or philosopher who (deliberately?) behaved eccentrically in order to get his lessons across.  What follows is the most famous story about him. There are many versions, but this is the one I heard first.

One day Zusya's followers came into his study and found him hiding under the desk, weeping and shaking with fear.  "I have just learned the question I will be asked by the angel of death when I die.  And I am terribly frightened because I cannot answer it!"

"Rabbi," said the followers, "you are good man, and a wise man.  What could death ask you that is so terrifying?"

"I thought he might ask: 'Zusya, why were you not Moses, to lead your people to the promised land?' I could have answered that!  Or he could ask 'Zusya, why were you not David, to fight your people?'  I could answer that.  But, no!  What he is will ask is: 'Zusya,  why were you not Zusya?'"
    

09 April 2015

The True History of Nero Wolfe


Because I read everything, to the great detriment of doing almost anything else, occasionally I come across such obvious patterns, such amazing coincidences, that I have to share them with someone. Thus, I am happy to relate that I have found the true origins of Nero Wolfe. The only question is, whether it's genetics or reincarnation. I'll let you decide.
For those of you who have never met the one and only Nero Wolfe, he is the misogynistic, gourmet one-seventh of a ton detective who lives in a brownstone in New York City and only leaves it under extreme emergency conditions. He solves mysteries usually without leaving his chair, leaving the footwork to Archie Goodwin, his amanuensis, investigator, and general thorn in Wolfe's side. His brownstone is his haven, his castle, his fortress, in which he follows a rigid routine, cares for his orchids and his stomach, and is cared for by Archie and Fritz, his cook. (Theodore helps with the orchids, but let's face facts: nobody – not even Nero Wolfe – likes him.)



Some theories (and I get these straight from Wikipedia) are that Wolfe (born, according to Rex Stout and Archie Goodwin, in Montenegro) was the offspring of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler, who had an affair in Montenegro (why they chose that country to frolic in is undetermined). Others have said that if Wolfe was of Holmesian descent, it was via Mycroft, who was vast and logical, like him. Others have posited the thief Arsene Lupin as Wolfe's father. However, this is all gilding the lily, not to mention assuming that one detective (or thief) leads to another.

Samuel Johnson by Joshua Reynolds.jpgI believe that the origins of Nero Wolfe go all the way back to the early 18th century. Specifically to 1709, when Samuel Johnson was born, who grew up to be a man of exceptional mind and memory, a man to whom no place was so suitable to live as a major metropolis, in his case, London, and whose girth and eccentricities were as legendary as were his literary abilities. I speak, of course, of Dr. Johnson, lexicographer, poet, playwright, journalist, and wit.

What led me to correlate Nero Wolfe with Samuel Johnson was re-reading Boswell's "Life of Johnson". Their size, their reluctance to travel from their adopted great city (London for Dr. Johnson, New York for Nero Wolfe), their constant reading, and their love of food is identical. Both have remarkably similar amanuenses (Archie Goodwin, James Boswell) whom they find alternately useful, irritating, ubiquitous, and indispensable. Both Goodwin and Boswell are - to the urban dweller - from the sticks (Ohio and Scotland respectively). Both Goodwin and Boswell have had numerous amatory encounters, though Boswell was more graphic in his (secret) reminiscences than Goodwin. Essentially both write biographies, although neither are as educated, logical, or eccentric as their subjects.

James Boswell of Auchinleck.jpg
Archie to the left, Boswell above.


Yes, Dr. Johnson did marry (to a woman twice his age), while Nero Wolfe is, at first glance, the ultimate misogynist. (But even Nero Wolfe liked to look at women's legs: see The Silent Speaker, Chapter 20) But "Tetty" was Johnson's only known dalliance, and he was known to be as severe as Nero Wolfe in his judgments upon the fairer sex. (“Never accustom your mind to mingle virtue and vice. The woman’s a whore, and there’s an end on ’t.”) But they both were respectful of virtuous wives and mothers, as well as of professional women who were good at what they did: Dol Bonner and Jackie Jaquette, in Wolfe's world; the writers Charlotte Lennox and Fanny Burney in Johnson's world.

