Rex stout

Rex Stout, 1975

Rex Todhunter Stout (born December 1, 1886 in Noblesville , Indiana , † October 27, 1975 in Danbury , Connecticut ) was an American writer .

He became known for his crime novels about the overweight private detective Nero Wolfe . Between 1933 and 1975 he wrote a total of 33 novels and 41 short stories in this series. Before he wrote his first Nero Wolfe novel at the age of 46, he had been a successful businessman. Throughout his life he advocated the safeguarding of individual freedoms and made particular contributions to the copyrights of writers. During the Second World War he carried out relentless public relations work against Nazi Germany as a representative of various organizations in radio broadcasts, newspaper articles and speeches . He was a “genuinely political author” who used the Nero Wolfe series as a vehicle for political commentary.

Life

The early years 1886–1910

Rex Stout, who came from a Quaker family, was the sixth of nine children of John Wallace Stout (1848–1933), a teacher, and Lucetta Elizabeth Stout, b. Todhunter (1853-1940). He was less than a year old when the family settled on a farm in Kansas that his grandfather ran. Early on he showed an astonishing spiritual development. At the age of one and a half - according to his later companion and biographer John McAleer - he learned to read, at four he read the Bible and The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon , and a little later he translated the Novum Organum by Francis Bacon into English. When he was nine, he went on a tour of Kansas with a teacher to demonstrate in schools his extraordinary ability to add long rows of numbers extremely quickly . Two years later he became the spelling champion of Kansas. Up to the age of twelve he read all 1126 books in his father's library and learned all of Shakespeare's sonnets by heart. In 1899 the family moved to Topeka , where he attended high school until 1903 and also worked as an office assistant for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway . His stay at the University of Kansas at Lawrence was short-lived. In the same year he took up a position as an accountant in a small company and also worked as an usher in a theater. In 1905 he was enlisted by the Navy and served from 1906 to 1908 as a yeoman on the yacht of American President Theodore Roosevelt . On board the "USS Mayflower (PY-1)" he sailed to Santo Domingo , Puerto Rico , Guantánamo , Havana , French Guiana , Barbados , Port-au-Prince , Martinique and Argentina .

After retiring from the Navy, Stout first moved to New York and in the following years worked in countless jobs in various states . So he worked u. a. as an accountant, promoted magazines, was clerk in a department store and crier on city tours through Manhattan , he was a plumber's assistant in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , fished shrimp off New Orleans , Louisiana , sold baskets and blankets in New Mexico , was a tour guide in Albuquerque and Colorado Springs , bellhop in Spokane , Washington , and cook in Duluth , Minnesota , sold books in Chicago , Illinois , and ran a hotel in St. Louis , Missouri .

Beginning as a writer 1910–1916

In 1910 and 1911 - Stout was still doing odd jobs - he published three poems in the literary magazine The Smart Set before moving his first crime story, A Professional Recall , to The Black Cat magazine in 1912 and to Burlington , Vermont moved to put four more stories on paper there. Back in New York, he devoted himself entirely to writing and wrote his first serialized novel , Her Forbidden Knight , which was published in All-Story Magazine between August and December 1913 . By 1916 three more serial novels had appeared in the same magazine and a total of 32 short stories , including science fiction, adventure and love stories , in various magazines . Stout was paid by the word and lived hand to mouth. Now thirty years old, he was stuck in a dead end because, despite the hardships he went through, he got no closer to his goal of becoming a serious writer. He decided to give up writing for the time being and not start again until he was financially independent. Stout fell silent until 1929.

Success as a businessman 1916–1927

In 1916 Stout met Fay Kennedy, the six years younger sister of a school friend from Topeka, whom he showed to New York for a week in order to propose to her on the spot. On December 16, 1916, the two stepped in front of the altar in Chicago - one more reason for Stout to put his life on a more solid basis.

Stout's eight year older brother John Robert ("Bob") had the idea for a school savings bank system. Stout worked out a plan, and together they founded the Educational Thrift Service. While Bob was running the prosperous company from New York, Stout and his wife traveled across the country from school to school to promote and set up the novel savings bank system. In 1918 it was introduced in over two hundred parishes. In 1919 - meanwhile employees took over the field service - the couple settled in New York. From then on, Stout led the life of a successful businessman. During the day he worked in his office in the Woolworth Building and after work he dined in fine restaurants, held parties, went to concerts, went to the theater and readings. He had access to the cultural and political establishment of New York and became a member of the American Civil Liberties Union . His acquaintances included writers, journalists, critics and politicians such as John Dos Passos , Ford Madox Ford , Dorothy Parker , Robert E. Sherwood , Edmund Wilson , Heywood Broun , Paul Robeson , Norman Thomas , Alfred E. Smith , Scott Nearing , Thorstein Veblen and Carl van Vechten .

