Snowflake Challenge 2021: Day 5
Jan. 9th, 2021 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tyrsibsChallenge #5: In your own space, promote a canon/talk about a part of canon that you love.
Of course, I could talk SPN, which I love, or Firefly, which created a beautifully realized 'verse in 14 episodes and a movie, but I find myself wanting to dig a little deeper and talk about the first canon that I fell hard for. The Nero Wolfe mysteries by Rex Stout.
I discovered them in junior high through a book called "Murder Ink", which was a sort of a fan friendly compilation of articles, interviews, trivia lists and glossaries about the Mystery genre. (If you're a mystery fan, I recommend this book and its companion, "Murderess Ink". Between the two volumes I found my first fannish worlds). Even then a completist, I searched out a lot of the books that were discussed, and eventually I made my way to Wolfe. The first book I found was "Murder by the Book", and I still remember that the plot blurb on the back started with "Wolfe risks Archie's neck" to solve the case. What? I had to know what that meant, and by the time I was done with that first book, I had to spend more time in Wolfe's brownstone. Lucky for me, Stout wrote about Wolfe and Archie for 41 years, beginning in 1934 with "Fer-De-Lance" and ending in 1975 with the Watergate inspired "A Family Affair."
Nero Wolfe gets top billing, and I suppose that's only right since he is the genius detective who solves the murders, but his assistant Archie Goodwin is equally vital to the novels' success. Wolfe is eccentric, strict in his daily routine but lazy when it comes to taking on new work, an overweight gourmand and orchid lover, a New Yorker with a mysterious past that began in Montenegro. In some ways, he's the epitome of a detective from the Golden Age of the Mystery in all of his habits and his Holmes-like ability to see connections that others miss. Archie, on the other hand, is streetwise and smooth with the ladies, intuitive, a man of action--more along the lines of the hardboiled American heroes of the same era. He narrates the books as well, in an economical and very funny voice that makes him very good company, indeed. One of my favorite descriptions of any character, anywhere, comes from Archie's assessment of one of Wolfe's longtime hired hands, Fred Durkin: "Fred was as honest as sunshine, but he wasn't so brilliant as sunshine." That sums up a lot of what you need to know about our Fred in 13 words.
Wolfe and Archie bicker and needle each other through their cases--in fact, Archie contends that the main reason Wolfe keeps him around is because Archie continually pressures him to work when he would prefer to spend time in the kitchen with his chef Fritz or up in his orchid rooms on the roof or just reading and drinking beer. They fight, but underneath all the irritation, each has absolute loyalty to the other. Their relationship is the backbone of the novels, the real reason to keep reading, though Stout also surrounds them with a memorable cast of side characters, and describes their world in comforting detail.
Wolfe's office is fully furnished in my imagination, and stands forever in a timeless version of New York, somewhere down West 35th Street.
Hmm-this is beginning to sound a little bit familiar---Maybe I have a type?
Of course, I could talk SPN, which I love, or Firefly, which created a beautifully realized 'verse in 14 episodes and a movie, but I find myself wanting to dig a little deeper and talk about the first canon that I fell hard for. The Nero Wolfe mysteries by Rex Stout.
I discovered them in junior high through a book called "Murder Ink", which was a sort of a fan friendly compilation of articles, interviews, trivia lists and glossaries about the Mystery genre. (If you're a mystery fan, I recommend this book and its companion, "Murderess Ink". Between the two volumes I found my first fannish worlds). Even then a completist, I searched out a lot of the books that were discussed, and eventually I made my way to Wolfe. The first book I found was "Murder by the Book", and I still remember that the plot blurb on the back started with "Wolfe risks Archie's neck" to solve the case. What? I had to know what that meant, and by the time I was done with that first book, I had to spend more time in Wolfe's brownstone. Lucky for me, Stout wrote about Wolfe and Archie for 41 years, beginning in 1934 with "Fer-De-Lance" and ending in 1975 with the Watergate inspired "A Family Affair."
Nero Wolfe gets top billing, and I suppose that's only right since he is the genius detective who solves the murders, but his assistant Archie Goodwin is equally vital to the novels' success. Wolfe is eccentric, strict in his daily routine but lazy when it comes to taking on new work, an overweight gourmand and orchid lover, a New Yorker with a mysterious past that began in Montenegro. In some ways, he's the epitome of a detective from the Golden Age of the Mystery in all of his habits and his Holmes-like ability to see connections that others miss. Archie, on the other hand, is streetwise and smooth with the ladies, intuitive, a man of action--more along the lines of the hardboiled American heroes of the same era. He narrates the books as well, in an economical and very funny voice that makes him very good company, indeed. One of my favorite descriptions of any character, anywhere, comes from Archie's assessment of one of Wolfe's longtime hired hands, Fred Durkin: "Fred was as honest as sunshine, but he wasn't so brilliant as sunshine." That sums up a lot of what you need to know about our Fred in 13 words.
Wolfe and Archie bicker and needle each other through their cases--in fact, Archie contends that the main reason Wolfe keeps him around is because Archie continually pressures him to work when he would prefer to spend time in the kitchen with his chef Fritz or up in his orchid rooms on the roof or just reading and drinking beer. They fight, but underneath all the irritation, each has absolute loyalty to the other. Their relationship is the backbone of the novels, the real reason to keep reading, though Stout also surrounds them with a memorable cast of side characters, and describes their world in comforting detail.
Wolfe's office is fully furnished in my imagination, and stands forever in a timeless version of New York, somewhere down West 35th Street.
Hmm-this is beginning to sound a little bit familiar---Maybe I have a type?
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Date: 2021-01-10 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2021-01-10 04:16 pm (UTC)I can see an SPN parallel here with Dean. Kripke originally thought of his characters as Luke and Han, right? So Sam would ultimately be the main protagonist. But the chemistry between the J's, and the recklessness and pathos Jensen brought to Dean quickly sparked the writers' attentions, and the characters became co-leads, with their relationship becoming the story's highest stake.
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Date: 2021-01-10 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
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