Rex Stout Articles and Interviews

The Wolfe Pack Literary Society

ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS

INTERVIEW WITH REX STOUT

BY JOHN & ANDREW MCALEER

Rex Stout discusses the art and craft of writing. Click here to read the article on the McAleer site, www.strandmag.com/.

Rex Stout as a guest on the radio show,
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READING AND WRITING DETECTIVE STORIES by Rex Stout

The following is from Brian on the Yahoo Nero Wolfe Group: "Today, I ran across this article written by Rex Stout. It was printed on the back of a dust jacket for a Gordon Ashe (Creasey) novel called, "The Man Who Laughed at Murder." What the article was doing there is anyone's guess. I wanted to share it with my fellow Wolfenistas-so here it is."

The first detective story I ever read was a five-cent paperbound affair-a daring and ingenious exploit of Old King Brady. That was on Kansas farm half a century ago. I have been reading detective stories off and on ever since, and I still can't decide which is more fun-reading or writing them.

The difference is somewhat the same as the difference between watching a baseball game from the grandstand and getting out on the field and playing. To see, from the grandstand, the shortstop make a brilliant play on a sizzler is a delight; but the short-stop's own delight, though surely as keen as yours, is of quite another sort. Similarly, to read of a detective's daring finesse or ingenious stratagem is a rare joy too (and regrettably rare) when, after prolonged pacing up and down or pressing your forehead against the cool metal of the typewriter frame until your blood has warmed it so that it is no longer cool, the plan of the detective's masterstroke come clear and whole, you lift your head, and your fingers start to hit the keys.

As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. When one of them has a free afternoon the place he is most likely the head for is the nearest ball park, to watch-and not for profit but for fun. Me too; I love a ball game. But if it's evening and I'm home with no urgent chore at hand, and a package of books has come, the television set and the chess board and the unanswered mail will have to manage without me-if one of the books is a detective story. That's for me. As I get settled in my chair and light on the first paragraph, I would swear that reading them is more fun than writing them. But then again."

An Interview with Rex Stout's Biographer, John J. McAleer —
Some Thoughts on Being a Literary Biographer (click to display the interview)

Watson Was a Woman

Maybe. Or so theorizes Rex Stout. Stout first proposed his famous theory that "Watson Was a Woman" at a Baker Street Irregulars meeting in 1941, but his tongue-in-cheek humour did not fare well in that venue. Months later his speech was published in The Saturday Review of Literature, Vol 23, No. 19 (the March 1, 1941 issue), and it has since been widely republished in other Sherlockian collections.

Click here to read the transcribed speech.

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