In 1925, the Educational Thrift Service served three million students in over thirty states. Stout was a made man who could now afford to cut back a little on work and move on to various other projects. Together with one of his closest friends, Egmont Arens , he published a twelve-volume luxury edition of Casanova's memoirs translated by Arthurmachen, with illustrations specially made by Rockwell Kent - a risky undertaking given the censorship. It was more of a hobby and a thirst for adventure than the pursuit of profit that led him to invest $ 24,000. Even so, the business was profitable. In 1926, Stout contributed $ 4,000 to found the left-wing magazine The New Masses and became a board member. In 1928 he turned his back on the magazine because he did not agree with its increasingly radical orientation. From 1926 to 1928 he was chairman of "Vanguard Press", a publishing house that reissued classics of literature at affordable prices and published books with content tending to the left.

Journey to Europe 1927–1929

On December 1, 1926, his 40th birthday, Stout decided to withdraw from the "Educational Thrift Service". His fortune, accumulated over the past ten years, gave him the opportunity to embark on an educational journey and to revive his literary ambitions. In December 1927, he and his wife crossed to Europe. From London , where he met George Bernard Shaw and Gilbert Keith Chesterton , the couple traveled on to Paris to visit Gertrude Stein's salon at 27 rue de Fleurus, which is frequented by writers and artists . a. to meet with Ernest Hemingway , Thornton Wilder and James Joyce . Stout, whose special interest was archaeological excavation sites, started a tour in the summer of 1928 that took him via Arles in the south of France , Dubrovnik in what was then Yugoslavia , Athens , Cairo and Tunis to Casablanca . At the end of the year he visited Belgium , Italy and Spain before returning to Paris in February 1929 to begin writing his first serious novel, How Like a God , which he completed a month later.

In the spring of 1929, Stout and his wife returned to the United States and moved to Brewster , New York , where in 1927 he had acquired an 18 acre piece of land that stretched as far as Danbury, Connecticut.

Turned to the detective novel 1929–1941

On October 24, 1929, the US stock market collapsed , with Stout losing almost all of his fortune. At least he still had enough funds to build a house on his land in Connecticut in 1930, while he was working on his second novel, Seed on the Wind , which he called "High Meadow" and which he lived in until his death lived and wrote. How Like a God and Seed on the Wind were well received by the criticism - but they did not represent a source of income that would have enabled the couple to maintain their usual standard of living. The successful businessman had become a reclusive writer.

The seclusion of "High Meadow" wore down Fay, who yearned for company and the glamor of New York and mourned the time when she had worked at the side of her husband for the "Educational Thrift Service". There was a crisis between the couple. In 1931 Stout met Pola Hoffmann, who was almost thirty. In February 1932, Fay was divorced, and on December 21 of the same year, Stout married Pola, who had two daughters, Barbara on October 5, 1933 and Rebecca on May 4, 1937.

After a total of four avant-garde novels, Stout remembered "his natural talent for storytelling and devoted himself [...] to the detective novel, within the limits of which he came so close to high literature that no difference in value can be recognized". By writing detective novels, he was also able to maintain his material status. In October 1933, at the age of 46, he began work on his first Nero Wolfe novel Fer-de-Lance , which "comes from the tradition of the academic mystery novel", but in which Wolfe's method of investigation is also "essentially psychological" . On October 24, 1934 Fer-de-Lance appeared under the title Point of Death in an abridged version in The American Magazine and two days later as a book with "Farrar and Rinehart". Columbia Pictures acquired the film rights, secured an option for more stories and filmed Fer-de-Lance two years later under the title Meet Nero Wolfe . Also in 1934 Stout's political thriller The President Vanishes was published anonymously and filmed by Paramount Pictures that same year . In 1935 Stout wrote his second Nero Wolfe novel, The League of Frightened Men , which was filmed in 1937 under the same title. By 1938 he wrote four other Nero Wolfe novels, a crime thriller about the detective Theodolinda "Dol" Bonner, The Hand in the Glove , and two novels, before he devoted himself exclusively to the detective novel. By 1941 eight more thrillers had been created, including two about Nero Wolfe and three about the private detective Tecumseh Fox. Stout had made a name for himself and had long been able to support his family with writing alone.

Political engagement 1941–1945

Between 1941 and 1945, Stout wrote only four Nero Wolfe stories, but not a single novel. The restrained literary production was due to his engagement during the Second World War. He joined the Friends of Democracy, an organization that fought against left and right extremism, and in 1942 became its president. He opposed the America First Committee on their behalf and in April 1940, when the United States was still neutral, spoke out in favor of supporting Great Britain .

Stout was active in other organizations. In 1941 he financially supported the founding of the "Fight for Freedom Committee" and, as its spokesman, called on August 1, 1941 in a radio broadcast for the United States to immediately declare war on Germany. He was also co-founder of Freedom House , from 1941 to 1946 chairman of the "Writers 'War Board", 1943-1945 President of "Authors' Guild" and 1943-1946 president of the Society for the Prevention of World War III , which campaigned for a lasting destruction of the German state and the restraint of the Germans at a permanently primitive level of development.

