Death of a Dude --> Discussion and Spoilers
CharlasThe Black Orchid (A Nero Wolfe Group)
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1etrainer
Started this one last night, but I have just read a few pages. First impression: Something seems different. More 'up to date'? Archie talks about a station wagon. I don't know . . . will see if the impression lasts as I go further.
2AdonisGuilfoyle
Ugh, I hated this book. In fact, if anybody wants a copy, mine is free to a more appreciative bookshelf, as I doubt I would ever read it again!
You're right, something is different, and I didn't care for the change. As a rule, with the exception being A Doorbell Rang, I find the books set in the 1960s and 1970s to be a little crude and indulgent. I will probably get shot down in flames for even daring to suggest that the whole corpus isn't A1, but that's my opinion.
In Dude, all the reader gets is a Rough Guide to Montana care of Stout: the supporting characters are bland, and I couldn't care less who died or why; Wolfe is out of his usual environment, which can get tiring; Archie is rather too serious, and Lily is reduced to a device - on her own ranch, for heaven's sake! I think my main issue is that, bar one or two touching scenes between Wolfe and Archie, Stout expects the story and scenery to carry the story - and they're not up to the task.
Boring.
You're right, something is different, and I didn't care for the change. As a rule, with the exception being A Doorbell Rang, I find the books set in the 1960s and 1970s to be a little crude and indulgent. I will probably get shot down in flames for even daring to suggest that the whole corpus isn't A1, but that's my opinion.
In Dude, all the reader gets is a Rough Guide to Montana care of Stout: the supporting characters are bland, and I couldn't care less who died or why; Wolfe is out of his usual environment, which can get tiring; Archie is rather too serious, and Lily is reduced to a device - on her own ranch, for heaven's sake! I think my main issue is that, bar one or two touching scenes between Wolfe and Archie, Stout expects the story and scenery to carry the story - and they're not up to the task.
Boring.
3etrainer
>2 AdonisGuilfoyle: Interesting! I left the darn book at work yesterday and I am traveling Monday through Friday next week. I don't know if I'll have time to retrieve the book before I leave Monday. If not, I 'll take The Final Deduction with me on the trip. Actually, I'll take both if I can lots of reading time on the plane and at night!
4MrsLee
I started reading Death of a Dude last night. I'm enjoying it so far. I've gotten to chapter 4.
Chapter 2: "I never saw him it's your rope." "Your not my little heifer now, you've dropped a calf." "To hell with it, that trail's grown over."
I was raised on a cattle ranch. Nobody I knew talked like this. It was more likely to be, "Yup" or "Naw", or possibly some unprintable things. Our ranch was in N. California, but the cowboys were as down-to-earth as you could ask for. Does anyone know any real cowboys that talk like this?
Chapter 3: A personal observation/rant on food fads. Archie speaks about the filet mignons and the fact that they had tried the less expensive route of using the beeves raised on the ranch, but it was no good. Now to the fad. I think a lot of ranchers must be laughing up their sleeves at the new trend for grass-fed beef. It's less expensive to raise the cattle that way, but they get to charge a whole lot more. The meat is tough, stringy and oddly flavored. When we raised cattle for slaughter on our ranch, we did raise them on grass, but the last couple of months they were corralled and fed grain. That made the meat tender and tasty.
The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton is available for preview at Google Books. I can't imagine Archie reading the whole book.
I can't help it AdonisGuilfoyle, I love that Wolfe came to Archie because he wanted him back in New York and knew that Archie wouldn't leave unless he had done his best. Also the whole arrival, knowing what that entails to Wolfe, speaks volumes about his regard for Archie.
Chapter 2: "I never saw him it's your rope." "Your not my little heifer now, you've dropped a calf." "To hell with it, that trail's grown over."
I was raised on a cattle ranch. Nobody I knew talked like this. It was more likely to be, "Yup" or "Naw", or possibly some unprintable things. Our ranch was in N. California, but the cowboys were as down-to-earth as you could ask for. Does anyone know any real cowboys that talk like this?
