Editing Nero Wolfe (section)

==Title character==
{{blockquote|I suggest beginning with autobiographical sketches from each of us, and here is mine. I was born in [[Principality of Montenegro|Montenegro]] and spent my early boyhood there. At the age of sixteen I decided to move around, and in fourteen years I became acquainted with most of Europe, a little of Africa, and much of Asia, in a variety of roles and activities. Coming to this country in nineteen-thirty, not penniless, I bought this house and entered into practice as a private detective. I am a naturalized American citizen.|Nero Wolfe addressing the suspects in "[[Fourth of July Picnic]]" (1957)}}

Although the Nero Wolfe stories take place contemporaneously with their writing and depict a changing landscape and society, the principal characters in the corpus (the term used by Wolfe fandom for the collection of books and stories, as the [[Baker Street Irregulars]] refer to the [[Sherlock Holmes]] tales as "the Canon") [[floating timeline|do not age]]. According to a memo prepared by Rex Stout in 1949, Nero Wolfe's age is 56, although this is not explicitly stated in the stories.{{efn|Rex Stout prepared a confidential memo dated September 14, 1949 to assist the producers of the Sydney Greenstreet radio series ''[[The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe]]''. Under the heading "Description of Nero Wolfe", Stout begins: "Height 5 ft. 11 in. Weight 272 lbs. Age 56."<ref name="McAleer"/>{{Rp|383}}}}<ref name="McAleer" />{{Rp|383}}

"Those stories have ignored time for thirty-nine years," Stout told his authorized biographer, John McAleer. "Any reader who can't or won't do the same should skip them. I didn't age the characters because I didn't want to. That would have made it cumbersome and would seem to have centered attention on the characters rather than the stories."<ref name="Royal Decree">
{{cite book |last=McAleer |first=John J. |date=1983 |title=Royal Decree: Conversations with Rex Stout |location=Ashton, Maryland |publisher=Pontes Press |oclc=11051942 }}</ref>{{Rp|49}}

According to the same memo, Wolfe's height is {{convert|5|ft|11|in|m|abbr=on}} and his weight is {{convert|272|lb|kg|abbr=on}}. Archie Goodwin, the narrator of the stories, frequently describes Wolfe as weighing "a seventh of a ton" (equivalent to about 286 pounds). This was intended to indicate unusual obesity at the time of the first book (1934), especially through the use of the word "ton" as the unit of measure. In a single short story written in 1947, Archie writes, "He weighs between 310 and 390, and he limits his physical movements to what he regards as the irreducible essentials."<ref>{{cite journal |last=Stout |first=Rex |date=April 1947 |title=Before I Die |journal=[[The American Magazine]] |publisher=Crowell Publishing Company |page=158 |title-link=Before I Die (short story) }}</ref>{{efn|In ''[[Too Many Women (novel)|Too Many Women]]'' (1947, chapter 5), Archie estimates Wolfe's weight at close to 340, and in the 1949 short story "Door To Death", his weight is given as a sixth (not a seventh) of a ton, or about 333 pounds. In ''[[In the Best Families]]'' (1953), Wolfe temporarily sheds 117 pounds.}}

"Wolfe's most extravagant distinction is his extreme antipathy to literal extravagance. He will not move," wrote J. Kenneth Van Dover in ''At Wolfe's Door: The Nero Wolfe Novels of Rex Stout'':

{{blockquote|He insists upon the point: under no circumstances will he leave his home or violate his routines in order to facilitate an investigation. The exceptions are few and remarkable. Instead of spreading the principles of order and justice throughout his society, Wolfe imposes them dogmatically and absolutely within the walls of his house—the brownstone on West Thirty-Fifth Street—and he invites those who are troubled by an incomprehensible and threatening environment to enter the controlled economy of the house and to discover there the source of disorder in their own lives.

The invitation is extended to readers as well as to clients.<ref name="Van Dover">{{cite book |last=Van Dover |first=J. Kenneth |date=2003 |title=At Wolfe's Door: The Nero Wolfe Novels of Rex Stout |edition=2nd |location=Rockville, Maryland |publisher=James A. Rock & Company |isbn=0-918736-52-8 }}</ref>{{Rp|2}}}}

Wolfe's most remarkable departure from the brownstone is for personal reasons, not for business, and thus does not violate the rule regarding the conduct of business away from the office. That event occurs in ''[[The Black Mountain (novel)|The Black Mountain]]'', when he leaves not only the brownstone but the United States to avenge the murder of his oldest friend. He abandons his cherished daily habits for a time and, despite his physical bulk, engages in strenuous outdoor activity in mountain terrain.

===Origins===
[[Image:Lovcen-011-p1010050.jpg|thumb|Nero Wolfe and his boyhood friend Marko Vukčić hunted dragonflies in the mountains where Wolfe was born, in the vicinity of [[Lovćen]]]]
{{blockquote|You, gentlemen, are Americans, much more completely than I am, for I wasn't born here. This is your native country. It was you and your brothers, black and white, who let me come here and live, and I hope you'll let me say, without getting maudlin, that I'm grateful to you for it.|Nero Wolfe speaking to the black staff of Kanawha Spa in ''[[Too Many Cooks (novel)|Too Many Cooks]]'' (1938), chapter&nbsp;10}}

The corpus implies or states that Nero Wolfe was born in [[Principality of Montenegro|Montenegro]], with one exception: In the first chapter of ''[[Over My Dead Body (novel)|Over My Dead Body]]'' (1939), Wolfe tells an [[FBI]] agent that he was born in the United States – a declaration at odds with all other references. Stout revealed the reason for the discrepancy in a 1940 letter cited by his authorized biographer, John McAleer: "In the original draft of ''[[Over My Dead Body (novel)|Over My Dead Body]]'' Nero was a Montenegrin by birth, and it all fitted previous hints as to his background; but violent protests from ''[[The American Magazine]]'', supported by Farrar & Rinehart, caused his cradle to be transported five thousand miles."<ref name=McAleer/>{{Rp|403}}{{efn|See also ''[[Over My Dead Body (novel)#Plot introduction|Over My Dead Body]]''.}}

"I got the idea of making Wolfe a Montenegrin from [[Louis Adamic]]," Stout said, noting that everything he knew about [[Montenegrins]] he learned from Adamic's book, ''The Native's Return'' (1934), or from Adamic himself.<ref name=McAleer/>{{Rp|278}}

