Yeah, another thing that kind of strikes me about the first 4 books is that.... they would be perfectly interesting novels without Wolfe and Archie in them at all. Which is totally a tribute to his skill as a writer... but not exactly a compliment if you're mainly a Wolfe & Archie fan. The early books set up these super complex and deep Psychological Dynamics and then Wolfe & Archie come in and sometimes feel like just plot devices to allow people to come into the office and do Dramatic Monologues at them (I'm thinking especially of whats-his-name's "I have seen a gutter punk lift a battered daffodil from the street!!" bit in "League of Frightened Men" here.)
Anyway, I feel like in later books the supporting characters are much more *supporting characters*, not that they get boring, because even Stout's stock characters are usually interesting. But they stop carrying the burden of being so Capital I Interesting because Wolfe & Archie have evolved enough to hold our interest. They're more complicated, and their relationship is more complicated. (And funnier. Archie definitely gets a *lot* funnier.)
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Date: 2010-04-06 01:33 am (UTC)Yeah, another thing that kind of strikes me about the first 4 books is that.... they would be perfectly interesting novels without Wolfe and Archie in them at all. Which is totally a tribute to his skill as a writer... but not exactly a compliment if you're mainly a Wolfe & Archie fan. The early books set up these super complex and deep Psychological Dynamics and then Wolfe & Archie come in and sometimes feel like just plot devices to allow people to come into the office and do Dramatic Monologues at them (I'm thinking especially of whats-his-name's "I have seen a gutter punk lift a battered daffodil from the street!!" bit in "League of Frightened Men" here.)
Anyway, I feel like in later books the supporting characters are much more *supporting characters*, not that they get boring, because even Stout's stock characters are usually interesting. But they stop carrying the burden of being so Capital I Interesting because Wolfe & Archie have evolved enough to hold our interest. They're more complicated, and their relationship is more complicated. (And funnier. Archie definitely gets a *lot* funnier.)