But to me, it was the use of language that cinched it. It is almost identical. See if you can tell who said what:
  1. "Some people have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they eat. For my part, I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind anything else"
  2. "What finally ruled [Voltaire] out was something that hadn't been mentioned at lunch at all: he had no palate and not much appetite. He was indifferent to food; he might even eat only once a day; and he drank next to nothing. All his life he was extremely skinny, and in his later years he was merely a skeleton. To call him a great man was absurd; strictly speaking, he wasn't a man at all since he had no palate and a dried-up stomach."
  3. "I know not why any one but a school-boy in his declamation should whine over the Common-wealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind. The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt; and in their corruption sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another"
  4. “We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.”
  5. "The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it."
  6. “I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.”
  7. "Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment."
  8. “A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.”
  9. "[A] pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.”
  10. "He is no wise man that will quit a certainty for an uncertainty."
  11. "Where there is no education, as in savage countries, men will have the upper hand of women. Bodily strength, no doubt, contributes to this; but it would be so, exclusive of that; for it is mind that always governs. When it comes to dry understanding, man has the better."
    "The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small."
  12. “The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold -- if you have one.”
  13. "A fellow that makes no figure in company, and has a mind as narrow as the neck of a vinegar-cruet."
  14. "I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read."
  15. “A person who does not read cannot think. He may have good mental processes, but he has nothing to think about. You can feel for people or natural phenomena and react to them, but they are not ideas. You cannot think about them."
  16. "It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives."
  17. “A guest is a jewel on the cushion of hospitality”
  18. "The right to lie in the service of your own interests is highly valued and frequently exercised.”
  19. “More people saying what they believe would be a great improvement. Because I often do I am unfit for common intercourse."
  20. "I have found you an argument; I am not obliged to find you an understanding."
  21. "A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him."
  22. “To pronounce French properly you must have within you a deep antipathy, not to say scorn, for some of the most sacred of the Anglo-Saxon prejudices.”
  23. "A Frenchman must be always talking, whether he knows anything of the matter or not; an Englishman is content to say nothing when he has nothing to say."
  24. “To assert dignity is to lose it.”
  25. "The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public."
  26. “Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes."
(Answers at the bottom of the page)

For my final piece of evidence, I give you the novel Gambit, in which Nero Wolfe burns a dictionary - bought with a flammable cover on purpose - because it allows the use of "imply" in place of "infer". A passion for precise language was certainly passed down from the man who wrote "A Dictionary of the English Language".




Sadly, Dr. Johnson had no children. But he did have a brother, Timothy, who had children. The genes were put into the pool. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you twin sons, separated by time. So, was Nero Wolfe a descendant of Samuel Johnson's brother Timothy? Or is he a reincarnation?

Put a wig on the one, take the Tourette's away from the other, and we might just have the answer!














Nero Wolfe - 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 13, 16, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 26
Samuel Johnson - 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 21, 22, 24, 25


12 February 2015

Write What You Know


"Write what you know!"  That old cliche gets trotted out regularly.  Now usually it's meant as an encouragement, but it's also used to set up (and even justify) limitations. I've had people seriously ask how I could teach World History without having visited every country in the world.  I've talked to writers who seriously said that they couldn't write about a ski bum or a serial killer or a heartbroken mother of a dying child because they'd never experienced that.

My response to the first is, "Does a medieval historian have to go to the Middle Ages?"  [Perennial note to self:  get a Tardis.  NOW.]

And my response to the second is, Emily Bronte, Emily Dickinson, and Flannery O'Connor.

Or Terence:

"I am a human being, I consider nothing that is human alien to me."
                        --Terence, The Self-Tormenter (163 BCE)

Or Walt Whitman:

"I am large; I contain multitudes."
                       --Walt Whitman, Song of Myself (1892 CE)

We are (almost) all born with the same emotional equipment.  Love, jealousy, envy, happiness, sadness, depression, joy, verve, hatred, need, greed, etc.  You want to know how someone else feels?  Pay attention.  To them and yourself.  Look inside and amplify (or de-amplify) as necessary. Everything that happens starts inside the human heart and mind.  If we're lucky, not all of it gets out, except in fiction.
NOTE:  "Just because it leaps into your head doesn't mean you have to DO it," is an observation I keep trying to share with my friends at the pen.  One of the main differences between (most) writers and (most) criminals is that writers have the ability to delay gratification.  (Per word, per piece, perhaps....) 
But seriously, think about writers:  Besides absolute loners like the Brontes and Emily Dickinson, there are many others who wrote amazingly atypical stuff.  In real life, Conan Doyle had far more in common with Dr. Watson than Mr. Holmes.  By all accounts Margaret Mitchell was neither a bitch nor lived during the Civil War.  Elizabeth George is neither a viscount nor a working class frump, and she's never lived in England.  Patricia Highsmith never actually killed anybody, although I understand that some people wanted to kill her.  Ray Bradbury never drove a car.  Rex Stout was happily married (at least the 2nd time), and fairly thin.  Our own Janice Law has never been a male gay artist of extremely unconventional genius with a liking for rough trade.  (That or she has the most fantastic disguise in history.)  It's called imagination.  And observation.  And mulling things over.  And wondering...  That's why we write.