:"Adamic describes the Montenegrin male as tall, commanding, dignified, courteous, hospitable," McAleer wrote. "He is reluctant to work, accustomed to isolation from women. He places women in a subordinate role. He is a romantic idealist, apt to go in for dashing effects to express his spirited nature. He is strong in family loyalties, has great pride, is impatient of restraint. Love of freedom is his outstanding trait. He is stubborn, fearless, unsubduable, capable of great self-denial to uphold his ideals. He is fatalistic toward death. In short, Rex had found for Wolfe a nationality that fitted him to perfection."<ref name=McAleer/>{{Rp|403}}

Wolfe is reticent about his youth, but apparently he was athletic, fit, and adventurous. In the earliest novels, Wolfe had been living in the brownstone on West Thirty-Fifth Street since about 1914, but in later novels this chronology is [[retconned]] away and Wolfe did not arrive in the US until 1930.  Before [[World War I]], he spied for the [[Austria-Hungary|Austrian government]]'s [[Evidenzbureau]], but had a change of heart when the war began. He then joined the [[Kingdom of Serbia|Serbian]]-[[Kingdom of Montenegro|Montenegrin]] army and [[Serbian Campaign (World War I)|fought against the Austrians and Germans]]. That means that he was likely to have been involved in the harrowing 1915 withdrawal of the defeated Serbian army, when thousands of soldiers died from disease, starvation, and sheer exhaustion{{efn|
"I starved to death in 1916," Wolfe states in the first chapter of ''[[Over My Dead Body (novel)|Over My Dead Body]]''. "When the Austrians came and we fought machine guns with fingernails. Logically I was dead; a man can't live on dry grass. Actually I went on breathing. When the United States entered the war and I walked six hundred miles to join the [[American Expeditionary Forces|A.E.F.]], I ate again."
}}
– which might help to explain the comfort-loving habits that are such a conspicuous part of Wolfe's character. He joined the [[American Expeditionary Forces]], and after a time in Europe and North Africa, he came to the United States.

====Influences====
According to John J. McAleer, Rex Stout's official biographer, during his stint in the Navy, Stout came into contact with [[Alvey A. Adee]], who was a major influence on Stout's creation of Nero Wolfe. Adee was a scholar, sleuth, gourmet, bachelor, a model of efficiency, a master of the English language, and is said to have inspired the characterization of Wolfe. Other than Adee, Rex Stout's maternal grandmother, Emily Todhunter, who was obese requiring a special chair and was addicted to atlases, dictionaries and flowers, as well as an omnivorous reader, served as a model.<ref>{{cite web |first=John J. |last=McAleer |date=1977 |title=Rex Stout: A biography |url=https://silo.pub/rex-stout-a-biography.html |access-date=2023-01-10 |website=silo.pub |lang=en |quote=The linked website states that John J. McAleer is John McAleer Theodore Dreiser’s pseudonym.}}</ref>

For Archie, Chief A.G Goodwin, an officer who recovered Rex Stout's stolen record collection, served as a model.<ref name=McAleer/>

====Suppositions====
In 1956, [[John Drury Clark|J. D. Clark]] theorized in an article in ''[[The Baker Street Journal]]'' that [[Sherlock Holmes]] and [[Irene Adler]] (a character from "[[A Scandal in Bohemia]]") had an affair in Montenegro in 1892, and that Nero Wolfe was the result. The idea was later co-opted by [[William S. Baring-Gould|W. S. Baring-Gould]] and implied in the novels of [[Nicholas Meyer]] and [[John Lescroart]], but there is no evidence that Rex Stout had any such connection in mind. Certainly there is no mention of it in any of the stories, although a painting of Sherlock Holmes does hang over Archie Goodwin's desk in Nero Wolfe's office. Some commentators note both physical and psychological resemblances and suggest Sherlock's brother [[Mycroft Holmes]] as a more likely father for Wolfe. Commentators have noted a coincidence in the names "Sherlock Holmes" and "Nero Wolfe": The same vowels appear in the same order. In 1957, [[Ellery Queen]] called this "The great O-E theory" and suggested that it was derived from the father of mysteries, [[Edgar Allan Poe]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Queen |first=Ellery |author-link=Ellery Queen |year=1957 |title=In the Queens' Parlor |location=New York, NY |publisher=[[Simon & Schuster]] |pages=4–5 |oclc=2628466 }}</ref> The only mention of Wolfe's mother in Stout's stories is in the first novel, ''Fer-de-Lance'' (1935), in which it is stated that she lives in [[Budapest]] and Wolfe sends her a monthly check.

Some [[Wold Newton family|Wold Newton]] theorists have suggested the French thief [[Arsène Lupin]] as the father of Nero Wolfe. They note that in one story Lupin has an affair with the queen of a Balkan principality, which may be Montenegro by another name. Further, they note that the name Lupin resembles the French word for wolf, ''loup''.<ref>
{{cite web
  | last = Ruaud | first = A.-F.
  | year = 2002 
  | title = Arsène Lupin: A Timeline
  | website = Cool French Comics
  | url = http://www.coolfrenchcomics.com/arsenelupintimeline.htm
  | access-date = 2007-11-16
}}
</ref>

===Brownstone===
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{{blockquote|I rarely leave my house. I do like it here. I would be an idiot to leave this chair, made to fit me —|Nero Wolfe in "[[Before I Die (short story)|Before I Die]]" (1947), chapter 2}}

Wolfe has expensive tastes, living in a comfortable and luxurious New York City [[brownstone]] on the south side of West 35th Street. The brownstone has three floors plus a large basement with living quarters, a rooftop greenhouse also with living quarters, and a small elevator, used almost exclusively by Wolfe. Other unique features include a timer-activated window-opening device that regulates the temperature in Wolfe's bedroom, an alarm system that sounds a gong in Archie's room if someone approaches Wolfe's bedroom door or windows, and climate-controlled plant rooms on the top floor. Wolfe is a well-known amateur [[orchid]] grower and has 10,000 plants in the brownstone's greenhouse. He employs three live-in staff to see to his needs: Archie Goodwin (assistant), Fritz Brenner (chef), and Theodore Horstmann (orchidist).