As a panelist in various radio programs, u. a. Regularly in Our Secret Weapon from August 1942 to October 1943, Stout campaigned for the war against Nazi Germany. His extremely anti-German sentiment culminated in the essay We Shall Hate, or We Shall Fail , which appeared in the New York Times Magazine on January 17, 1943 , and which aroused severe criticism. In the article he called for unlimited hatred of all Germans, spoke of "shooting, starving, killing them, destroying their cities, bombing their factories and gardens", and proclaiming that the plan was to "kill hundreds of thousands of Germans" It is left unclear whether this refers to deaths in fighting, war crimes or acts of killing beyond that. Stout's unbridled hatred of Germany isolated him from other comrades-in-arms in the fight against fascism, such as John P. Marquand , Max Eastman and Dorothy Thompson . The latter, who like Stout was involved in the founding of the “Freedom House” and vehemently opposed fascism in newspaper articles and speeches, he even branded as a “German apologist”, as a defender of Germany, because she saw the German people as victims of the Nazi regime. Regimes , while taking the view, said that the German people were to blame for Hitler . A violent argument followed, which led to the two of them leaving the "Freedom House". After a clarifying discussion, however, they soon returned there so that they could once again devote themselves to their political concerns without Stout giving up his radical stance on Germany as a whole.

In October 1943, a year before the presidential election , Stout endorsed incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt's plan to run for a fourth term due to national emergency on the radio show Wake Up America .

In January 1945, Stout went to the European front as a war correspondent and made stops in Aachen and Cologne , in the Vosges , in Paris, in the Apennines , in Rome , Naples and Florence , to Libya , Tunisia , Algeria , Morocco and Dakar in the spring To return to New York , Natal in Brazil and Puerto Rico .

World peace, anti-communism, copyright law, FBI and the Vietnam War 1945–1966

After the end of the Second World War, Stout turned increasingly to writing and published a Nero Wolfe novel and a total of 34 Nero Wolfe stories every year between 1946 and 1966. He compared his creative process to triggering an explosion. He did not take notes before starting to write and did not revise what was written as it was written or after it was completed. It took him no more than six weeks to get a novel ready for printing.

So Stout had enough time to continue working in other areas. In the post-war years he focused on the question of how to ensure lasting peace in the world. In 1946, on behalf of the Writers' Board, he sent a petition to President Truman , signed by more than a thousand prominent Americans, urging him to work towards transforming the recently founded United Nations into a world government at the price of national sovereignty. In 1949, Stout was co-founder and chairman of the "Writers' Board for World Government".

If Stout was an enemy of fascism during the Second World War, he took to the field against communism in the early 1950s , especially against the “big lies”, the great lies of Stalin . Regardless of this, he equally detested McCarthy's anti-communist campaign and protested against the execution on June 19, 1953 of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who had been accused of nuclear espionage for the Soviet Union . His criticism was directed not against the death penalty as such, but against the baselessness of the Testimony from Harry Gold , David Greenglass, and Elizabeth Bentley .

Stout was elected president of the Authors' League in 1951 and held the post until 1955. Convinced that “the work of an intellectual artist should be paid for according to its value”, he took up the rights of writers and advised on the copyright law, which was based on the 1952 World Copyright Convention and came into force in November 1954.

In 1958, Stout assumed the presidency of the Mystery Writers of America . A year later he was awarded the Grand Master Award for his life's work.

With The Doorbell Rang , one of the "most successful and spectacular novels [of the Nero Wolfe series ...], in which Stout exposes the encroachments of American state organs into the privacy of citizens, the illegal surveillance practices of the FBI with grim wit," he was targeted in 1965 FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover , whom he described in an interview as a threat to the very foundations of democracy. In November of the same year, he also published The Case of the Spies Who Weren't in Ramparts magazine, a criticism of a book that investigated the role of the FBI in the espionage case involving the Rosenbergs. This criticism represented an even sharper attack against Hoover and the FBI than The Doorbell Rank . Stout was put on a blacklist of people hostile to the FBI. He didn't think Hoover would comment on his novel, however, because "if the FBI got upset, it would only help sell the book." Hoover, however, did not hold his tongue in check. In a newspaper article he was quoted as saying, "If a special agent ever behaved as described in Mr. Stout's book, he would get immediate termination." The Doorbell Rank sold better than any previous Nero Wolfe novel and gave Stout, who until then had been widely regarded as an advocate of civil liberty who wrote detective stories just for diversion, a wider readership and higher recognition than Writer.