Look, there's nothing new under the sun.  Humans are humans (including Neanderthals).  Everyone on Jerry Springer could be any of us, given the wrong circumstances and a complete lack of self-control in public.  There are really no new plots, which is a godsend to those of us who scramble to figure out not whodunnit but how the heck they did it.  My story "Sophistication" used a 4,000 year old plot device and I'm damned proud of it.  And if the news is quiet, and you just can't think of a reason why someone would commit a violent act, consider Steven Pinker's breakdown of the Five Inner Demons from his book, "The Better Angels of Our Nature":
  • Practical violence (means to an end)
  • Dominance violence (the quest for authority, prestige, power, glory, etc.)
  • Revenge 
  • Sadism 
  • Ideology 
There's a list to haunt your dreams.

James Joyce,
painted by Patrick Tuohy
in Paris, 1924
So we have all the emotions, we can crib the plots, what do we really need?  Education.  Facts.  And here's where we are the luckiest generation in history.  You can research almost ANYTHING on the internet.  I don't have to be James Joyce, sitting in Paris, writing frantic letters back home to Dublin, trying to nail down details of Dublin, June 16, 1904.  (Although there's worse things to be, that's for sure.  I wouldn't want his failing eyesight, but otherwise...)  I can find out almost anything I want to know about guns, poisons, crime, statistics, spyware, malware, anything-ware online.  I can read old diaries, old letters, old cuneiform, and go to an infinity of historical websites dedicated to Life In ___ (fill in the blank).  It's out there. And I have done it:  I am proud to say that my most recent sale to AHMM (thank you, Linda Landrigan!) is "Miss West's First Case", set in a tuberculosis sanatorium in post-WW2 Vienna, and I did ALL the research either on-line or amongst my books.  

Write what you know?  Honey, we can know anything we want.  We just have to put it together. Excuse me, I have to get writing!


15 May 2013

Addressing the Red Envelope


by Robert Lopresti

Back in December I promised that when my Black Orchid Novella Award winning story was published, I would tell you a little bit about how it came to be written.  I am delighted to report that the July/August issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine has arrived, featuring "The Red Envelope," so here goes.

Two years ago our old friend James Lincoln Warren told me he was writing an entry for the BONA competition, and asked if I would be one of his early readers.  I was happy to comply and voila, he won.

Now the cheap joke is that I concluded "if James can do it, it must be easy," or words to that effect.  I had no such illusion.  But as a great fan of Rex Stout and AHMM I thought I had a chance.  I spent most of a sunny day on my PlotCycle, pedaling around town and trying to think of a setting that would carry a 15- to 20,000 word piece of fiction.  In short, what did I know enough about to discuss, even in fictional terms, for that long?

Hmm.  Libraries?  Didn't want to go there.  Archaeology?  A passion, but I'm no expert.  Folk music?  Already wrote a novel about that.

But, say...  That aforementioned novel was set in Greenwich Village, 1963.  What if I jumped back a few years to the peak of the Beat movement?  My detective could be a beat poet.  And the inevitable gather-all-the-suspects-and reveal-the-killer scene could be done as improvised beat poetry!

As the old saying goes, it's so crazy it just might work.  And since the rules for the contest say "There needs to be some wit," crazy might be a real advantage.

To find out how I named the novella's characters you will have to look at the article I wrote for the Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine website, Trace Evidence.  

But I want to tell you about two things that I pulled from my memory to add to the plot.  One was an anecdote  I read in one of those "Humor in Real Life" columns from Reader's Digest back in the 1960s, about a young woman introducing her date to her father.  The other was something I learned while working on a non-fiction book about the Pacific Northwest.   How do they fit into a story about 1958 New York?  I can't tell you without spoiling the plot.

Which I sincerely hope you read. Otherwise, what was all this for?

19 December 2012

Picking More Black Orchids


Two weeks ago I published in this space the speech I gave when I won the Black Orchid Novella Award. I wanted to talk a little bit more about the experience. After that I promise to shut up about it until the winning story is published in May, when I will start babbling about it again. (Hey, I don't win prizes that often; give me a break.)

Anyway, I was informed by Jane Cleland back in September that I was the winner. The reason for the early tip-off, of course, is to encourage the winner to attend, which is exactly what it did in my case.  But it meant I had to keep my trap shut for three months and that was not the easiest thing I ever did. Ironically, I applied for a promotion at the same time and in my c.v. I had to write "This year I will receive another award for my writing, but I can't tell you what it is. Ask me in December." I'm sure the peers reviewing my file wondered what the hell that was about.