The front door is equipped with a chain bolt, a bell that can be shut off as needed, and a pane of [[two-way mirror|one-way glass]], which enables Archie to see who is on the [[Stoop (architecture)|stoop]] before deciding whether to open the door.{{efn|In most of the corpus, it is seven steps from the sidewalk to the stoop (for example, "[[The Squirt and the Monkey]]"; ''[[Before Midnight (novel)|Before Midnight]]'', chapter 5; ''[[Might as Well Be Dead]]'', chapter 2; ''[[A Family Affair (novel)|A Family Affair]]'', chapter 3), but it is eight steps in "[[Booby Trap (novella)|Booby Trap]]", chapter 5.}} The front room is used as a waiting area for visitors while Archie informs Wolfe of their arrival, and also as a place for Archie to hide one visitor from another.

Wolfe's bedroom is on the second floor of the brownstone, and Archie's is on the third. Each of these floors also includes one spare bedroom, used on occasion to house a variety of clients, witnesses, and sometimes even culprits. Wolfe takes pride in being able to offer such assistance and once remarked, "The guest is a jewel resting on the cushion of hospitality".<ref>''[[Too Many Cooks (novel)|Too Many Cooks]]'', chapter 6.</ref>

Wolfe's office becomes nearly soundproof when the doors connecting it to the front room and the hallway are closed. There is a [[Peephole|small hole in the office wall]] covered by what Archie calls a "trick picture of a waterfall".<ref>''[[The Doorbell Rang]]'', chapter 13. According to chapter 16 of ''[[Too Many Clients]]'', the picture measures 14 by 17 inches.</ref> A person in an alcove at the end of the hallway can open a sliding panel covering the hole, so as to see and hear conversations and other events in the office without being noticed. The chair behind Wolfe's desk is custom-built, with special springs to hold his weight; according to Archie, it is the only chair that Wolfe really enjoys sitting in.{{efn|Wolfe has another chair in the bedroom that is nearly as good as the one in the office. In "[[Help Wanted, Male]]" (chapter 5) it is called his "number two chair".}} Near the desk is a large chair upholstered in red leather, which is usually reserved for Inspector Cramer, a current or prospective client, or the person whom Wolfe and Archie want to question. In the short story "[[The Squirt and the Monkey]]", Wolfe and Archie have a hidden tape recorder and microphone installed in the office, with controls in the kitchen. In the story "[[Eeny Meeny Murder Mo]]", the system is modified to transmit sound to a speaker in the front room.

The brownstone has a back entrance leading to a private garden, as noted in ''[[Champagne for One]]'' (chapter 10) and elsewhere, from which a passage leads to 34th Street—used to enter or leave Wolfe's home when it is necessary to evade surveillance. Archie says that Fritz tries to grow herbs such as chives in the garden.

"That readers have proved endlessly fascinated with the topography of Wolfe's brownstone temple should not be surprising", wrote J. Kenneth Van Dover in ''At Wolfe's Door'':

<blockquote>It is the center from which moral order emanates, and the details of its layout and its operations are signs of its stability. For forty years, Wolfe prepares menus with Fritz and pots orchids with Theodore. For forty years, Archie takes notes at his desk, the client sits in the red chair and the other principals distribute themselves in the yellow chairs, and Wolfe presides from his custom-made throne. For forty years, Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Purley Stebbins ring the doorbell, enter the office, and explode with indignation at Wolfe's intractability. The front room, the elevator, the three-foot globe—all persist in place through forty years of American history. ... Like Holmes's 221B Baker Street, Wolfe's West Thirty-Fifth Street remains a fixed point in a turning world.<ref name="Van Dover"/>{{Rp|3}}</blockquote>

In the course of the books, ten different street addresses are given on West 35th Street:
* 506 in ''[[Over My Dead Body (novel)|Over My Dead Body]]'', chapter 12
* 618 in ''[[Too Many Clients]]'', chapter 4
* 902 in ''[[Murder by the Book]]'', chapter 7
* 909 in ''[[Before I Die (short story)|Before I Die]]'', chapter 10
* 914 in ''[[Too Many Women (novel)|Too Many Women]]'', chapter 24
* 918 in ''[[The Red Box]]'', chapter 3
* 919 in ''[[The Silent Speaker]]'', chapter 12
* 922 in ''[[The Silent Speaker]],'' chapter 2
* 924 in ''[[Man Alive (short story)|Man Alive]]'', chapter 9
* 938 in ''[[Death of a Doxy]]'', chapter 4{{efn|[[Ken Darby]] identifies the ten brownstone addresses and additional stories in which they appear. The most frequently used address for Nero Wolfe's residence is 918 West 35th Street—the address that Darby found in ''[[The Red Box]]'', ''[[And Be a Villain]]'', "[[The Next Witness]]" and "[[Method Three for Murder]]".<ref name="Darby">{{cite book |last=Darby |first=Ken |author-link=Ken Darby |date=1983 |title=The Brownstone House of Nero Wolfe |location=Boston and Toronto |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |isbn=0-316-17280-4 |url=https://archive.org/details/brownstonehouseo00darb }}</ref>{{Rp|9}}}}

"Curiously, the 900 block of West 35th Street would be in the Hudson River", wrote American writer [[Randy Cohen]], who created a map of the literary stars' homes for ''[[The New York Times]]'' in 2005. "It's a non-address, the real estate equivalent of those [[555 (telephone number)|555 telephone numbers]] used in movies." Cohen settled on 922 West 35th Street—the address printed on Archie's business card in ''The Silent Speaker''—as Nero Wolfe's address.<ref>{{cite news |last=Cohen |first=Randy |author-link=Randy Cohen |date=May 1, 2005 |title=We'll Map Manhattan |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/books/review/well-map-manhattan.html |newspaper=The New York Times  |access-date=2015-10-31 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Cohen |first=Randy |date=June 5, 2005 |title=We Mapped Manhattan |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/books/review/we-mapped-manhattan.html |newspaper=The New York Times  |access-date=2015-10-31 }}</ref> On the "Literary Map of Manhattan", the brownstone is numbered 58 and is placed in the middle of the Hudson River.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Cohen |first1=Randy |last2=Holmes  |first2=Nigel |date=June 5, 2005 |title=A Literary Map of Manhattan |url=https://www.nytimes.com/packages/khtml/2005/06/05/books/20050605_BOOKMAP_GRAPHIC.html |newspaper=The New York Times  |access-date=2015-10-31 }}</ref>

It is described in the opening chapter of ''[[The Second Confession]]'' as being on West Thirty-Fifth Street "nearly to 11th Avenue", which would put it in the 500 block.