Stout saw personal freedom threatened not only by the FBI, but also by the communist presence in Southeast Asia. Similar to the Second World War, when he propagated tough crackdown on Nazi Germany, he now welcomed the open intervention of the Americans in the Vietnam War and signed a corresponding declaration in November 1965. Other co-signatories included Dean Acheson , Lucius Clay , James B. Conant, and later President Richard Nixon .

The last years 1966–1975

While the protests against the Vietnam War grew louder in the following years, Stout stuck to his stance and in 1969 wrote to President Nixon, who had just taken office, endorsing his Vietnam policy. Nonetheless, after Nixon's resignation in August 1974, alluding to the Watergate affair , he described Nixon as the greatest danger to which American democracy had ever been exposed.

In the last decade of his life, Stout largely withdrew from the public eye, but retained his interest in politics and gave isolated interviews. Serious illnesses increasingly troubled him, but did not stop him from writing. In January 1975 he completed his last Nero Wolfe novel, A Family Affair . On October 27, 1975, Rex Stout died in "High Meadow" on his land in Connecticut at the age of 88. Five days later, some of his ashes were scattered in his garden.

The Nero Wolfe Award was launched in his honor in 1979 .

Politics at the Stouts plant

"Stout is the politician among the eminent detective novelists." The conflict between the personal rights of the individual and the interests of the state pervades the Nero Wolfe stories, which are based on current events and allusions to both foreign policy issues and domestic American problems how criminal irregularities in government offices, extortion in immigration authorities and corruption in charities, in the war economy and in the political apparatus are accompanied. In The Rubber Band (1936), for example, Jews protest against German ships, social politicians are suspected of being communists and Italian exiles are attacked by fascists, in Too Many Women (1947) the question of the economic development of Germany, especially the Ruhr area , is posed, and in The Golden Spiders (1953), Nero Wolfe is outraged by the immigration quota .

Some of Stout's novels are primarily political. Too Many Cooks (1938) and A Right to Die (1964) are about civic equality between blacks and whites and Over My Dead Body (1940) are about American companies that have financial relations with Nazi Germany. The Second Confession (1949) deals with the communist infiltration of an industrial corporation and The Black Mountain (1954) deals with communist rule in Montenegro , Nero Wolfe's homeland. The Doorbell Rang (1965) targets the FBI, and A Family Affair (1975) focuses on Nixon and the Watergate affair.

Stout and Germany

Stout “only knew a few bits of German and had no close connection to German poetry. [...] More important and more consequential than his literary ignorance, however, was his political antipathy towards Germany. ”This“ Germanophobia ”was not limited to the time of Hitler's dictatorship. In the following years too, Stout was one of the decisive critics of Germany. He urged a restriction of economic structures and the demilitarization of Germany as well as the confiscation of German assets in order to prevent a resurgence of Germany and a renewed war, and condemned the plan of the United States to make Germany the most powerful industrial state in Europe in order to prevent the fall to have a strong ally in a war against the Soviet Union. He prophesied that the Germans would make common cause with the communists. In 1949 he forbade a publisher out of political conviction from publishing his books in German - a refusal from which he refrained from in the 1950s. In the 1960s, he joined the critical opinion of Karl Jaspers , which was expressed in his book Wohin driebe the Federal Republic? (1966) called for the people to exert greater influence on political events, and had Nero Wolfe read with approval in The Father Hunt (1968) Jaspers' book - in the English translation The Future of Germany .

Only once, in Before Midnight (1955), does Stout quote a book title in German: Die Geschichte des Teufels - a joke that fell under the table in the German edition Before Midnight (1957). “The typical Stout comments on political topicality are often deleted or abbreviated.” Everything that was offensive - including Stout's antipathy towards Germany - was banned from his books, which falsified him into an agreeable entertainment writer. Furthermore, the few places where he uses German expressions cannot be found again. Words like “schlampick”, “Weltschmerz” and “Wanderlust” were deleted without further ado. In some novels, entire passages have been left out and other sections seemingly humorous. In If Death Ever Slept (1957) it is said, for example, “it was plain” (German: “it was clear”), which the translator Renate Steinbach in Der Schein deceives (1959) to “which even a dumb village idiot would have realized” bloated. And “Wolfe grimaced” (German: “Wolfe made a grimace”) in Too Many Cooks (1938) is transformed by the translator Carl Brinitzer in Too Many Cooks (1957) into “Wolfe looked like a cross between Job and the unlucky raven”. When Archie Goodwin, Nero Wolfe's assistant, says in the same novel: "and then you'll ask whoever stabbed Laszio to raise his hand and his hand will shoot up, and then all you'll have to do is ask who paid him" (Eng .: "and then you will ask whoever stabbed Laszio to raise his hand, and his hand will snap up, and then you just have to ask who paid him"), one reads in the translation: “And then you can ask the ten little negroes who murdered Laszio. 'Please raise your hand who did it!' And then of course the perpetrator will report immediately. // Ten little negroes, / They'll be happy then, / One killed Laszio, / There were only nine. // And then all you need to do is ask who he got the money from. ”Arbitrary additions like these, the laconic narrator Archie Goodwin turns into a cozy talker - a bad habit about which Marlene Dietrich expressed her displeasure in a letter to Stout: "They try to copy the jargon of Archie - frightful." (Eng .: "You are trying to imitate the jargon Archies - terrible.")

