Aileen Wen - Rex Stout: A Biography

Author Rex Stout created one of the best-known and popular fictional detective characters in history, Nero Wolfe, along with Wolfe's unforgettable and talented personal assistant, Archie Goodwin. With Nero Wolfe, Stout has been described as a puppet master who manipulated a character until it took on a life of its own.

Nero Wolfe became so real that he has spawned decades of study and analysis from reviewers, bibliophiles, academics, and fans who debate and speculate on every aspect of Nero Wolfe's life: the man himself, his assistant Archie Goodwin, his detective methods, his home, and his culinary preferences. Although Rex Stout the author was a fascinating man with a life history worth telling, he comes second to the characters he created in Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin.

In each of the Nero Wolfe narratives, comprising almost 80 novels, novellas and short stories, the story is told through the eyes of Archie Goodwin. Wolfe is brilliant, eccentric, and lazy. Archie does all of the legwork, while Wolfe stays at home and solves the mystery. Some have speculated that the Archie Goodwin character was Rex Stout's idealized self-portrait. Others have suggested Archie was actually female, although there is little evidence in Stout's books to support that.

Ironically, Stout himself wrote an opinion piece "Watson was a Woman?" in which he presents evidence and argues quite persuasively that Sherlock Holmes' sidekick Watson was really a woman named Irene Watson.

Although Stout started out writing other types of books, including a psychological novel, with the 1934 publication of Fer-de-Lance, his first Nero Wolfe novel, he concentrated completely on writing about Nero Wolfe, detective extraordinaire. Wolfe quickly came alive for readers as a real person. Nero Wolfe loves orchids and has a penchant for gourmet food, as evidenced by his corporeal figure that weighs in at, according to Archie, a seventh of a ton. Many of Wolfe's elaborate menus are described at length in each novel, leading Stout to publish a cookbook based on Wolfe's favorite dishes in 1973.

Part of Wolfe's charm is his vocabulary. He tosses out words like flummery, recondite, contumelious, dolichocephalic and acarpus, and he uses a cryptography technique called chaffing and winnowing. He avoids exercise: Wolfe only gets up from his chair to move to another chair, unless it is to escape a crying woman (in which case, he leaves the room). He has elaborate rules of proper behavior, and refuses to talk to anyone who remains standing in his presence.

Nero Wolfe's genius allows him to solve seemingly impossible mysteries, always, of course, with the help of Archie Goodwin, who is sent out to do the real dirty work. Wolfe always has three ways he solves a mystery:

1. He contacts each suspect and accuses them of being the murderer. He then waits for them to expose themselves by stealing a key piece of evidence or by trying to kill Archie, Wolfe, or a person Wolfe has used as bait.

1. He sends an operative to retrieve a piece of evidence. This is withheld from Archie and revealed at the end to expose the murderer.

1. He uses logic and reasoning to work out who is the killer.

The quirky personality of Nero Wolfe is highlighted in the following excerpts, in Archie's words, as always:

• "Wolfe was in his office looking at television, which gives him a lot of pleasure. I have seen him turn it on as many as eight times in one evening, glare at it from one to three minutes, turn it off, and go back to his book." ( The Golden Spiders , 1953)

• "The trouble with mornings is that they come when you're not awake." ( A Window for Death , 1956)

• I resent your tone, your diction, your manners, and your methods; and only a witling would call a man with my conceit a liar." ( Immune to Murder , 1955)

• "I presume you know, since I've told you, that my distrust and hatred of vehicles in motion is partly based on my plerophory that their apparent submission to control is illusory and that they may at their pleasure, and sooner or later will, act on whim. Very well, this one has, and we are intact. Thank God the whim was not a deadlier one." ( Some Buried Caesar, 1939)

Then there is Wolfe's attitude towards women:

• "Women don't require motives that are comprehensible by intellectual processes." ( Door to Death , 1949)

Rex Stout's other claim to fame was his political and social involvement. During WWII, he was the leader of the Authors League of America, through which he advocated against Nazism. He was also chairman of the War Writers Board and master of ceremonies for the radio program Speaking of Liberty, each of them serving as vehicles for Stout to espouse his political viewpoints against Communism and to encourage others to get involved in advocating for peace. In his novels he also argued for racial equality and in favor of the civil rights movement.

Rex Stout was one of a number of American writers placed under FBI surveillance during the J. Edgar Hoover years. He was considered either a Communist or an affiliate tool, and therefore an enemy of the FBI. In the Church Committee's 1976 investigative report it was discovered that Rex Stout's name had been put on the FBI's "not to contact list."

Almost a third of his FBI file related to his 1965 novel, The Doorbell Rang . In that novel Nero Wolfe takes on the FBI and tries to get them to stop tailing and harassing a woman who had been distributing books that criticized the Bureau and J. Edgar Hoover. The book was published during a time when the public was unhappy with some FBI activities, and the novel was not particularly flattering in how it portrayed the agency, its director, and its agents.

During the final decade of his life, Rex Stout had more books in print than any other American author. At the time of his death, Nero Wolfe books had sold over 45 million copies in 22 languages. Stout continued to write Nero Wolfe novels right to the end, publishing A Family Affair a month before he died on October 27, 1975 at the age of 88.

Rex Stout was born December 1, 1886 in Noblesville, Indiana, to Quaker parents, John Wallace Stout and Lucetta Elizabeth Todhunter Stout. He was the she sixth of nine children. Shortly afterwards, his parents moved the family to Kansas. John Wallace Stout was a teacher and he encouraged all his children to read. By the time Rex was four, he had read the Bible twice, and by age 13, he was the state spelling bee champion.

He was recognized as an arithmetic prodigy, with an IQ of 185. He reportedly took delight in correcting his teachers or demanding that they provide proof of certain statements, leading his biographer to later dub him Mr. Know-It-All in Knee Pants .

Stout went to Topeka High School and later attended the University of Kansas, Lawrence. He left high school in 1905 and enlisted in the Navy, and from 1906 to 1908 did a stint as Yeoman on the official yacht of President Teddy Roosevelt. Once finished, he spent four years drifting and working at some 30 different jobs across six states, including store clerk, hotel manager, office boy, and bookkeeper. While working, he wrote and managed to sell poems, stories and articles to various magazines.

In 1916, his math skills helped him invent a school banking system called Bank Day that tracked money school children saved. The system was adopted by almost 400 U.S. schools, and the royalties allowed Stout to travel extensively in Europe and devote his time to writing. He married Fay Kennedy of Topeka, Kansas that same year.