Writing as Archie Goodwin, [[Ken Darby]] suggests that "the actual location was on East 22nd Street in the [[Gramercy Park]] District. ... Wolfe merely moved us, fictionally, from one place to the other in order to preserve his particular brand of privacy. As far as ''I'' can discover, there never ''were'' brownstone houses on West 35th Street."<ref name="Darby"/>{{Rp|8}}{{efn|Stout was playfully erratic about details in the stories. Besides the varying street addresses, he retained minor inconsistencies, and catching them is one of the pleasures of readers of the Nero Wolfe stories. Inspector Cramer's first name, rarely invoked, was originally Fergus, and later modified to L.T. Wolfe's attorney Nathaniel Parker was also known as Henry Parker and Henry Barber. An assistant district attorney was either Mandel or Mandelbaum. The same surnames are assigned to supporting characters in different stories: Jarrett, Jaret, Jarrell, Dykes, Annis, Avery, Bowen, Yerkes, Whipple and others.}}

The absence of brownstones in Wolfe's neighborhood sent television producers to the Upper West Side of Manhattan for an appropriate home and setting for select exterior shots, used in the [[A&E Network|A&E]] TV series ''[[Nero Wolfe (2001 TV series)|Nero Wolfe]]''. This Manhattan brownstone lacked some peculiarities of Wolfe's home, unlike the model specially constructed on the Toronto set where most of the series was filmed{{efn|"And Hutton, bless him, took pains to make sure that the stoop, meticulously recreated in a freezing Ontario warehouse soundstage really did have seven steps", reported Martin Sieff of [[United Press International]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Sieff |first=Martin |date=December 25, 2001 |title=Happy Christmas, Santa Wolfe |url=http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2001/12/25/Happy_Christmas_Santa_Wolfe/UPI-97501009257337/ |newspaper=[[United Press International]] |access-date=2015-10-31 }}</ref>}}—for example, the correct number of steps leading up to the stoop. It was, therefore, shown from angles that would camouflage any slight discrepancies.{{efn|WireImage (image numbers 253302 – 253308) and [[Getty Images]] (image number 1302172) document the location photography directed by Timothy Hutton on October 15, 2000, also seen in the A&E documentary ''The Making of Nero Wolfe''.}} The series settled on "914" for the brownstone's address. This number can be seen on the studio set representing the front door exterior in several episodes and on a closeup of Archie's paycheck in "[[Prisoner's Base#A Nero Wolfe Mystery (A&E Network)|Prisoner's Base]]".

===Food===
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{{blockquote|Once he burned up a cookbook because it said to remove the hide from a ham end before putting it in the pot with lima beans. Which he loves most, food or words, is a tossup.|Archie Goodwin in ''[[Gambit (novel)|Gambit]]'' (1962), chapter 1}}

Good food is a keystone (along with reading) of Wolfe's mostly leisured existence. He is both a gourmand and a gourmet, enjoying generous helpings of Fritz's cuisine three times a day. [[Shad]] [[roe]] is a particular favorite, prepared in a number of different ways. Archie enjoys his food but lacks Wolfe's discerning palate, lamenting in ''[[The Final Deduction]]'' (chapter 9) that "Every spring I get so fed up with shad roe that I wish to heaven fish would figure out some other way. Whales [[Mammal|have]]." Shad roe is frequently the first course, followed by roasted or braised duck, another Wolfe favorite.

Archie also complains that there is never corned beef or rye bread on Wolfe's table, and he sometimes ducks out to eat a corned beef sandwich at a nearby diner. Yet a young woman gives Wolfe a lesson in preparing corned beef hash in "[[Cordially Invited to Meet Death]]". Another contradiction is found in ''[[Plot It Yourself]]'' when Archie goes to a diner to eat "fried chicken like my Aunt Margie used to make it back in Ohio", since Fritz does not fry chicken. But in ''[[The Golden Spiders]]'', Fritz prepares fried chicken for Wolfe, Archie, Saul, Orrie, and Fred.

Wolfe displays an [[oenophile]]'s knowledge of wine and brandy, but it is only implied that he drinks either. In ''[[And Be a Villain]]'' (chapter 17), he issues a dinner invitation and regrets doing so on short notice: "There will not be time to chambrer a claret properly, but we can have the chill off." Continuing the invitation, Wolfe says of a certain brandy, "I hope this won't shock you, but the way to do it is to sip it with bites of Fritz's apple pie."

On weekdays, Fritz serves Wolfe his breakfast in his bedroom. Archie eats his separately in the kitchen, although Wolfe might ask Fritz to send Archie upstairs if he has morning instructions for him. Regularly scheduled mealtimes for lunch and dinner are part of Wolfe's daily routine. In an early story, Wolfe tells a guest that luncheon is served daily at 1 p.m. and dinner at 8 p.m., although later stories suggest that lunchtime may have been changed to 1:15 or 1:30, at least on Fridays. Lunch and dinner are served in the dining room, on the opposite side of the first-floor hallway from the front room and the office. However, Archie will eat separately in the kitchen if he is in a rush due to pressing business or a social engagement, because Wolfe cannot bear to see a meal rushed. Wolfe also has a rule against discussing business at the table, sometimes bent but very rarely overtly broken.

In the earliest books, Archie reports that Wolfe is subject to what he terms a "relapse"—a period of several days during which Wolfe refuses to work or even to listen to Archie badger him about work. The cause is unknown. Wolfe either takes to bed and eats nothing but bread and onion soup, or else he consults with Fritz on menus and the preparation of nonstop meals. In ''[[Fer-de-Lance (novel)|Fer-de-Lance]]'' (chapter 6), Archie reports that, during a relapse, Wolfe once ate half a sheep in two days, different parts cooked in 20 different ways. The relapse also appears briefly in ''[[The League of Frightened Men]]'' (chapter 11), ''[[The Red Box]]'' (chapter 6), and ''[[Where There's a Will (novel)|Where There's a Will]]'' (chapter 12), but subsequently disappears from the corpus as a plot device—possibly because Archie eventually discovered how to shut down a relapse during its earliest stages, as chronicled in ''The Red Box''.