Works

From 1929 to 1931 Stout published with "Vanguard Press", until 1944 with "Farrar and Rinehart" and then with Viking Press , all of them New York.

Nero Wolfe cycle

Novels

• 1934: Fer-de-Lance

→ dt. A fat man drinks beer . Tal, Vienna, Leipzig 1938

→ German The Lance Snake . Humanitas Verlag, Konstanz 1956

• 1935: The League of Frightened Men

→ dt. The League of Scary Men . Translator: Heinz F. Kliem. Signum Verlag, Gütersloh 1963

• 1936: The Rubber Band

→ as To Kill Again . Curl, New York 1960

→ dt. The rubber band . Humanitas Verlag, Konstanz 1957

• 1937: The Red Box

→ German The red box . Humanitas Verlag, Konstanz 1959

• 1938: Too Many Cooks

→ dt. Too many cooks . Nest Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1957

• 1938: Some Buried Caesar

→ as The Red Bull . Dell, New York 1945

→ German The red bull . Nest Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1955

→ dt. The red bull . With an afterword by Jürgen Dollase . From the American by Conny Lösch . Stuttgart: Klett, Cotta 2018. ISBN 978-3-608-98112-4

• 1940: Over My Dead Body

→ Eng. Only about my corpse . Humanitas Verlag, Constance 1960

• 1940: Where There's a Will

→ German label wild rose . Translated by Ute Tanner. Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin, Vienna 1972

• 1946: The Silent Speaker

→ German The murder in the Waldorf Astoria . Translator: Gottfried Beutel. Drei Raben Verlag, Stuttgart 1952

• 1947: Too Many Women

→ dt. Too many women . Humanitas Verlag, Konstanz 1958

• 1948: And Be a Villain

→ as More Deaths Than One . Collins, London 1949

→ German uproar in the studio . Humanitas Verlag, Constance 1960

• 1949: The Second Confession

→ dt. The second confession . Nest Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1956

• 1950: In the Best Families

→ as Even in the Best Families . Collins, London 1951

→ dt. The dog knew the perpetrator . Drei Raben Verlag, Stuttgart 1952

→ dt. Even in the best families . Signum Verlag, Gütersloh 1963

→ dt. In the best families A case for Nero Wolfe. From the American English by Werner Loch-Lawrence . Stuttgart: Klett, Cotta 2019. ISBN 978-3-608-96386-1

• 1951: Murder by the Book

→ German orchids for sixteen girls . Nest Verlag, Nuremberg 1954

• 1952: Prisoner's Base

→ as Out Goes She . Collins, London 1953

→ German guest on the third floor . Nest Verlag, Nuremberg 1954

• 1953: The Golden Spiders

→ dt. The golden spiders . Nest Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1955

• 1954: The Black Mountain

→ German Nero Wolfe in Montenegro . Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin, Vienna 1973

→ German Nero Wolfe in Montenegro . Translated from Mechthild Sandberg. Frankfurt a. M .: Fischer Taschenbuchverl. 2009.

• 1955: Before Midnight

→ German before midnight . Nest Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1957

• 1956: Might As Well Be Dead

→ German PH does not answer . Nest Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1958

• 1957: If Death Ever Slept

→ dt. Appearances are deceptive . Nest Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1959

• 1958: Champagne for One

→ dt. The champagne party . Nest Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1960

• 1959: Plot It Yourself

→ as Murder in Style . Collins, London 1960

→ German plagiarism . Translator: Renate Steinbach. Frankfurt / M .: Nest Verlag 1961.

• 1960: Too Many Clients

→ dt. Too many clients . Nest Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1961

• 1961: The Final Deduction

→ German. First of all, things turn out differently ... Nest Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1962

• 1962: Gambit

→ German Gambit . Weiss, Munich, Berlin 1965

• 1963: The Mother Hunt

→ dt. The big question mark . Weiss, Munich, Berlin 1965

• 1964: A Right to Die

→ dt. When light falls into the dark . Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin 1967

• 1965: The Doorbell Rank

→ dt. Per Address Killer X . From the americ. by Brigitte Weitbrecht. Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin 1968

→ dt. The doorbell rang . A case for Nero Wolfe. From d. american. English by Conny Lösch. With an afterward from Jürgen Kaube . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart, 2017

• 1966: Death of a Doxy

→ German corpse in the best proportion . Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin 1967

• 1968: The Father Hunt

→ dt. The sins of the fathers . Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin 1968

• 1969: Death of a Dude

→ bloody blueberries . Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin, Vienna 1970

