Just some random observations...

I've read most of the Nero Wolfe collection several times (I never tire of them) and decided to start again, chronologically. So I'm 3-4 chapters into "Fer-de-lance" and I noticed a few things that I thought were worth talking about.

I noticed that in this story, the front door of the brownstone on 35th Street does not have a see-through panel. Archie must look out the front room window to see people coming or going.

Does anyone know of a specific book that explains when this was changed or did it go unexplained?

Also, one page 1, Archie says (speaking of the black roadster) "we always left it parked out front". Yet, later in this same story (and in all the others) the car is taken to the garage a block, or so away.

Did anyone else pick up on this? Am I simply not understanding that the quote on page 1 meant "daytime only"?

Nero seems much more civil and friendly in this story, as opposed to later books where he is generally grumpy.

One more thought, not about this first story...

In "The Red Box", Cramer lights his cigar at 4 different times throughout the story. In every other Wolfe story that I can remember, Archie makes note that "He never lit one" or "I've never seen him light one". Curious.

On a completely personal note:

I often feel a tinge of regret at not begining my own writing career earlier. I am now 52 years young (though often feel really old!) and have several projects going and a small bit of published work (magazine articles mostly). That feeling, however, is somewhat easier to accept when I realize that Rex Stout didn't write the first Nero Wolfe mystery until he was 47.

I still have time!

I expect as read these through you will come across a number of discrepancies and developments, hopefully you find catching them part of the fun!

Actually, I really appreciate Stout's not having let himself be hemmed in by his first conceptions.

Noting another one: in most books, Saul is a bachelor; in at least one other, he's married with children. But I think the wife and children preceded his bachelor existence. :) Anyone able to correct me? I'm happy to have fragmentary memories refreshed.

Rex Stout, P.D. James, and others, are indeed encouraging, in that way. (And best of luck to you!)

I think I read somewhere that Stout wrote from start to finish without revisions. I have no idea if he kept an outline or "morgue" on his characters and events. I know I would sure need one!

I never mind the discrepancies, for me, they just make it more fun and the way my brain works, I probably don't notice half of them!

So many authors began later in life. I think it gives a person more to write about if they've lived some of it first. Somehow the characters and personalities ring more true to life.

Yes, the discrepancies are part of the amusement. I believe Stout even gets the addresses of Wolfe's brownstone confused a time or two. I do like how Stout manages to keep Archie and Wolfe roughly the same in temperament (and age!) while moving through the decades, 30's, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. One of the last novels, A Family Affair, is in part a reaction against Watergate, if I remember correctly. Stout's solution was elegant: never mention their exact ages, but allow history from the outside world to intrude as necessary. And #1--it's never too late to start writing! Go for it.

ostrom - I too like the way Wolfe and Archie never change, but their world does. I also find it amusing that that is the exact thing some people hate about the stories.

Agreed. Difficult choice, aging a main character, and I've read somewhere - probably in Ian Ousby's Guilty Parties that very few did it well. And, of course, there are alternatives to Stout's. Apparently Innes' Inspector Appleby is a rare character-author pair who, with aging, managed something richer than the original. But feeling a period's change along with a familiar character: that too has its charms. Rich ones.

Christie, I thought, was rather brave not just to let Poirot age but to get frail and die. She let him age with the times. I just finished "There Is a Tide", a.k.a., "Taken at Flood," a post-WWII Poirot that's actually a very good novel of manners, with some great insights into post-WWII Brit. society. Anyway, I think both the Stout and Christie choices have their charms. I'm embarrassed to say I've read no Innes--a terrible hole in my knowledge of the genre. I tried one once and didn't take to it, so I must try again.

I didn't take to my first Innes, either - yet now I love him. It may be a matter of mood, but he was also a very distinctive and uneven writer. Amazing, at times; not so successful, at others.

From London Far is a good non-Appleby, post-war thriller involving art theft, Scotland, and literature. Specifically, fragments from Samuel Johnson's "London" start the action turning.

I loved the highly whimsical, literate, slightly eerie, brilliantly written Lament for a Maker, read slightly before. That really is what turned my opinion around. Of course, if you're put off by Scotland....

Eurydice, thanks so much for the specific recommendations. That always helps immensely. Now I'll know what to look for.