Wolfe views much of life through the prism of food and dining, going so far as to say that [[Voltaire]] "... wasn't a man at all, since he had no palate and a dried-up stomach."<ref>''[[Gambit (novel)|Gambit]]'', chapter 8.</ref> He knows enough about fine cuisine to lecture on American cooking to Les Quinze Maîtres (a group of the 15 finest chefs in the world) in ''[[Too Many Cooks (novel)|Too Many Cooks]]'' and to dine with the Ten for [[Aristology]] (a group of epicures) in "[[Poison à la Carte]]". Wolfe does not, however, enjoy visiting restaurants (with the occasional exception of Rusterman's, owned for a time by Wolfe's best friend Marko Vukčić and later subject to Wolfe's trusteeship). In ''[[The Red Box]]'' (chapter 11), Wolfe states, "I know nothing of restaurants; short of compulsion, I would not eat in one were [[François Vatel|Vatel]] himself the chef."

Wolfe appears to know his way around the kitchen; in ''[[Too Many Cooks (novel)|Too Many Cooks]]'' (chapter 17), he tells Jerome Berin, "I spend quite a little time in the kitchen myself." In ''[[The Doorbell Rang]]'', he offers to cook [[Yorkshire Buck]] and, in "[[Immune to Murder]]", the State Department asks him to prepare [[trout Montbarry]] for a visiting dignitary. In ''[[The Black Mountain (novel)|The Black Mountain]]'', Wolfe and Goodwin stay briefly in an unoccupied house in Italy on their way to Montenegro; Wolfe prepares [[Tagliarini|a pasta dish]] using [[Romano cheese]] that, from "his memory of local custom", he finds in a hole in the ground. During the short story "[[Murder Is Corny]]", he lectures Inspector Cramer on the right and wrong ways to cook corn on the cob, insisting that it must be roasted rather than boiled in order to achieve the best flavor. (The 1940 story "[[Bitter End (novella)|Bitter End]]" suggests the contrary view that Wolfe was unable to prepare his own meals; Fritz's illness with the flu causes a household crisis and forces Wolfe to resort to canned liver pâté for his lunch.)

Wolfe's meals generally include an appetizer, a main course, a salad served after the entrée (with the salad dressing mixed at tableside and used immediately), and a dessert course with coffee. (After-dinner coffee, however, is often taken by Wolfe and Archie in the office rather than the dining room.)

Many of the dishes referred to in the various Nero Wolfe stories and novels were collected and published, complete with recipes, as ''The Nero Wolfe Cookbook'' by Rex Stout and the Editors of the Viking Press, published in 1973. All recipes are prefaced with a brief excerpt from the book or story that made reference to that particular dish.

===Beer===
[[Image:Wolfe-NWM-Opener.jpg|right|thumb|Gold plated bottle opener from the A&E TV series ''[[Nero Wolfe (2001 TV series)|Nero Wolfe]]'']]
{{blockquote|[Fritz] served Wolfe's beer first, the bottle unopened because that's a rule, and Wolfe got his opener from the drawer, a gold one Marko Vukcic had given him that didn't work very well.|Archie Goodwin in ''[[The Father Hunt]]'' (1968), chapter 5}}

Nero Wolfe's first recorded words are, "Where's the beer?"

The first novel, ''[[Fer-de-Lance (novel)|Fer-de-Lance]]'', introduces Wolfe as he prepares to change his habits. With [[Prohibition in the United States|Prohibition]] at an end, he can stop buying kegs of [[rum-running|bootleg]] beer and purchase it legally in bottles. Fritz brings in samples of 49 different brands for him to evaluate, from which he ultimately selects Remmers as his favorite. Several times during the story, Wolfe announces his intention to reduce his beer intake from six quarts a day to five. "I grinned at that, for I didn't believe it", Archie Goodwin writes.<ref>''[[Fer-de-Lance (novel)|Fer-de-Lance]]'', chapter 1.</ref>

Like most other things in Wolfe's life, his beer drinking is bound by ritual. Seated at his desk, Wolfe presses the button twice to ring for beer, and Fritz delivers the bottles unopened; Wolfe uncaps the bottles himself, using an 18-karat gold bottle opener given to him by a satisfied client.<ref>''[[Prisoner's Base]]'', chapter 2; ''[[In the Best Families]]'', chapter 2. Marko Vukcic engaged Wolfe in "[[Omit Flowers]]".</ref> He never drinks directly from the bottle, but instead pours the beer into a glass and lets the foam settle to an appropriate level before drinking. He keeps the gold opener in the center drawer of his desk, where he also keeps the bottlecaps as a means of tracking his daily/weekly consumption.

In ''[[Plot It Yourself]]'' (chapter 13), Wolfe makes an unprecedented vow after Archie tells him the killer they seek has killed again. Wolfe hits the desk with his fist, bellows in a language Archie does not understand, then coldly orders Fritz away when he enters with the beer: "Take it back. I shall drink no beer until I get my fingers around that creature's throat. And I shall eat no meat."

===Reading===
{{blockquote|Wolfe was drinking beer and looking at pictures of snowflakes in a book someone had sent him from Czechoslovakia. ... Looking at him, I said to myself, "He's in a battle with the elements. He's fighting his way through a raging blizzard, just sitting there comfortably looking at pictures of snowflakes. That's the advantage of being an artist, of having imagination." I said aloud, "You mustn't go to sleep, sir, it's fatal. You freeze to death."|Archie Goodwin in ''[[The League of Frightened Men]]'' (1935), chapter 1}}

Reading is central to Nero Wolfe's life, and books are central to the plots of many of the stories. The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining Wolfe's office contain some 1,200 books (''[[Gambit (novel)|Gambit]]'', chapter 6)—the size of Stout's own library.<ref name="McAleer"/>{{Rp|252}}

In the first paragraph of ''[[Plot It Yourself]]'', Archie relates his own method of grading what Wolfe is reading, on a scale from A to D. If Wolfe picks up a book before he rings for beer, and if he has marked his place with a thin strip of gold given to him by a grateful client, the book is an A. "I haven't kept score, but I would say that of the two hundred or so books he reads in a year not more than five or six get an A," Archie writes. In ''[[The Red Box]]'' (chapter 12), Wolfe uses a thin strip of ebony to mark his place as he re-reads ''[[Seven Pillars of Wisdom]]''. Archie indicates in various stories that Wolfe prefers to finish a paragraph before acknowledging an interruption in his reading. He often dog-ears a page to mark his place.

