Featured Author:
Rex Stout
Rex Stout (1886-1975) was the author of the Nero Wolfe series of detective stories, one of the most popular series of the twentieth century.
Stout was born in Indiana but the family soon moved to Kansas. With a teacher father who encouraged him to read, young Rex became well-known in the state for his abilities, and won the state spelling bee.
Briefly going to college before deciding he knew more than the professors, he left to join the navy and see the world. He spent time as a sailor on Theodore Roosevelt’s presidential yacht, where he met numerous celebrities and politicians.
Leaving the service, he worked his way across the country, then began selling short stories to magazines so he could live. A few years later he decided to spend some time making enough money to live on, so he didn’t have to live sale-to-sale of his stories. He invented a banking system for school children, which became hugely successful and paid him enough money to become a full-time writer.
Nero Wolfe
After writing a few novels with minor success, he turned to detective fiction, creating the character of Nero Wolfe, of whom he wrote a book a year for almost the rest of his life.
During the war he stopped writing stories to work on propaganda for the United States in radio and print, describing himself as a “pro-Roosevelt left liberal.” He served on the board of the ACLU and as leader of the Author’s League of America.
In later years he was president of the Mystery Writers of America, receiving their Grand Master Award in 1959. He received a Silver Dagger from the Crime Writers Association in 1969. At Bouchercon in 2000 he was nominated for Best Mystery Writer of the Century, and Nero Wolfe was nominated as Best Mystery Series of the Century.
This is an imagined interview between CozyMystery.com (CM) and Rex Stout (RS). It has been synthesized from various interviews with Rex Stout over the years. All quotes from Rex Stout are his own words. Items in square brackets are where we have altered his words for clarity or to avoid spoilers. Please see the end of the article for source credits.
Early Days
CM: In your early days of writing, you began by selling stories to magazines.
RS: What I’d do, I’d write a story and sell it to a magazine. Then I’d take girls places, to the ball games and shows and then I’d be broke. So I’d write another story and sell it and get my laundry. But this was a lot of damn nonsense.
CM: It was hard to be on that treadmill. How did you break out of it?
RS: I went into business and made a hell of a lot of money.
CM: Was it easy to switch from writing short articles to writing novels?
RS: Short fiction is harder to write than long. An unnecessary page in a long novel doesn’t hurt it much, but an unnecessary sentence in a three-thousand-word word story spoils it.
The Writing Industry
CM: What do you think of the publishing industry?
RS: Most book publishers are jackasses.
CM: Everyone in it? How about agents? You never had an agent, right?
RS: Agents on the whole, with very few exceptions, are absolutely worthless people.
Detective Fiction
CM: You don’t think much of critics either. They regard your books as some kind of lesser writing?
RS: I have never regarded myself as this or that. I have been too busy being myself to bother about regarding myself.
CM: In terms of the Great American Novel, the critics never include the popular books like yours?
RS: One tradition of American criticism is that the detective story is just a detective story.
CM: And so it gets left out of the discussion.
RS: Great writing has to have two factors: to create people just as real to the reader as any people he’s ever known, and then to make a comment on human behavior. It doesn’t make any difference what kind of framework you use.
CM: But some forms are considered better than others?
RS: What all writers think they’re doing is making important comments on people and their behavior. Damn few succeed.
CM: You spent time trying to write those important books before turning to crime stories.
RS: When you’re writing serious novels, when you’re making serious comment on people and their behavior, you have to put part of your soul in the work. I thought, if you’re merely good and not great, what’s the use of putting all that agony into it.
CM: You changed your focus and became very successful with it.
RS: I turned to detective stories. I’ve had a hell of a lot of fun at it, and I’ve never been ashamed of anything I’ve written.
Creating Characters
CM: The question you’ve been asked a thousand times, where did Nero Wolfe come from?
RS: I haven’t the faintest idea of where he came from, or even where his name came from.
CM: Your wife said that you are a combination of Nero Wolfe and his sidekick Archie Goodwin.
RS: I don’t know where he came from. Absolutely no idea.
CM: So how in general do you create characters?
RS: A character who is thought out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought out character is flat.
CM: And when you’re writing a book you discover who the characters are. Does that also apply to the story?
RS: I knew who was going to be killed when I started, and who was going to do the killing, but I changed the motive.
CM: Why?
RS: The characters changed it for me.
CM: So rather than planning, you let the characters take the story where they will?
RS: The development of occurrences in a detective story should happen with as little contrivance as possible. The writer should not move the pieces around, but that goes for all writing.
CM: And it ends up with something believable in the end?
RS: Everything in a story should be credible, but one of the hardest things to believe is that anyone will abandon the effort to escape a charge of murder.
The Writing Process
CM: What’s your writing process? How do you start the day?
RS: I write afternoons and evenings. My mornings are just God-awful. I’m not miserable and unhappy; I’m just not alive yet. I’m in a fog.
CM: I read you work on nothing but your book for a month until it’s done?
RS: When I’m writing a story I don’t do anything else. I don’t go out for dinner; I don’t have have anyone to dinner.
CM: No planning at all?
RS: I’ve never rewritten a page, never made an outline. I just start off with a single sheet of paper with the characters’ names, their ages, and what they do. I always finish up the book in 39 or 40 days.
CM: It’s hard to imagine you don’t do any outlining.
RS: I’ve never done 10 minutes’ research for a story in my life. If I had to, I think I’d go into some other line of business.
CM: You must do a lot of revising at the end?
RS: Most novelists revise, more or less, but those who revise extensively always know they are going to, at least subconsciously, and as they do the first draft they are usually not much concerned with their choice of words or their syntax.
CM: But you enjoy it and the whole writing process?
RS: I love writing. I love to feel the piece is going together. I love to monkey with words. You want an expression on a face and you want to give the reader a distinct impression in two or three words. It’s a hell of a lot of fun.
And Finally…
CM: Has there ever been a time when you’ve been tired of it, and wish you’d done something other than writing?
RS: I can’t remember any five minutes of my life when I’ve been bored. I can’t understand people who get bored. If you’re alive, you can’t be bored.
Do you have anything to say about this article? Agree or disagree with what we have to say? Let us know in the comments below.
Credits
Rex Stout, “Man Who Came In From The Cold,” Mademoiselle, July 1964.
John and Andrew McAleer, “An Interview With Rex Stout,” Strand, 2003.
Bill Ryan, “Rex Stout Reflects 2 of His Creations,” Hartford Courant, https://www.nerowolfe.org/pdf/stout/author/Media_Coverage/Hartford_Courant_RS_reflects_on_his_2_creations.pdf.
Timothy Dickinson and Rhoda Koenig, “And now a word or two with the Master”, Chicago Tribune, July 28, 1974.
Alfred Bester, “Conversation with Rex Stout,” Holiday, November 1969.
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