The badgering in this book in general feels much more robust and zingy, with less of the youthful-hero-worship of Fer de Lance.
Archie seems a little high-energy in "Rubber Band" to me. Like a little yappy dog! I think the pendulum swung too far away from "smartass thug" over towards "Damon Runyon/O.Henry-type silver-tongued devil." I mean, "Does she frolic with the gee-gees," Archie, REALLY? I'm just glad he glosses over most of it during the *entire chapter* of him making fun of Rowcliff (while he's searching the house).
the power dynamic seems more even
Yeah, Wolfe is sometimes really mean in earlier books-- "Bring any articles which to you seem unimportant" or other little digs at Archie's intelligence, especially when he's cranky. In this book snarking at each other is more of a game that they both play, most of the time (esp. in that bit you quoted where Wolfe winks at Archie and Archie can't even LOOK at him without BEAMING-- oh, boys.)
CRAMER
Actually lights and smokes his cigar! (Though he chews them as well.)
Also he's still calling Archie "son." Plus, can I just mention, Wolfe/Cramer-y canon moments are kinda rare, but here is a good one-- right after Wolfe gives his giant paragraph-long speech to Cramer, Hombert and Skinner that basically boils down to "YOU ARE IDIOTS PLEASE SIT DOWN" -- Cramer said to Hombert, "Didn't I tell you he was a nut? Let me handle him."
Wolfe nodded solemnly. "That's an idea, Mr. Cramer. You handle me." ...
...........*COUGH*
.... And then at the end of the chapter when Wolfe starts getting DRAMATIC at everyone: "Daylight will serve us better. No more tonight, short of the rack and the thumbscrew. You will hear from me."
Cramer got up too, saying to Hombert, "He's always like this. You might as well stick pins in a rhinoceros."
"He's always like this" n'aaaawwww. :D
Also in regard to the ensemble coming together, there's no Lon Cohen yet, just "Harry Foster of the Gazette." (In McAleer's biography of Stout, iirc, I think he mentions that the introduction of Lon Cohen as a character was a response to a reader's criticism that his ensemble so far was not as diverse as it could be considering its setting, which is true, esp. since Saul isn't as prominent as he would be in later books & kind of gets lost among the crowd of Orrie, Johnny, Fred, Bill, etc.)
WOLFE AND WOMEN
In this book, he has that Lewis-Carroll-style list of things for which women are best-adapted ("chicanery, sophistry, self-adornment, cajolery, mystification and incubation") which seems more like disdain than perturbation,
And, can I just say? POT, KETTLE, BLACK, buddy! Seriously, in terms of being well-suited to a vocation, Wolfe EMBODIES chicanery, sophistry, cajolery and mystification. We certainly know he's not above self-adornment. And if you count the orchids, he's even got "incubation" covered. *g*
Not to mention that, when she's going hysterical after Walsh gets killed, "Wolfe stepped to her and put his hand on her shoulder." !!!
Not only that! At the beginning of Chapter 5, Archie is having breakfast in the kitchen as usual, and Clara Fox has breakfast with Wolfe, IN HIS ROOM. ....!!! Is there any other time in canon when a woman is in WOLFE'S ROOM?
Plus he is really pretty nice to her (in his "tough love" kind of way) when he tells her she's not responsible for Mike Walsh's death. (More on that later.)
ARCHIE AND WOMEN
Okay, so Archie is totally a sexist in a lot of big ways, but there's something really nice about the way he tends to describe women. (On Clara Fox: She had brown hair, neither long nor boyish bob, just a swell lot of careless hair, and her eyes were brown too and you could see at a glance that they would never tell you anything except what she wanted them to.) He clearly thinks Clara Fox is gorgeous, but he doesn't start going on about her *body* in a creepy, ogling way, the way a lot of male mystery authors make their protagonists view & describe women. "Her generous breasts heaved welcomingly at me" blah blah-- and in a *series* character this tends to get even more off-putting with repetition just *because* it's so generic and reductive: there's only so many ways you can say "She was a woman! I stared at her breasts for an entire paragraph! It was awesome!") But instead of observing generic attributes, Archie immediately notices something key about Clara's *personality*, her spirit-- and although he probably *also* notices her body (especially later when she's wearing his dressing gown) he clearly doesn't feel like that's the most important thing to describe about *a person* the first time he sees her. Which is nice.
ARCHIE AND DISSIMULATION
Archie claims not to feel too tetchy, though, despite at one point kicking over his wastebasket
I love it when Archie kicks over his wastebasket. It's just so childish and pointless, especially because we know and *he* knows he's just going to have to pick it back up again; no one's going to do it for him. But sometimes you just have to kick something, and if you're going to, it might as well be something that's going to make a nice satisfying loud noise and fall over, as opposed to kicking, say, the desk and just hurting your toes. I can just *see* Archie standing there, stock still, fuming oh so quietly, and then, POW. "Stupid wastebasket!"