• 1973: Please Pass the Guilt

→ German everyone's bomb . Translated by Ute Tanner. Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin, Vienna 1974

• 1975: A Family Affair

→ German deadly cigars . Translated by Ute Tanner. Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin, Vienna 1976

Volumes of stories

• 1942: Black Orchids

→ German black orchids . Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin 1964

• Black Orchids (German black orchids )
• Cordially Invited to Meet Death (dt. Death does itself the honor )

• 1944: Not Quite Dead Enough

→ dt. The explosive pineapple . Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin, Vienna 1973

• Not Quite Dead Enough (Eng. The blue scarf )
• Booby Trot (Eng. The explosive pineapple )

• 1949: Trouble in Triplicate

→ dt. You will die soon . Drei Raben Verlag, Zurich 1952

• Help Wanted, Male (Eng. You Will Die Soon )
• Instead of evidence
• Before I Die ( lead is unhealthy )

• 1950: Three Doors to Death

• Man Alieve
• Omit Flowers ( Eng . The open door )
• Door to Death (Eng. The glass trap )

• 1950: Curtains for Three

• Bullet for One (German alibi made to measure , in alibi made to measure . Xenos Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg 1977)
• The Gun with Wings (Eng. The winged revolver , in Heikle Jungs . Scherz, Bern, Stuttgart, Vienna 1964)
• Disguise for murder

• 1951: Triple Jeopardy

• The cop killer
• The Squirt and the Monkey (Eng. Nap into the afterlife )
• Home to Roost

• 1954: Three Men Out

→ German The talking pencils . Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin, Vienna 1973

• This Won't Kill You ( foul in the cabin )
• Invitation to Murder (German challenge to murder )
• The Zero Clue (Eng. The talking pencils )

• 1956: Three Witnesses

→ German tangled threads . Scherz, Bern, Munich, Vienna 1966

• When a Man Murders (Eng. When a man murders )
• The Like a Dog (German Wolfe comes to the dog , in Bewitched Stories . Scherz, Bern, Stuttgart, Vienna 1963)
• The Next Witnesses (dt. The next witness )

• 1957: Three for the Chair

• Immune to Murder
• A Window for Death (Eng. The window for death , in death in two installments . Scherz, Bern, Munich, Vienna 1965)
• Too Many Detectives (Ger. A witness falls silent , in Heikle Jungs . Scherz, Bern, Stuttgart, Vienna 1964)

• 1958: And Four to Go

→ as Crime and Again . Collins, London 1959

• Christmas party
• Easter parade
• Fourth of July Picnic
• Murder is no joke

• 1960: Three at Wolfe's Door

→ German gift à la carte . Goldmann, Munich 1960

• Method Three for Murder (German method 3 )
• Poison à la Carte (German: Gift à la Carte )
• The Rodeo Murder (German murder at the rodeo )

• 1962: Homicide Trinity

→ dt. Ene mene killer Mo . Ullstein, Frankfurt / Main, Berlin, Vienna 1981

• Counterfeit for Murder
• Death of a Demon (dt. Death of a demon )
• Eene Meeny Murder Mo (German Ene Mene Murderer Mo )

• 1964: Trio for Blunt Instruments

→ German murders now - pay later . Weiss, Munich, Berlin 1966

• Kill Now - Pay Later (German murders now - pay later )
• Blood will tell
• Murder is Corny (German meeting point dead-end street )

posthumously

• 1985: Death Times Three

• Bitter End (1940)
• Frame-Up for Murder (1958)
• Assault on a Brownstone (1959)

Tecumseh-Fox cycle (novels)

• 1939: Double for Death

→ German murder in the bungalow . Humanitas Verlag, Constance 1960

• 1940: Bad for Business (in The Second Mystery Book )
• 1941: The Broken Vase

→ Eng. The broken vase . Scherz, Bern, Stuttgart, Vienna 1960

Other crime stories

• 1934: The President Vanishes (anonymous)
• 1937: The Hand in the Glove

→ as Crime on Her Hands . Collins, London 1939

→ dt. The mysterious melon . From the American by Günter Hehemann. Constance: Humanitas Verlag, 1959.

• 1939: Mountain Cat

→ dt. The secret of the mountain cat . From the American by Alexander Marmann Munich, Berlin: Weiss, 1966.

• 1940: Red Threads (in The Mystery Book )

→ dt. The red wool thread . From the American by Heinz F. Kliem. Kaonstanz: Humanitas Verlag, 1961.

• 1941: Alphabet Hicks

→ as The Sound of Murder . Pyramid, New York 1965

→ German The sounding alibi . Scherz, Bern, Stuttgart, Vienna 1961

Other novels

• 1913: Her Forbidden Knight
• 1914: Under the Andes

→ dt. In the hands of the Incas . From the American by Herbert Schuster. Berlin, Frankfurt / Main: Ullstein, 1987.

