I just read A Family Affair, Rex Stout's final Nero Wolfe novel. Robert Goldsborough has written additional ones, but I haven't read any of those. From what I understand they're period pieces from earlier than 1975, when this one was published. Anyway, I'm not spoiling anything directly, but I am linking to this post, which very much does.
It's short, as Stout's novels tended to be. But it's a bit of a spiky read at that. There is a lot of speechifying on the Watergate Scandal, in which I'm guessing that Wofe speaks for Stout. A little makes for local color, but a lot is a lot, and gives the appearance that Stout is getting hung up on minutiae. On the other hand―and there's definitely another hand here―Watergate speaks to the topic of betrayal of trust, and the conclusion is absolutely steeped in that idea. I feel like the ensuing decades may have blunted that idea, because we've gotten more inured to thinking of politicians as untrustworthy, although some still prefer to believe that corruption is concentrated in one party or the other.
As Madeleine points out in her own personal review, one character who had been presented as being more or less trustworthy turns out not only bad but is actually the murderer. And I have to wonder when Stout made this decision. Had he always known that this one was the worm in the apple, that under the cover of being kind of a dick but otherwise a reliable performer he had a core of evil, and that that the evil being revealed would be the most high-impact way to conclude the series? Or was he as a creator struck at the end by a kind of despair, albeit one that he could work through. Because there's a balance. The climax is more than a little bleak, but the denouement assures the reader that life and work will go on.
2 comments:
When I saw it was this particular book you'd been reading I wasn't surprised but it's the single one of the Nero Wolfe novels I read only once, possibly for the speechifying about Watergate. More likely is that I didn't especially want to reexperience the last of what's become one of my favourite respites from modern life. Stout was definitely an opinionated writer and a proponent of left liberalism in its older sense - he was pro-labor. but he hated communism with equal passion. It's understandable that he felt Nixon had betrayed the trust of the American people. That that seems naive at this point is a sad statement about our society.
Anyway, rather than read any further in the link you provided, instead I decided to re-read 'A Family Affair'. I'm not quite finished yet but it was time to answer your post so here I am. It's my opinion that Stout had intended Orrie Cather to be his penultimate villain for a long time. In the earliest books there was another detective associated with Wolfe and Archie, Johnnie Keems, who also lusted after Archie's job but it was Orrie who continued to play that role in the rest of the stories. It was always obvious that Archie didn't care for him and that Wolfe didn't especially trust him.
Now I'm off to finish the story before I retire to sleep. The daughter who probably knew what the note her murdered father had seen has been shot to death herself. Things are speeding up and I'm looking forward to that denouement you mentioned.
The Doorbell Rang features another of those political diatribes, this time anout J. Edgar Hoover. I don't think Stout was necessarily in despair near the end of his life but he knew what could destroy a perfectly fine young country.
For better or for worse--maybe both--the discursions on Watergate root the book in the mid-seventies. If it's difficult now to perceive the way Nixon betrayed the people's trust back then it's in large part because he wouldn't have been extended that kind of trust to begin with now. Less than two years before being forced to resign he had won a stunning landslide reelection, carrying every state except for Massachusetts and DC. Not that he had ever been all that popular on a personal level, but the vast majority of voters decided that they trusted him over the image they had been given of George McGovern. The last President to win on that level was Reagan in 1984. Trump could never have that kind of victory because liberals thought that he had been dredged up from hell. And Biden couldn't--you needed a full court press in the media and a change in voting laws just to make sure he would win. There's not a great deal of trust involved when the President's supporters expect nothing of him except to not be the other guy.
There does seem to be a lot of crossover between Orrie Cather and Johnny Keems. Cather would seem to have been technically better at his job, as he kept getting rehired despite the fact that Archie didn't like him and Wolfe didn't trust him, as you pointed out. Around the midpoint of the series he was killed off. Maybe that was when Stout got the idea to give Orrie a different kind of big sendoff.
You've obviously finished your reread by now. Maybe "despair" wasn't quite the right word. Wolfe and Archie do live to fight another day, and at the end of the day I expect Cramer will still be willing to work with them. Which I like. It's an ending where things will continue to happen, the author is just irising out.
Yeah, the FBI under Hoover were a pretty formidable enemy. As an unelected bureaucrat whom no one had the balls to fire he amassed way too much power. Good thing that doesn't happen anymore, right?
Post a Comment