THAT INTIMATE PSYCHIC CONNECTION
MAN THAT'S GOOD STUFF. *whew*
*fanning myself*
My favorite Wolfe/Archie moment is when Archie goes up to bug Wolfe during Orchid Time: ...whenever I interrupted him in the plant rooms he pretended he was Joe Louis in his training camp and I was a boy peeking through the fence. N'AAWWW. I love how in this analogy, even though Archie is telling us about it as if it's something Wolfe does that's ANNOYING (he treats me like a little kid!!) he still can't resist framing the analogy with Wolfe as the champion of the world, and HIMSELF as the adoring little fanboy yearning desperately for just a glimpse of his hero! <3
ASSORTED ADORABLENESS
-- Some of my favorite exclamatory lines from Wolfe:
My personal favorite: "Will you take a message for me to Mr. Cramer? Tell him that Nero Wolfe pronounces him to be a prince of witlings and an unspeakable ass! Pfui!"
* "Great hounds and Cerberus!"
I love it when Wolfe gets dramatic and mythological. To Clara Fox: "And don't be conceited enough to imagine yourself responsible for the death of Michael Walsh. Your meddlings have not entitled you to usurp the fatal dignity of Atropos; don't batter yourself."
It's almost like this is one of Wolfe's pet phrases for Archie or something, given that each time we've heard it it's come from Wolfe first. ♥
It really does have the ring of an in-joke. The thing about Wolfe and Archie and the "past cases" they solve-- it's not just the "past cases" that give a solid sense of these being people with pasts, it's the little interpersonal stuff like that too. The things Archie says, like, "You have forbidden me to use the word louse, so I would say that Muir is an insect..." or, I think it's in "League" when he says "You instructed me never again to tell you to go to hell, so I'll just say... this sucks," or whatever he says. Little stuff like that, past references to previous conversations, etc. I don't know, I feel like these days in a mystery series, all this stuff would be so tightly nailed down-- you'd never get a reference like this unless it was to an *actual conversation* in a previous book, for fear of confusing or frustrating readers.
In this book, Wolfe's and Archie's bedrooms are still mentioned on the same floor: "where he had lived for over twenty years, and I had slept on the same floor with him for eight"--boy, that phrasing is so intimate, it's no wonder the books shortly move Archie up a floor. :D
See also, Archie commenting on Wolfe not liking women: " .... Though I suppose you've changed your mind, now that there's a woman sleeping in your bed--"
"Nonsense. My bed--"
"You own all the beds in this house except mine, don't you? Certainly it's your bed. ...."
AHAHAHAHAAAA. Archie, seriously, you're twelve. "But it's YOUR BED! Your bed that you OWN and she's IN it, therefore, she's a woman and she's IN YOUR BED BRB LOL-ING FOREVER." Also can I just beam helplessly at Archie's traditional BTW, NOT A KEPT MAN!!! interjection, where, no matter how awkwardly he has to jam it into a sentence, he makes sure to remind us that he owns his own furniture, dammit! Archie's Rules of Being Your Own Man-- okay, this is not news to anyone here, but they are so WEIRD. It's totally okay to live in a guy's house and eat his food and drive his car on your personal vacations and errands and cherish his heartfelt and expensive gifts to your bosom-- all that is fine, as long as you make sure to pay for your own furniture!! And Archie did! SO THERE, NOT A KEPT MAN.
I suppose the biggest actual coincidences are either largely-immaterial (Archie talking about Clivers at the beginning because he read about him in the paper) or highlighted as such in the book (Clivers being found over Walsh's body). At least, that's how it seems to me.
Yeah, to me the A and B plot tie together pretty well, and it's explained very reasonably how Coleman-aka-Perry was the cause of both of Clara Fox's seemingly unrelated problems. But the "Marquis found over Mike Walsh's body" thing is just SHAMELESS, especially because it was a reporter from the Gazette who JUST HAPPENED to sneak in and witness everything and get back and write the story and file it for the evening edition and have it printed and distributed *that same night*, within a few hours!! So that Johnny Keems can grab the paper and take it to Wolfe and Archie and that can get the Expository Newspaper Article Flashback and find out what they missed, because otherwise they would never find out. (I guess pre-internet, pre-cellphone journalism was more responsive to current events than I would have assumed, but it's still a pretty massive coincidence.)