• 1914: A Prize for Princes
• 1916: The Great Legend
• 1929: How Like a God
• 1930: Seed on the Wind
• 1931: Golden Remedy
• 1933: Forest Fire
• 1935: O Careless Love!
• 1938: Mr. Cinderella

Other

• 1973: The Nero Wolfe Cook Book (with others)

Short stories

• 1977: Justice Ends at Home and Other Stories (Ed. John McAleer)

Poems

The poems appeared in the literary magazine The Smart Set .

• 1910: In Cupid's Family (November, p. 58)
• 1911: Cupid's Revenge (June, p. 140)
• 1911: The Victory of Love (October, p. 49 f.)

As editor

• 1942: The Illustrious Dunderheads
• 1946: Rue Morgue No. 1 (with Louis Greenfield)
• 1956: Eat, Drink, and Be Buried

Awards

• 1959: Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Lifetime Achievement
• 1969: Silver Dagger from the British Crime Writers' Association for The Father Hunt as best foreign crime novel
• 2005: Archie Goodwin Award of the "Nero Wolfe Society" posthumously for his life's work

See also

• Nero Wolfe
• Nero Wolfe Award

literature

• David R. Anderson: Rex Stout . Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., New York 1984, ISBN 0-8044-6009-4 .
• John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, ISBN 0-316-55340-9 .
• Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, pp. 87–117, ISBN 3-8260-2014-6 .
• Guy M. Townsend: Rex Stout . In: John M. Reilly (ed.): Twentieth-Century Crime And Mystery Writers . St. James Press, London 1985, pp. 824-827, ISBN 0-912289-17-1 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Rex Stout in the catalog of the German National Library
• The Wolfe Pack: Official Site of the Nero Wolfe Society - biography, bibliography, articles, interviews, etc. v. a. m. (English)
• Avenarius' Book of Quotations - Biography and Bibliography
• Obituary for Rex Stout in The New York Times , October 28, 1975 (PDF file; 452 kB; English)
• Obituary for Rex Stout in The Washington Post , October 29, 1975 (PDF file; 2.37 MB; English)