Chapter 3: A personal observation/rant on food fads. Archie speaks about the filet mignons and the fact that they had tried the less expensive route of using the beeves raised on the ranch, but it was no good. Now to the fad. I think a lot of ranchers must be laughing up their sleeves at the new trend for grass-fed beef. It's less expensive to raise the cattle that way, but they get to charge a whole lot more. The meat is tough, stringy and oddly flavored. When we raised cattle for slaughter on our ranch, we did raise them on grass, but the last couple of months they were corralled and fed grain. That made the meat tender and tasty.
The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton is available for preview at Google Books. I can't imagine Archie reading the whole book.
I can't help it AdonisGuilfoyle, I love that Wolfe came to Archie because he wanted him back in New York and knew that Archie wouldn't leave unless he had done his best. Also the whole arrival, knowing what that entails to Wolfe, speaks volumes about his regard for Archie.
5AdonisGuilfoyle
Oh yes, I appreciated that gesture from Wolfe - and Archie tells him, towards the end, that he risks 'losing him' and that that would be a shame, which is very expressive for Archie. But the book as a whole ... Pfft.
6MrsLee
I think I agree with you that some of the chemistry is missing between Wolfe and Archie, and Wolfe seems subdued so far, but I'm taking into account his extreme discomfiture at being displaced. I like Lily in this.
7AdonisGuilfoyle
Lily was in this? ;)
Stout disappointed me with Lily; she was fun and sparky and individual in Caesar, inventive in Not Quite Dead Enough, but in the books after she became nothing more than a device. I call her 'Lily Everywoman', because she is basically Archie's source for culture and connections, outside of Wolfe - she 'adopts' projects like struggling actors and writers, takes Archie to the opera and to her ranch/country house, knows rich people, reads poetry, and likes fishing. She doesn't have a defining quirk to make her 'real' - at least in Not Quite Dead Enough, the story that fans either love or hate, she shows a couple of 'negative' emotions - jealousy and anger, and in her own maverick style! The character I liked in Caesar makes a flash of a return in A Family Affair, with the playful dialogue, but otherwise, she's basically a prop for Archie.
Stout disappointed me with Lily; she was fun and sparky and individual in Caesar, inventive in Not Quite Dead Enough, but in the books after she became nothing more than a device. I call her 'Lily Everywoman', because she is basically Archie's source for culture and connections, outside of Wolfe - she 'adopts' projects like struggling actors and writers, takes Archie to the opera and to her ranch/country house, knows rich people, reads poetry, and likes fishing. She doesn't have a defining quirk to make her 'real' - at least in Not Quite Dead Enough, the story that fans either love or hate, she shows a couple of 'negative' emotions - jealousy and anger, and in her own maverick style! The character I liked in Caesar makes a flash of a return in A Family Affair, with the playful dialogue, but otherwise, she's basically a prop for Archie.
8MrsLee
AG - I guess that's O.K. with me because otherwise she would be serious competition, I like Archie available. :)
Chapter 6 - The vision of Wolfe looking very gay in a red poncho with his face pretty grim, is worth reading the whole book!
Chapter 7 - For me, this trout recipe is overdone. Too much. The best trout I've ever had were always caught by my dad and within an hour they were cleaned, shaken in flour and cayenne, sprinkled with salt, fried in bacon fat until just done, with the head and tail attached. The tails are the best part, crispy goodness. My mom ate the heads, but I couldn't do it.
When Wolfe says "Remarkable" as he tries the Real Montana Trout Deal, is he masking his dislike of it? Archie's remarks make me wonder, and it is vague later on, I can't tell whether he is being sarcastic or serious. Sometimes, when asked my opinion and I would rather not be truthful and hurtful, I will say, "interesting."
I found myself getting indignant at all the talk of forcing the man to marry Alma and people not taking Alma's opinion very seriously. Then I remembered this was written in the late 60's and opinions were very different then. Perhaps it was quite daring for Stout to even write about this subject at that time? I know he brought it up in The Mother Hunt, unwed mothers, but this is pretty specific about sex and the impulses which drive it with teens.