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Date: 2010-04-25 08:36 am (UTC)THE BEGINNING
The badgering in this book in general feels much more robust and zingy, with less of the youthful-hero-worship of Fer de Lance.
Archie seems a little high-energy in "Rubber Band" to me. Like a little yappy dog! I think the pendulum swung too far away from "smartass thug" over towards "Damon Runyon/O.Henry-type silver-tongued devil." I mean, "Does she frolic with the gee-gees," Archie, REALLY? I'm just glad he glosses over most of it during the *entire chapter* of him making fun of Rowcliff (while he's searching the house).
the power dynamic seems more even
Yeah, Wolfe is sometimes really mean in earlier books-- "Bring any articles which to you seem unimportant" or other little digs at Archie's intelligence, especially when he's cranky. In this book snarking at each other is more of a game that they both play, most of the time (esp. in that bit you quoted where Wolfe winks at Archie and Archie can't even LOOK at him without BEAMING-- oh, boys.)
CRAMER
Actually lights and smokes his cigar! (Though he chews them as well.)
Also he's still calling Archie "son." Plus, can I just mention, Wolfe/Cramer-y canon moments are kinda rare, but here is a good one-- right after Wolfe gives his giant paragraph-long speech to Cramer, Hombert and Skinner that basically boils down to "YOU ARE IDIOTS PLEASE SIT DOWN" -- Cramer said to Hombert, "Didn't I tell you he was a nut? Let me handle him."
Wolfe nodded solemnly. "That's an idea, Mr. Cramer. You handle me." ...
...........*COUGH*
.... And then at the end of the chapter when Wolfe starts getting DRAMATIC at everyone: "Daylight will serve us better. No more tonight, short of the rack and the thumbscrew. You will hear from me."
Cramer got up too, saying to Hombert, "He's always like this. You might as well stick pins in a rhinoceros."
"He's always like this" n'aaaawwww. :D
Also in regard to the ensemble coming together, there's no Lon Cohen yet, just "Harry Foster of the Gazette." (In McAleer's biography of Stout, iirc, I think he mentions that the introduction of Lon Cohen as a character was a response to a reader's criticism that his ensemble so far was not as diverse as it could be considering its setting, which is true, esp. since Saul isn't as prominent as he would be in later books & kind of gets lost among the crowd of Orrie, Johnny, Fred, Bill, etc.)
WOLFE AND WOMEN
In this book, he has that Lewis-Carroll-style list of things for which women are best-adapted ("chicanery, sophistry, self-adornment, cajolery, mystification and incubation") which seems more like disdain than perturbation,
And, can I just say? POT, KETTLE, BLACK, buddy! Seriously, in terms of being well-suited to a vocation, Wolfe EMBODIES chicanery, sophistry, cajolery and mystification. We certainly know he's not above self-adornment. And if you count the orchids, he's even got "incubation" covered. *g*
Not to mention that, when she's going hysterical after Walsh gets killed, "Wolfe stepped to her and put his hand on her shoulder." !!!
Not only that! At the beginning of Chapter 5, Archie is having breakfast in the kitchen as usual, and Clara Fox has breakfast with Wolfe, IN HIS ROOM. ....!!! Is there any other time in canon when a woman is in WOLFE'S ROOM?
Plus he is really pretty nice to her (in his "tough love" kind of way) when he tells her she's not responsible for Mike Walsh's death. (More on that later.)
ARCHIE AND WOMEN
Okay, so Archie is totally a sexist in a lot of big ways, but there's something really nice about the way he tends to describe women. (On Clara Fox: She had brown hair, neither long nor boyish bob, just a swell lot of careless hair, and her eyes were brown too and you could see at a glance that they would never tell you anything except what she wanted them to.) He clearly thinks Clara Fox is gorgeous, but he doesn't start going on about her *body* in a creepy, ogling way, the way a lot of male mystery authors make their protagonists view & describe women. "Her generous breasts heaved welcomingly at me" blah blah-- and in a *series* character this tends to get even more off-putting with repetition just *because* it's so generic and reductive: there's only so many ways you can say "She was a woman! I stared at her breasts for an entire paragraph! It was awesome!") But instead of observing generic attributes, Archie immediately notices something key about Clara's *personality*, her spirit-- and although he probably *also* notices her body (especially later when she's wearing his dressing gown) he clearly doesn't feel like that's the most important thing to describe about *a person* the first time he sees her. Which is nice.
