Last evening I sliced my left index finger rather nastily while peeling potatoes. This morning it is pretty sensitive (actually started bleeding again at one point) making typing a bit difficult. But, time and tide…
I note today is Rex Stout’s birthday and therefore, Nero Wolfe’s…
I’ve read, I’m moderately confident, every one of his Nero Wolfe mysteries. Mostly I read them in the first couple of years I attended seminary. Well written, and with pretty much a single plot (The household needs money. Archie bully’s the unwilling Wolfe into taking a case. Archie gathers information while Wolfe wiles his time with his orchids (and the gardener Theodore) and annoying Fritz who is trying to cook. There are complications involving Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Stebbins as well as the independent contractors, Saul, Fred & Orrie. Archie also has a series of lovely women companions although in one of the few areas where there is evolution in the stories, increasingly that lovely companion is only Lily… At some point Wolfe has all the information he requires, sits down, closes his eyes, sucks on his lips for between three and five minutes and then has Archie gather the principals into his office for a dramatic conclusion.), a wonderful ritual, and a delight for an evening after serious intellectual work.
Loved ’em.
Almost every one.
Some years ago Jan & I, when in Manhattan, drove down West 35th street to sight the possible three-story Brownstone Wolfe and his household occupied. As I recall there was no nine hundred block, his favorite for various reported houses, and of the two non-nine hundred addresses, one in the five hundred block, the other in the six hundred, the buildings were mostly warehouses…
We thrilled, anyway…
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