Nero Wolfe discussion

Welcome to our discussion of Fer-de-Lance, the first in the Nero Wolfe Series by Rex Stout.

I made notes on Chapter 1 while reading--listened to the audiobook. I suspect these will be the longest comments on any chapter, and partly noted to track changes--or lack thereof--through the series.
*Roadster with a rumble seat Parked out front as always... this is the first of many vehicles we will track across the series and parking will be an issue later on. Still, I remember being surprised that the car was a model with a rumble seat.
*Archie wants to be a man of action, even if only on errands
*Archie’s description of Wolfe: there will be a later Jackie Gleason comparison, but this initial description seems to go beyond even that. Was Stout wanting us to see Wolfe as grotesque or merely singular?
*During the Depression and fritz buys 49 bottles of beer! Archie and Sol had pay decreases and Fred was let go altogether… but it’s Wolfe’s money and his brains that earn it
*Prohibition ended in 1933… 3.The bootleg barrels are our first clue that Wolfe isn't averse to going around the law.
*Wolfe’s assertion he uses his lower nerve centers… was that current thinking regarding brain function?
*I wish I could remember my reaction the first time I read “…that was about the only time I got excited” when Archie first described Wolfe’s out/in lip movements
*Audiobook version describes Maria as Italian… I’m assuming such revisions in later editions were Stout’s own, or done with his permission
*Surprising that Wolfe deferred to Archie for the initial interview with Maria, although he did note he wasn’t evoking “phenomena”… which means what?
*Wolfe said, “I am nobody’s friend.” A lie? Marco merely a later development? More a philosophical comment?
*Wolf tells Archie: “bring any articles that seem to you unimportant”… ouch!
*Fred's comment that Wolfe is tight with money… only with employees… but fair even so.
I wonder what poor Fred thought about all those bottles of beer?

I think the nerve centers comment means specifically that his brain is not being used.

If you check the copyright dates after 1934, you can probably tell about revisions.

Wolfe's comment merely means, I think, that he sometimes regards phenomena as more significant than facts.

"Surprising that Wolfe deferred to Archie for the initial interview with Maria" - I noticed that too. Very rare that Wolfe has Archie to the interview in his presence. Although, he is vicariously doing that everytime Archie is out and about interviewing and then giving it back to Wolf verbatim.

In the story where Archie quits and then gets hired by the girl on the step and then through compromises that so typify their relationship they work together on it... In that one I think Archie does the interview. WHAT IS THAT STORY TITLE?? I want to check whether my memory of that is true.

The choice about doing the interview is odder still given the extensive interviews we will see Wolfe do later in the same book with the young woman from the boarding house and even the golf caddies later. I think it's a matter of Archie being able to get the main facts while Wolfe can elicit important details that others couldn't or wouldn't recognize as significant--always a feature as to whether Archie brings in someone for Wolfe to talk to directly or merely rely on Archie's verbatim report.

The story where Archie quits and then gets hired by the girl on the step is Method Three For Murder from Three At Wolfe's Door (1960). "If I had been a camel and the book had been a straw you could have heard my spine crack."

Alan wrote: "The story where Archie quits and then gets hired by the girl on the step is Method Three For Murder from Three At Wolfe's Door (1960). "If I had been a camel and the book had been a straw you could..."

Thank you Alan!

With regard to Wolfe turning the questioning to Archie, my first thought is that this is the very first interview in the corpus, and Stout didn't have Wolfe's world quite as firmly in his grip as he would after one or two more books. My second thought is that Wolfe is having Archie step up to the plate because he is doing the interview as a favor to Fred Durkin, doesn't see any prospect for a lucrative fee, and so is having Archie spare him the trouble of asking routine questions.

As to Method Three for Murder, Archie does the initial interviewing because Mira Holt is Archie's client - she hired him on the stoop after he had quit. As part of his reconciliation with Wolfe they agree that she will be a client of both of them, and Archie gives Wolf half of the retainer.

Introducing Nero Wolfe.

Fair warning: it's pretty awful, but FWIW here's the original blurb for FDL that starts on the inside flap of the dust jacket and ends on the back cover:

Fer De Lance introduces, in a technique that will command the interest of every lover of detective fiction, the fascinating, eccentric figure of Nero Wolfe, in a dazzling story of crime. Immured in his office and utterly static, this lethargic fat man had a power belonging to few investigators before him to sweep through the most labyrinthine and inscrutable mysteries with complaisant ease and without disturbing his ritual of huge meals, regular hours of being incommunicado among his exotic greenhouse flowers, and perpetual guzzling of beer, a power which this barrel of a man modestly ascribed to his his “feeling for phenomena.”

By his temperament, his super-psychology and his admirable wit, Nero Wolfe distinguishes himself, a master among sleuths, unequalled since Philo Vance stepped up besides Sherlock Holmes.

A college president was quietly buried in state. Wolfe abruptly sent Archie, his affable secretary and third eye, out to bet the District Attorney ten thousand dollars that an exhumation and a thorough autopsy would reveal a needle and traces of poison in the stomach of the deceased educator. The wager was a simple means of getting the body dug up. When the newspapers broke the story and when a second autopsy showed Wolfe to be right, excitement erupted all over the place.

From the outset of this excellent adventure, Wolfe is entertaining as consistently as he is amusing. An artist and a man of leisure, he startles clients, manoeuvers suspects and manipulates crime itself to his unalterable convenience.

So thoroughly an example of its era- down to and including the mention of Philo Vance.

Well. That was a wall of text that wouldn't survive in today's world. ;-)
I didn't think i had heard of Philo Vance but when I googled him the images felt familiar.
I'm going to have to read some.

Shall we move on to the chapters 2-7. I think those chapters nicely establishes the ground work of the story.
We get introduced to the absolute canon of gall that characterizes Wolfe. (offering a ridiculous wager to get the murder declared for someone who he can make money off of.)
NOTE: 10K is about 184K in today's money.

The insults Wolfe hurls at Archie are marvelous.
"Some day Archie, when I decide you are no longer worth tolerating, you will have to marry a woman of very modest intellectual capacity to get an appropriate response for your wretched sarcasms."

"...to have you with me is always refreshing because it constantly reminds me how distressing it would be to have someone present - a wife for instance,- whom I could not dismiss at will."

and when you are not quite sure where the insult is but it sure feels like it's there.
"grace and charm are always admirable qualities and sometimes useful."