References and comments

1. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, p. 8.
2. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 459.
3. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 42.
4. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 37-47.
5. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 55 f.
6. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 77 f.
7. ↑ John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 65.
8. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 55 f.
9. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 82-85.
10. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 85-93.
11. ↑ A yeoman in the United States Navy is a naval non-commissioned officer who does administrative work. See the United States Navy usage designations .
12. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 97-109.
13. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 119-122. In the Washington Post obituary for Rex Stout on October 29, 1975, Stout is quoted as having worked 30 jobs.
14. ↑ At the age of 17 Stout had already sold a poem to The Smart Set , but it had not been printed and was later lost. See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 92.
15. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 125 f.
16. ↑ Two of the stories appeared in 1917. Stout used the pseudonym Evans Day twice. The magazines he published in were The Black Cat , Lippincott's Monthly Magazine , The Smart Set , All-Story Magazine , All-Story Weekly , All-Story Cavalier Weekly, and Smith's Magazine .
17. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 145.
18. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 161 f.
19. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 162-181.
20. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 182-187 and 198 f.
21. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 188-190.
22. ↑ Other board members were u. a. Egmont Arens, John Dos Passos and John French Sloan , among others, appeared as donors. a. in appearance William Carlos Williams and Robinson Jeffers . See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 196.
23. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 197 f.
24. ↑ In 1926, 100,000 US dollars from the "Garland Fund" (well-known name for the "American Fund for Public Service"), which was founded in 1922 by Charles Garland with 918,000 US dollars, for the establishment of "Vanguard Press" " made available. See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 196.
25. ↑ Stout lost his post at the head of "Vanguard Press" in 1928 after the publisher was bought up, but remained vice president until 1931. During this time z. B. Erewhon by Samuel Butler , works by Henry George and Scott Nearing, but also the first three serious novels Stouts: How Like a God (1929), Seed on the Wind (1930) and Golden Remedy (1931). See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 196 f.
26. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 201 f.
27. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 204 f.
28. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 207 f.
29. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 210.
30. ↑ It was only during the Second World War that Stout moved to New York in order to better meet his obligations in various organizations. He only built outside of New York State to avoid being represented in the House of Representatives by the ultra-conservative Hamilton Fish . See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 298.
31. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 219-226.
32. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 229 f.
33. ↑ Pola Hoffmann (1902–1984), b. Weinbach came from Stryj , which belonged to Austria and later to Poland and is now in the Ukraine . When she met Stout, she was married to Wolfgang Hoffmann, a son of the architect Josef Hoffmann . See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 233. She was a textile designer and worked a. a. for Edith Head , Christian Dior and Norman Norell . See Obituary for Pola Stout in The New York Times , October 17, 1984.
34. ↑ Fay married Vladimir Koudrey in 1934, the stepson of the Russian revolutionary leader Leonid Krassin . Koudrey died four years later at the age of 34. Fay worked as an artist until her death in 1977. See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 551.
35. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 234-236.
36. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 244 and 271.
37. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, p. 7.
38. ↑ See Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, p. 87.
39. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, p. 92.
40. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, p. 92.
41. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 255.
42. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 254-257.
43. ↑ Stout ended the Fox series after three novels because, as he later said, “Fox wasn't a created character, like Wolfe. He was put together piece-by-piece and wasn't worth a damn. " (German: "Fox was not a created character like Wolfe. He was put together piece by piece and not worth a penny.") Quoted from John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 286. Nonetheless, Stout considered the plot of the Fox novel Double for Death (1939) to be the best detective construction he had ever succeeded in. Compare Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, p. 88.
44. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 278.
45. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 316.
46. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 278 f.
47. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 288-290. The declaration of war of Germany and Italy to the United States took place on 11 December 1941st
48. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 293.
49. ↑ Immediately after the end of World War II, the "Writers 'War Board" was renamed "Writers' Board". See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 346.
50. ↑ See Guy M. Townsend: Rex Stout . In: John M. Reilly (ed.): Twentieth-Century Crime And Mystery Writers . St. James Press, London 1985, p. 824.
51. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 305-308.
52. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 316 f.
53. ↑ Rex Stout et al. a .: "We shall hate or we shall fail": Article and discussion in the New York Times . Retrieved September 22, 2014.
54. ↑ John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 314.
55. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 314.
56. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 329-331.
57. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 327.
58. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 337-339.
59. ↑ "Writing a story is like touching off an explosion." Quoted from John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 398.
60. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 397-399. Unlike his novels, Stout worked through his articles and essays carefully. About the creation of We Shall Hate, or We Shall Fail , he said: "I worked it over with care." Quoted from John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 316.
61. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 354.
62. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 372 f.
63. ↑ See David R. Anderson: Rex Stout . Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., New York 1984, p. 12.
64. ↑ Quoted from John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 382.
65. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 382.
66. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 461 f.
67. ↑ From 1955 to 1961 Stout was Vice President, from 1961 to 1969 again President and from 1969 until his death in 1975 again Vice President of the "Authors' League". See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 437.
68. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, p. 99.
69. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 407.
70. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 428 f.
71. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, p. 97.
72. ↑ "[Hoover] was so obviously a threat to the very basis of democracy." Quoted from John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 458. The interview was reprinted in the Saturday Review on October 9, 1965 .
73. ↑ The book is Invitation to an Inquest by Walter and Miriam Schneir.
74. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 462 f.
75. ↑ When the “not to contact list” was suspended in 1972, there were a total of 332 names on it. See Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans . Book II, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate together with Additional, Supplemental, and Separate Views, April 26 (legislative day, April 14), 1976, E. Political Abuse of Intelligence Information, subfinding c, footnote 91.
76. ↑ "If the FBI raised hell it would just help sell the book." Quoted from John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 459.
77. ↑ "[If] a special agent ever conducted himself as depicted in Mr. Stout's book, he would be subject to immediate dismissal." Quoted from John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 459. Published in Goldsboro , North Carolina , News-Argus , Nov. 14, 1965.
78. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 459 f.
79. ↑ See David R. Anderson: Rex Stout . Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., New York 1984, p. 12.
80. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 460.
81. ↑ See David R. Anderson: Rex Stout . Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., New York 1984, p. 13.
82. ↑ "[Nixon] was unquestionably the greatest danger that ever occurred to American democracy." Quoted from John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 521.
83. ↑ See John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, pp. 521-532.
84. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, p. 95.
85. ↑ See Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, pp. 95 ff.
86. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, p. 112. The disdain that Stout bestowed on German literature is reflected in a remark he made to Thomas Mann in Paris in 1928. He openly stated that it is not in the German temperament to produce great writers: "It's not in the German temperament [...] to produce great writers." Quoted from John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 205. Thomas Mann was taken aback by this provocation, but his daughter Erika saved the situation by agreeing with Stout that her father, whose maternal grandmother came from Brazil , " half Brazilian ”, half Brazilian.
87. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, p. 112.
88. ↑ "I predict that the Germans will join the Communists to fight us." Quoted from John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 372.
89. ↑ See Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, p. 112.
90. ↑ See Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, p. 96.
91. ↑ See Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, p. 95 f.
92. ↑ Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, p. 116.
93. ↑ See Josef Quack: The limits of the human. About Georges Simenon, Rex Stout, Friedrich Glauser, Graham Greene . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, pp. 112–116.
94. ↑ Quoted from John McAleer: Rex Stout: A Biography . Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto 1977, p. 506.
95. ↑ https://www.klett-cotta.de/buch/Moderne_Klassiker/Es_klingelte_an_der_Tuer/80014