====Select reading list====
[[William S. Baring-Gould]]'s summary of Wolfe's library<ref>{{cite book |last=Baring-Gould |first=William S. |author-link=William S. Baring-Gould |date=1969 |title=Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-fifth Street |url=https://archive.org/details/nerowolfeofwestt00bari |url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=Viking Press |pages=[https://archive.org/details/nerowolfeofwestt00bari/page/171 171–175] |isbn=0-14-006194-0}}</ref> was incorporated with contributions from others into an annotated reading list created by Winnifred Louis.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nerowolfe.org/htm/tidbits/Wolfe_erudition.htm#a_la |title=The Erudite Nero Wolfe |publisher=[[The Wolfe Pack]] |access-date=2015-10-31}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.oocities.org/wrlouis/wolfe_rl.html#a_ar |title=Wolfe's Reading List |last1=Louis |first1=Winnifred |date=February 3, 2001 |website=Merely a Genius |access-date=2015-10-31}}</ref>
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Author
! Title
! Reference in Nero Wolfe corpus
! class="unsortable" | Chapter
|-
| {{sortname|Louis|Adamic}}
| ''{{sortname|The|Native's Return|nolink=1}}''
| ''{{sortname|The|League of Frightened Men}}''
| 2
|-
| {{sortname|Robert|Ardrey}}
| ''[[African Genesis]]'' 
| ''[[Gambit (novel)|Gambit]]''
| 3
|-
| {{sortname|Lincoln|Barnett}}
| ''{{sortname|The|Treasure of Our Tongue|nolink=1}}''
| ''{{sortname|The|Doorbell Rang}}''
| 4
|-
| {{sortname|Jacques|Barzun}}
| ''Science: The Glorious Entertainment'' 
| ''{{sortname|A|Right to Die}}''
| 11
|-
| {{sortname|Franz|Boas}}
| Autographed copies
| ''[[Too Many Cooks (novel)|Too Many Cooks]]''
| 10
|-
| {{sortname|Lyman|Bryson}}
| ''{{sortname|An|Outline of Man's Knowledge of the Modern World|nolink=1}}''
| ''[[Too Many Clients]]''
| 5
|-
| {{sortname|Albert|Camus}}
| ''{{sortname|The|Fall|The Fall (Camus novel)}}''
| "[[Fourth of July Picnic]]"
| 5
|-
| {{sortname|John Roy|Carlson|Arthur Derounian}}
| ''Under Cover'' 
| "[[Booby Trap (novella)|Booby Trap]]"
| 4
|-
| {{sortname|Rachel|Carson}}
| ''[[Silent Spring]]'' 
| ''{{sortname|The|Mother Hunt}}''
| 7
|-
| {{sortname|Bruce|Catton}}
| ''{{sortname|The|Coming Fury|nolink=1}}''
| "[[Murder Is Corny]]"
| 6
|-
| {{sortname|Bruce|Catton|nolink=1}}
| ''Grant Takes Command'' 
| ''[[Please Pass the Guilt]]''
| 2
|-
| {{sortname|Grenville|Clark}} and [[Louis B. Sohn]] 
| ''[[World Peace Through World Law]]'' 
| ''[[Champagne for One]]''
| 7
|-
| {{sortname|Fred J.|Cook}}
| ''{{sortname|The|FBI Nobody Knows|nolink=1}}''
| ''{{sortname|The|Doorbell Rang|nolink=1}}''
| 1
|-
| {{sortname|Elmer|Davis}}
| ''But We Were Born Free'' 
| ''{{sortname|The|Black Mountain|The Black Mountain (novel)}}''
| 3
|-
| {{sortname|Clifton|Fadiman}}
| ''Party of One'' 
| ''[[Before Midnight (novel)|Before Midnight]]''
| 12
|-
| {{sortname|John|Gunther}}
| ''Inside Europe'' 
| ''[[Too Many Cooks (novel)|Too Many Cooks]]''
| 1
|-
| {{sortname|John|Gunther|nolink=1}}
| ''Inside Russia Today'' 
| "[[Method Three for Murder]]"
| 1
|-
| {{sortname|Lancelot|Hogben}}
| ''Mathematics for the Million''
| "[[The Zero Clue]]"
| 7
|-
| {{sortname|Rudyard|Kipling}}
| ''{{sortname|The|Jungle Book}}''
| ''[[Death of a Doxy]]''
| 9
|-
| {{sortname|Arthur|Koestler}}
| ''{{sortname|The|Lotus and the Robot}}''
| ''{{sortname|The|Final Deduction}}''
| 2
|-
| {{sortname|William|Kunstler}}
| ''{{sortname|The|Minister and the Choir Singer|nolink=1}}''
| ''{{sortname|A|Right to Die|nolink=1}}''
| 8
|-
| {{sortname|Christopher|La Farge|Christopher La Farge (author)}}
| ''Beauty for Ashes'' 
| ''Before Midnight''
| 9
|-
| {{sortname|Christopher|La Farge|nolink=1}}
| ''The Sudden Guest'' 
| ''[[Too Many Women (novel)|Too Many Women]]''
| 16
|-
| {{sortname|T. E.|Lawrence}}
| ''[[Seven Pillars of Wisdom]]'' 
| ''{{sortname|The|Red Box}}''
| 12
|-
| {{sortname|Walter|Lord}}
| ''Incredible Victory'' 
| ''{{sortname|The|Father Hunt}}''
| 2
|-
| {{sortname|C. I.|Lewis|Clarence Irving Lewis}}
| ''{{sortname|A|Survey of Symbolic Logic|nolink=1}}''
| ''Too Many Women''
| 16
|-
| {{sortname|Merle|Miller}}
| ''{{sortname|A|Secret Understanding|nolink=1}}''
| ''[[Might as Well Be Dead]]''
| 8
|-
| {{sortname|Michel de|Montaigne}}
| ''[[Essays (Montaigne)|Essays]]'' 
| ''Before Midnight''
| 19
|-
| {{sortname|Louis|Nizer}}
| ''[[My Life in Court]]'' 
| "Murder Is Corny"
| 5
|-
| {{sortname|Dan|Rather}} and Gary Gates
| ''{{sortname|The|Palace Guard|nolink=1}}''
| ''{{sortname|A|Family Affair|A Family Affair (novel)}}''
| 2
|-
| {{sortname|A. L.|Rowse}}
| ''William Shakespeare: A Biography'' 
| ''{{sortname|A|Right to Die|nolink=1}}''
| 3
|-
| {{sortname|Walter|Schneir}} and Miriam Schneir
| ''Invitation to an Inquest'' 
| ''Death of a Doxy''
| 2
|-
| {{sortname|William L.|Shirer}}
| ''{{sortname|The|Rise and Fall of the Third Reich}}''
| "[[Kill Now—Pay Later]]"
| 3
|-
| {{sortname|Alexander|Solzhenitsyn|Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn}}
| ''{{sortname|The|First Circle|In the First Circle}}''
| ''[[Death of a Dude]]''
| 7
|-
| {{sortname|John|Steinbeck}}
| ''[[Travels with Charley]]'' 
| ''{{sortname|The|Mother Hunt|nolink=1}}''
| 3
|-
| {{sortname|Ivan|Turgenev}}
| Stories
| ''Please Pass the Guilt''
| 14
|-
| {{sortname|Mark|Van Doren}}
| Poetry
| ''[[And Be a Villain]]''
| 1
|}

