Flashback Friday: Staying connected

At dinner [Wolfe] started on automation. He has always been anti-machine, and on automation his position was that it would soon make life an absurdity. It was already bad enough; on a cold and windy March day he was eating his evening meal in comfortable warmth, and he had no personal connection whatever with the production of the warmth. The check that paid the oil bill was connected, but he wasn't. Soon, with automation, no one would have any connection with the processes and phenomena that make it possible to stay alive. We would all be parasites, living not on some other living organisms but on machines, arrived at the ultimate ignominy."

- Rex Stout, writing about Nero Wolfe in A Right to Die

Originally published April 18, 2011

Don't move!

L



ongtime readers know my fondness for Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe, whom I've quoted many times at this blog, as well as having praised one of the very best television adaptations over at the TV blog.  It should be no surprise, therefore, that I was attracted to this story at the Weekly Standard on the history of what Benjamin Welton calls "the stationary detective."  Wolfe is, of course, the first name that comes to mind (my mind, anyway) when one thinks of sleuths able to solve crimes without leaving the house, and Welton spends a good deal of this brief article talking about Wolfe, but mentions several other detectives as well.  Mystery fiction is all the rage out there, but if you don't mind going back a few years, I think you'll find that many of the authors Welton discusses are worth your while as well.  Check them out, but read Wolfe first!