We visit the Saturday farmer's market almost every week and there is a very nice woman there who makes excellent hats out of recycled sweaters. Back in September I joked that the reason I couldn't fit into one of her hats was that my head was swelled (swollen?) because I just found out I had won an award. She asked which one and of course I couldn't tell her. I did tell her last week and naturally she had never heard of the BONA. Another person wondering what the hell that was about.

Anyway, I did go to the Black Orchid events, wearing one of those recycled hats, oddly enough. It started with the Assembly, in which Rex Stout fans gather to hear experts discuss topics related to the Corpus. (Doyle's writings about Sherlock Holmes are known as the Canon; Stout's reports on Nero Wolfe are known as the Corpus, because it suggests the corpulent nature of our hero).

My favorite speaker was Bob Gatten, who spoke about Rex Stout's work as president of the War Writers Board. I hadn't known that Stout organized a program to discourage writers from using ethnic stereotypes in their writing. "We can't fight racism in Europe and appease it over here."

Another highlight was David Naczycz of Urban Oyster on the history of beer in New York City, a subject very dear to Wolfe's heart, or taste buds.

But the major event was the Banquet. Terri and I were seated next to Linda Landrigan, the editor of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and James Lincoln Warren, good friend of this blog, and last year's winner. James had an official duty this year, presenting the first of five annual toasts. His was to Rex Stout which he delivered in rhyme. Here is a sample:
In our hearts, we all gather together to meet 
At the brownstone address on West Thirty-Fifth Street,
To drink milk or drink beer, or tonight imbibe wine,
To toast a great soul and inimitable mind.
And I can testify that a considerable amount of wine was indeed imbibed.

Another feature of the annual banquet is that each table is expected to compose and perform a song (set to a familiar tune) about the Corpus. These are always enthusiastic if not necessarily masterpieces. Ira Matetsky the Werowance (i.e. president) of the Pack said of one number "of all the song parodies I have heard, that was the most recent."

Having been warned about this feature in advance I provided my tablemates with seven songs to choose from. They selected this number, to the tune of "Ain't Misbehavin'." (That's a photo of Fats Waller, of "Ain't Misbehavin'" fame, not Ira Matetsky, in case you wondered.)
SOME BURIED CAESAR

I traveled upstate,
I don’t care to go,
I had a big date,
To show up a flower show
Some Buried Caesar,
I blame it all on you
Du-du, du-du-du, dudu-du
The car was loaded,
With orchids and me,
A tire exploded,
My Heron hit a tree.
Some Buried Caesar,
I didn’t hear you moo, Du…

Like Jack Horner

we were cornered
in the pasture,
I climbed faster,
That rescue’s what I waited for
Be-lieve me

While Archie first eyes,
the girl he’ll adore,
I won the first prize,
That’s what I went there for
Some Buried Caesar,
I solved a murder too, Du…
Some Buried Caesar,
That’s what detectives do

Matestsky gushingly described our contribution as "surprisingly competent."

One more thing. To fund unexpected expenses, the Wolfe Pack raffled off a seat for next year's banquet. I do not expect to be able to attend in 2013 but in the interest of contributing I bought one ticket.

Guess who won?

Must have been my lucky night.

28 November 2012

Meet Nero Wolfe


by Robert Lopresti

You may read mysteries for the plot, but if you RE-read them it is for something else, like language or characters.  Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels had wonderful language, but I don't know any mystery series with a larger assortment of reappearing characters than Stout's.  Watching them show up is like meeting old friends -- or enemies.

So, in honor of the Wolfe Pack's annual Black Orchid Banquet, which will be held this Saturday in New York, and celebrates the Rex Stout corpus...


Meet Nero Wolfe.  Say how do you do.
He's gonna introduce you to the whole darn crew. 

There's Cramer and Cather, Parker and Panzer,
Bonner and Brenner, and big Bill Gore, 
Archie and Johnny, Purley and Mimi,
Sally and Bascom and Theodore.

Doctor Vollmer and Lily Rowan,
Fred and Felix and old Lon Cohen,

Tim Evarts the Churchill dick
Hitchcock in London, and Marko Vukcic,

Up in Westchester you'll find Ben Dykes,
And Lieutenant Con Noonan, whom nobody likes,

There's Hombert, Skinner, and Arnold Zeck,
And even old Rowcliffe, what the heck.

And Mandlebaum.