===Orchids===
 {{multiple image
<!-- Essential parameters -->
| align     = right
| direction = vertical
| width     = 220
<!-- Image 1 -->
| image1    = Wolfe-NWM-Orchid.jpg
| alt1      =
| caption1  = Silk orchid prop from A&E TV's ''[[Nero Wolfe (2001 TV series)|Nero Wolfe]]''
<!-- Image 2 -->
| image2    = White Orchid.jpg
| alt2      =
| caption2  = ''[[Phalaenopsis]]'' hybrid
}}
{{blockquote|Wolfe had once remarked to me that the orchids were his concubines: insipid, expensive, parasitic and temperamental. He brought them, in their diverse forms and colors, to the limits of their perfection, and then gave them away; he had never sold one.|Archie Goodwin in ''[[The League of Frightened Men]]'' (1935), chapter 2}}
Known for rigidly maintaining his personal schedule, Nero Wolfe is most inflexible when it comes to his routine in the rooftop plant rooms. Ever day except Sunday, from 9:00 to 11:00 in the morning, and from 4:00 to 6:00 in the afternoon, he looks after his orchid collection alongside his employee Theodore Horstmann, the "best orchid nurse alive".  (Horstmann himself is said to spend up to 12 hours a day in the plant rooms.)

"Wolfe spends four hours a day with his orchids. Clients must accommodate themselves to this schedule", wrote Rex Stout's biographer John J. McAleer. "Rex does not use the orchid schedule to gloss over gummy plotting. Like the disciplines the sonneteer is bound by, the schedule is part of the framework he is committed to work within. The orchids and the orchid rooms sometimes are focal points in the stories. They are never irrelevant. In forty years Wolfe has scarcely ever shortened an orchid schedule."<ref name="McAleer"/>{{Rp|445|date=October 2013}}

"A dilly it was, this greenhouse", wrote Dr. John H. Vandermeulen in the ''[[American Orchid Society]] Bulletin''.

<blockquote>Entering from the stairs via a vestibule, there were three main rooms—one for [[cattleya]]s, [[laelia]]s, and hybrids; one for [[odontoglossum]]s, [[oncidium]]s, [[miltonia]]s, and their hybrids; and a tropical room (according to ''[[Fer-de-Lance (novel)|Fer-de-Lance]]''). It must have been quite a sight with the angle-iron staging gleaming in its silver paint and on the concrete benches and shelves 10,000 pots of orchids in glorious, exultant bloom.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Vandermeulen |first=Dr. John H. |date=February 1985 |title=Nero Wolfe—Orchidist Extraordinaire |journal=American Orchid Society Bulletin |publisher=[[American Orchid Society]] |volume=43 |issue=2 |page=143 }}</ref></blockquote>

"If Wolfe had a favorite orchid, it would be the [[genus]] [[Phalaenopsis]]", Robert M. Hamilton wrote in his article, "The Orchidology of Nero Wolfe", first printed in ''[[The Wolfe Pack#Publications|The Gazette: Journal of the Wolfe Pack]]'' (Volume 1, Spring 1979). Phalaenopsis is mentioned in 11 Wolfe stories, and [[Phalaenopsis aphrodite|Phalaenopsis Aphrodite]] is named in seven—more than any other species.<ref>{{cite book |last=Gotwald |first=Rev. Frederick G. |date=1992 |orig-year=1983 |title=The Nero Wolfe Handbook |location=Salisbury, North Carolina |publisher=F. G. Gotwald |pages=84–85 |oclc= 22780318}}</ref>{{efn|Robert M. Hamilton lists all of the orchids mentioned in Archie's accounts in alphabetical order. He records Phalaenopsis Aphrodite appearing in "[[Door to Death]]", ''[[The Golden Spiders]]'', ''[[Plot It Yourself]]'', "[[Poison à la Carte]]", ''[[A Right to Die]]'', ''[[The Doorbell Rang]]'' and ''[[The Father Hunt]]''.}} Wolfe personally cuts his most treasured Phalaenopsis Aphrodite for the centerpiece at the dinner for the Ten for [[Aristology]] in "[[Poison à la Carte]]". In ''[[The Father Hunt]]'', after Dorothy Sebor provides the information that solves the case, Wolfe tells Archie, "We'll send her some sprays of Phalaenopsis Aphrodite. They have never been finer."<ref>"[[Poison à la Carte]]", chapter 2; ''[[The Father Hunt]]'', chapter 13.</ref>

In the earlier works, Wolfe doesn't sell his orchids -- "I do not sell orchids", Wolfe tells Archie in chapter 7 of ''[[Murder by the Book]]'' (1951).  In ''[[The Silent Speaker]]'' (1946), Wolfe complains to Archie about the difficulty of the case, saying "I was an ass to undertake it. I have more Cattleyas than I have room for, and I could have sold five hundred of them for twelve thousand dollars."  However, he does give them away. Four or five dozen are used to advance the investigation in ''[[Murder by the Book]]'', and Wolfe refuses to let Archie bill the client for them. In ''[[The Final Deduction]]'', [[Sophronitis purpurata|Laelia purpurata]] and [[Dendrobium chrysotoxum]] are sent to Dr. Vollmer and his assistant, who shelter Wolfe and Archie when they have to flee the brownstone to avoid the police.<ref>''[[The Final Deduction]]'', chapter 6.</ref>  As the series progresses, Wolfe seems to be more comfortable selling his orchids.  In 1957's ''[[If Death Ever Slept]]'' (chapter 11), Archie describes Wolfe as "a practicing private detective with no other source of income except selling a few orchid plants now and then".  By the time of Stout's short 1963 piece "Why Nero Wolfe Likes Orchids", Archie notes that Wolfe "hasn't bought a plant from a commercial grower for 10 years, but he sells some -- a hundred or more a year."