You're very welcome; and I hope that either, if read, will be enjoyed. :)

I agree that the discrepencies actually add the the reader's enjoyment. It's the same with how many times Wolfe, "who never leaves the house except for personal errands", actually breaks this rule quite often. He is drawn out on business in many cases, ie: leaving the house for months in the last Zeck episode and spending weeks in Montana in Death of a Dude... among many others.

For me, the series in near perfection... the ability to write each as a stand alone story yet repeatable and enduring charachters that we follow with joy. The only negative is that Stout is not around now to keep it alive (I am not a fan of the revival by Goldsborough).

He does break the 'never leave the house' rule quite often, doesn't he? Or if it isn't that, he breaks some other rule of his. That is Stout's way of increasing suspense, right?

Archie sometimes mentions in passing other cases that they have worked on. I like to think that they are the routine cases and I as a reader get treated only to their more exciting cases, where it is necessary to break the rules...

I agree that the cases we are privy to are the select few that Archie thought we should know about. I think it's mentioned that he only relates murder cases this way.

But I think Stout carefully used this as a way to make the stories stand out. We are told that Wolfe is an eccentric individual, a creature of habit. He never breaks the rules regarding talk about business during meals (and I can't remember any story that breaks this rule, he never deviates from the two 2-hour periods with his orchids (again, don't think he ever breaks this in the Corpus) . But he uses the "leaving of the house on business" to emphasize that Wolfe is an "extrordinary" individual. It is the breaking of this rule that is, in fact, "extra ordinary".

It's a wonderful technique that helps make this series one of the best in the history of the written word.

That's a good point and I agree with you, it is mainly Wolfe's eccentricity that Stout wants to illustrate with the rules. Any creation of suspense by breaking them is secondary.

We talked about Wolfe's beer drinking in another thread and how it makes him seem more human. These rule-breaking instances do that, too, don't they? Some things that most people take for granted they can do easily, such as riding a car or sitting in an ordinary chair, cause Wolfe real discomfort. He may be a genius with an expensive lifestyle, but his life has difficulties all the same.

Actually, he does occasionally break the rule about times with the orchids. In A Right to Die, he has to move quickly to get to a group of people before the police do. (I use the term "move" without meaning he actually stirred from The Chair, of course.) In order to speak to them in time, he missed his afternoon orchid appointment. He was not a happy detective!

But, on the dinner time discussion topic rule, he did keep it. He had two black men, one an anthropology professor and another a lawyer, and kept them for dinner in order to discuss the case. At the table, they discussed Othello, specifically how the case might play out legally in New York at that time. Archie didn't relate the whole discussion, of course, but it was an interesting choice of subject, considering the case involved.

DianeS
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At the moment, I can't remember what novel this occurred in, but I love the time when Wolfe breaks the implicit "rule" of not getting exercise, and he goes downstairs to play darts, which he thinks of as exercise, and which he implies, to Archie, will help him lose part of his seventh of a ton. That is such a funny, human moment.

That was "The Rubber Band", I just finished it (I'm going back through the Corpus now). He always beat Archie at it too.. No wonder, Wolfe would master anything he chose to do.

Thanks for the help, Moovyz. All but two of my Stouts are in storage. I hope to parole them soon. I can't wait to see them on the shelves and go through the corpus again. The same with Georges Simenon.

Inspector Cramer does not appear in the first Wolfe novel, Fer-de-lance.
But Purley Stebbins does.
(I think ... going from memory here.)

Wolfe also broke his exercise rule when he and Fritz were going to join the army during WWII. This was in one of the novellas. I think Archie came home from the Army to find that Fritz and Wolfe were in the habit of taking afternoon walks.

The return from marching at the docks is a favorite passage of mine.
There are numerous discrepancies. I admire Stout for shamelessly plowing through the story without regard as to whether the brownstone was the right number. There's definitely an evolution of Archie and Wolfe for me.
I imagined Saul was divorced. It added to his gravitas.

Another tidbit I remember from a previous chronological reading of the Canon... the famous Red Leather Chair, much coveted by self-important clients, does not make its first appearance until the late 1940s.

By the way...

My dad and I have a radio program (OTR: Old Time Radio) app on our kindle/phone and we have listened to Nero Wolfe.

We both enjoyed Nero Wolfe AND his 'sidekick' Archie

Favorite 'quote':

"ARCHIE!"
:)