For those devoted followers and readers to this blog, you will remember that I had sent out into the ether a little riddle. The riddle can be found in the previous post, to help reduce the rambling. Now, to continue, here is my new piece of work for the series entitled "The Detective Scribbles," and it is the corpulent American amateur detective Nero Wolfe.
For those who do not know of this colossal calculator, Nero Wolfe, here is a brief explanation. The character of Wolfe and his trusty sidekick, Archie Goodwin, came from the brain of one man by the name of Rex Stout, who was, coincidental, an Indiana native (which was a fact I didn't know about until early this summer). Stout, for those interested in his works, was born in Bloomington, Indiana, just a further explanation on the tid-bit of information given. Anyway, back to the character of Nero Wolfe. Wolfe made his first appearance sitting in his brownstone on West 35th street in 1934 in a story called Fer-de-Lance and it was well reviewed as being a work of genius. Since Wolfe's genesis was during a period known as "The Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Wolfe had more eccentricities than you could shack a stick at. For instance, Wolfe, who is described as being "a seventh of a ton" in the stories, is always punctual when it came to his meals, and his meals consisted of only the best cuisine that came from his manservant Fritz Brenner. When Wolfe was having his meals it was made clear that no one, absolutely no one, was to disturb Wolfe during his meals, which almost seems to border on the religious for any character.
Another of Wolfe's eccentricities was his absolute love of orchids. His orchidophile attitude was nearly as religious as his meals, note that I am sure that orchidophile is a severely made-up word. He tended to them as if they were family. Although these are just two of Wolfe's many eccentricities, it is true to form that Wolfe is the American version of Sherlock Holmes.
Speaking of which, you might find small, almost minute, similarities with Stout's Wolfe and Doyle's Holmes. One of which is very prominent, almost "a seventh of a ton" prominent, it is the almost uncanny resemblance to Holmes' brother Mycroft. You could flip through the story of The Greek Interpreter and find some distinct similarities. Both of them are very, very corpulent computers, basically. It is even speculated in some circles that Wolfe is the child of Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes, which could explain the resemblance. Also this could explain the similar amount of syllables in both Holmes' and Wolfe's names. But I shall quit this speculation and try to wrap this up.
To conclude this post I shall recommend that anyone interested in Crime Fiction, especially American Crime Fiction, try to find a copy of one of Rex Stout's analytical detective Nero Wolfe and his trusty sidekick Archie Goodwin, they are certainly entertaining. Click here to go to the wikipedia page about Nero Wolfe and the Wolfe stories.
Both of these drawings, sorry for the abrupt transition, were drawn with an old fashioned dip-pen that I had bought near at the beginning of the summer. I was not qutie sure which Wolfe picture to present on this blog, because I admire this character deeply, so I cut off all deliberation and decided to post both. The one at the beginning of this post was my favorite and most faithful out of the two because of the orchid, but I had accidently put Wolfe smiling, which I found to be odd since he is such a serious character, so this second one here sort of balances it out, I think, but it is a mere speculation. I shall, perhaps put some clues for the next detective in this series before the week's out, mainly because I am still deliberating which detective to draw next. If you, being, hopefully, a faithful audience, have any suggestions, please do leave them in the comment section of this post. Thanks.
Keep a sharp eye out for my next post.
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