Is the harangue about foul language and censorship just for fun? Or was Stout smarting from not being able to use it in his books?
Chapter 6 - The vision of Wolfe looking very gay in a red poncho with his face pretty grim, is worth reading the whole book!
Chapter 7 - For me, this trout recipe is overdone. Too much. The best trout I've ever had were always caught by my dad and within an hour they were cleaned, shaken in flour and cayenne, sprinkled with salt, fried in bacon fat until just done, with the head and tail attached. The tails are the best part, crispy goodness. My mom ate the heads, but I couldn't do it.
When Wolfe says "Remarkable" as he tries the Real Montana Trout Deal, is he masking his dislike of it? Archie's remarks make me wonder, and it is vague later on, I can't tell whether he is being sarcastic or serious. Sometimes, when asked my opinion and I would rather not be truthful and hurtful, I will say, "interesting."
I found myself getting indignant at all the talk of forcing the man to marry Alma and people not taking Alma's opinion very seriously. Then I remembered this was written in the late 60's and opinions were very different then. Perhaps it was quite daring for Stout to even write about this subject at that time? I know he brought it up in The Mother Hunt, unwed mothers, but this is pretty specific about sex and the impulses which drive it with teens.
Is the harangue about foul language and censorship just for fun? Or was Stout smarting from not being able to use it in his books?
9AdonisGuilfoyle
Re: Stout smarting - I got the feeling, in 'Please Pass the Guilt', that Stout included a passage on the etymology of certain crude words just because he *could*, and if that's the case, I'll take the censorship and Stout's griping every time.
And this is why I can do without the 1960s/1970s-set stories - yes, every generation has its own values and beliefs, but there didn't seem to be the need to harp on about it before the 1960s! And the unnecessary ranting that went on - feminism, civil rights (which shouldn't have been an issue in the first place) - only highlights that nothing very much had changed at the time. Yes, hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I just wish pontificating writers had realised that at the time - ie, the double standard was, and still is, rampant, for all the burning of underwear, and racism is still rife. Stout seemed to use his books as personal soapboxes more as the years went on, and for me, that interferes with the story - a Right to Die, for instance, has Archie protesting his liberal perspective of his fellow Americans, whereas in Too Many Cooks, he is rather bigoted. Either Stout was using his own narrator to highlight the injustices of that era in the first book, or he thought he could perform a politically-correct volte face in the second, and nobody would notice.
And this is why I can do without the 1960s/1970s-set stories - yes, every generation has its own values and beliefs, but there didn't seem to be the need to harp on about it before the 1960s! And the unnecessary ranting that went on - feminism, civil rights (which shouldn't have been an issue in the first place) - only highlights that nothing very much had changed at the time. Yes, hindsight is a wonderful thing, but I just wish pontificating writers had realised that at the time - ie, the double standard was, and still is, rampant, for all the burning of underwear, and racism is still rife. Stout seemed to use his books as personal soapboxes more as the years went on, and for me, that interferes with the story - a Right to Die, for instance, has Archie protesting his liberal perspective of his fellow Americans, whereas in Too Many Cooks, he is rather bigoted. Either Stout was using his own narrator to highlight the injustices of that era in the first book, or he thought he could perform a politically-correct volte face in the second, and nobody would notice.
10etrainer
I'm in Ohio - flying back to fiery California tomorrow morning. I finished The Final Deduction before I left. Death of a Dude is somewhere at work. That will be the final book for me. I don't know if I'm burned out on Stout or what, but I just sort of plodded through Deduction. It was OK. I hope I get more enjoyment out of Dude. We'll see.
11MrsLee
etrainer - Hope you don't live in one of the danger spots of California? I am way up north, it's windy here, but otherwise fine.
12etrainer
Our house is close to the Santiago Fire, but it is moving away from our location. Besides, the fires back in March burned all the fuel near me - except for the houses. The winds were horrible on Sunday. It was as bad as I can remember in the past 30 years.
13wormread
Death of a Dude is one of my least favourite books. It came across as rather stale and staged though there are a few good moments in it. I will not be in a hurry to pick up my copy again.