ARCHIE AND DISSIMULATION
Archie claims not to feel too tetchy, though, despite at one point kicking over his wastebasket
I love it when Archie kicks over his wastebasket. It's just so childish and pointless, especially because we know and *he* knows he's just going to have to pick it back up again; no one's going to do it for him. But sometimes you just have to kick something, and if you're going to, it might as well be something that's going to make a nice satisfying loud noise and fall over, as opposed to kicking, say, the desk and just hurting your toes. I can just *see* Archie standing there, stock still, fuming oh so quietly, and then, POW. "Stupid wastebasket!"
THAT INTIMATE PSYCHIC CONNECTION
MAN THAT'S GOOD STUFF. *whew*
*fanning myself*
My favorite Wolfe/Archie moment is when Archie goes up to bug Wolfe during Orchid Time: ...whenever I interrupted him in the plant rooms he pretended he was Joe Louis in his training camp and I was a boy peeking through the fence. N'AAWWW. I love how in this analogy, even though Archie is telling us about it as if it's something Wolfe does that's ANNOYING (he treats me like a little kid!!) he still can't resist framing the analogy with Wolfe as the champion of the world, and HIMSELF as the adoring little fanboy yearning desperately for just a glimpse of his hero! <3
ASSORTED ADORABLENESS
-- Some of my favorite exclamatory lines from Wolfe:
My personal favorite: "Will you take a message for me to Mr. Cramer? Tell him that Nero Wolfe pronounces him to be a prince of witlings and an unspeakable ass! Pfui!"
* "Great hounds and Cerberus!"
I love it when Wolfe gets dramatic and mythological. To Clara Fox: "And don't be conceited enough to imagine yourself responsible for the death of Michael Walsh. Your meddlings have not entitled you to usurp the fatal dignity of Atropos; don't batter yourself."
It's almost like this is one of Wolfe's pet phrases for Archie or something, given that each time we've heard it it's come from Wolfe first. ♥
It really does have the ring of an in-joke. The thing about Wolfe and Archie and the "past cases" they solve-- it's not just the "past cases" that give a solid sense of these being people with pasts, it's the little interpersonal stuff like that too. The things Archie says, like, "You have forbidden me to use the word louse, so I would say that Muir is an insect..." or, I think it's in "League" when he says "You instructed me never again to tell you to go to hell, so I'll just say... this sucks," or whatever he says. Little stuff like that, past references to previous conversations, etc. I don't know, I feel like these days in a mystery series, all this stuff would be so tightly nailed down-- you'd never get a reference like this unless it was to an *actual conversation* in a previous book, for fear of confusing or frustrating readers.
In this book, Wolfe's and Archie's bedrooms are still mentioned on the same floor: "where he had lived for over twenty years, and I had slept on the same floor with him for eight"--boy, that phrasing is so intimate, it's no wonder the books shortly move Archie up a floor. :D
See also, Archie commenting on Wolfe not liking women: " .... Though I suppose you've changed your mind, now that there's a woman sleeping in your bed--"
"Nonsense. My bed--"
"You own all the beds in this house except mine, don't you? Certainly it's your bed. ...."
AHAHAHAHAAAA. Archie, seriously, you're twelve. "But it's YOUR BED! Your bed that you OWN and she's IN it, therefore, she's a woman and she's IN YOUR BED BRB LOL-ING FOREVER." Also can I just beam helplessly at Archie's traditional BTW, NOT A KEPT MAN!!! interjection, where, no matter how awkwardly he has to jam it into a sentence, he makes sure to remind us that he owns his own furniture, dammit! Archie's Rules of Being Your Own Man-- okay, this is not news to anyone here, but they are so WEIRD. It's totally okay to live in a guy's house and eat his food and drive his car on your personal vacations and errands and cherish his heartfelt and expensive gifts to your bosom-- all that is fine, as long as you make sure to pay for your own furniture!! And Archie did! SO THERE, NOT A KEPT MAN.
I suppose the biggest actual coincidences are either largely-immaterial (Archie talking about Clivers at the beginning because he read about him in the paper) or highlighted as such in the book (Clivers being found over Walsh's body). At least, that's how it seems to me.
Yeah, to me the A and B plot tie together pretty well, and it's explained very reasonably how Coleman-aka-Perry was the cause of both of Clara Fox's seemingly unrelated problems. But the "Marquis found over Mike Walsh's body" thing is just SHAMELESS, especially because it was a reporter from the Gazette who JUST HAPPENED to sneak in and witness everything and get back and write the story and file it for the evening edition and have it printed and distributed *that same night*, within a few hours!! So that Johnny Keems can grab the paper and take it to Wolfe and Archie and that can get the Expository Newspaper Article Flashback and find out what they missed, because otherwise they would never find out. (I guess pre-internet, pre-cellphone journalism was more responsive to current events than I would have assumed, but it's still a pretty massive coincidence.)