In ''[[The Second Confession]]'', the orchid rooms are torn apart by gunfire from across the street. The shooters are in the employ of crime boss [[Nero Wolfe supporting characters#Arnold Zeck|Arnold Zeck]], who wants Wolfe to drop a case that could lead back to him. Wolfe and Archie call men to take care of the plants and repair the windows before notifying the police.<ref>''[[The Second Confession]]'', chapter 5.</ref>

===Eccentricities===
[[File:Wolfe-Too-Many-Cooks-Train.jpg|thumb|Wolfe suppresses his loathing of travel and trains in ''Too Many Cooks'' (illustration by [[Rico Tomaso]] for ''The American Magazine'', March 1938).]]
{{blockquote|I understand the technique of eccentricity; it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action.|Nero Wolfe in ''[[Fer-de-Lance (novel)|Fer-de-Lance]]'' (1934), chapter 5}}
Wolfe has pronounced eccentricities and strict rules concerning his way of life. Their occasional violation adds spice to many of the stories.

Despite Wolfe's rule never to leave the brownstone on business, the stories find him leaving his home on several occasions. At times, Wolfe and Archie are on a personal errand when a murder occurs, and legal authorities require that they remain in the vicinity (''[[Too Many Cooks (novel)|Too Many Cooks]]'', ''[[Some Buried Caesar]]'', "[[Too Many Detectives]]" and "[[Immune to Murder]]", for example). In other instances, the requirements of the case force Wolfe from his house (''[[In the Best Families]]'', ''[[The Second Confession]]'', ''[[The Doorbell Rang]]'', ''[[Plot It Yourself]]'', ''[[The Silent Speaker]]'', ''[[Death of a Dude]]''). Nevertheless, Wolfe is usually able to justify the travel associated with these cases as still being within the limits of his self-imposed "no leaving the house on business" rule, often by noting that there was a personal non-business related reason to make the journey. Although he occasionally ventures by car into the suburbs of New York City, he is loath to travel, and clutches the safety strap continually on the occasions that Archie drives him somewhere. He does not trust trains to start or to stop.<ref>''[[And Be a Villain]]'', chapter 10.</ref> As Archie says of Wolfe in ''[[The Doorbell Rang]],'' "he distrusted all machines more complicated than a wheelbarrow."<ref>''[[The Doorbell Rang]]'', chapter 8. However, in ''[[In the Best Families]]'', Wolfe displays no noticeable reticence whatsoever concerning travel in an automobile.</ref>

Wolfe maintains a rigid schedule in the brownstone. He has breakfast in his bedroom while wearing yellow silk pajamas; he hates to discuss work during breakfast, and if forced to do so insists upon not uttering a word until he has finished his glass of orange juice (''[[Murder by the Book]]''). Afterwards, he is with Horstmann in the plant rooms from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Lunch is usually at 1:15&nbsp;p.m. He returns to the plant rooms from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Dinner is generally at 7:15 or 7:30&nbsp;p.m. (although in one book, Wolfe tells a guest that lunch is served at 1 o'clock and dinner at 8). The remaining hours, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., and after dinner, are available for business, or for reading if there is no pressing business (even if, by Archie's lights, there is). Sunday's schedule is more relaxed; Theodore, the orchid-keeper, usually goes out.

[[File:Yellow-dart-left.jpg|thumb|"He took his coat and vest off, exhibiting about eighteen square feet of canary-yellow shirt, and chose the darts with yellow feathers, which were his favorites." —Wolfe exercises in ''[[The Rubber Band]]'', chapter 14]]

Wolfe is loath to exercise, but in ''[[The Rubber Band]]'' he is sufficiently concerned about his weight that he adds a workout to his daily routine. From 3:45 to 4 p.m., he throws yellow-feathered [[Dart (missile)|darts]] (which he calls "javelins") at a poker-dart board that Fritz hangs in the office. Archie joins him, using red-feathered darts, but quits when he loses nearly $100 to Wolfe in the first two months; he resumes playing only after Wolfe agrees to raise his salary. "There was no chance of getting any real accuracy with it, it was mostly luck", Archie writes.<ref>''[[The Rubber Band]]'', chapter 1.</ref> Other surprising examples of Wolfe's athleticism occur in "[[Not Quite Dead Enough (novella)|Not Quite Dead Enough]]" and ''[[The Black Mountain (novel)|The Black Mountain]]''.

Wolfe does not invite people to use his first name and addresses them by honorific and surname. Aside from his employees, one of the only two men whom Wolfe addresses by their first names is his oldest friend, Marko Vukčić; Marko calls him Nero.{{efn|"He was one of the only two men whom Wolfe called by their first names, apart from employees", Archie writes of Marko in ''[[Too Many Cooks (novel)|Too Many Cooks]]'', chapter 1. Sixteen years later, in ''[[The Black Mountain (novel)|The Black Mountain]]'' (chapter 1), Archie puts the number at ten.}} In ''[[Death of a Doxy]]'' Julie Jaquette refers to Wolfe as Nero in a letter to Archie; and [[Nero Wolfe supporting characters#Lily Rowan|Lily Rowan]] has addressed Wolfe using an assumed first name. But these are exceptions. In "[[The Rodeo Murder]]" Wolfe finds it objectionable when Wade Eisler addresses him as Nero; and in "[[Door to Death]]" Sybil Pitcairn's disdainful use of his first name makes Wolfe decide to solve the case. Men nearly always address him as Wolfe, and women as Mr. Wolfe.

He is extremely fastidious about his clothing and hates to wear, even in private, anything that has been soiled. The short story "[[Eeny Meeny Murder Mo]]" opens with an example of this habit, in which Wolfe removes his necktie and leaves it on his desk after dropping a bit of sauce on it during lunch. The tie is later used to commit a murder in his office. Beyond that, Wolfe has a marked preference for the color yellow, habitually wearing shirts and silk pajamas in this color and sleeping on yellow bedsheets.<ref>"[[Help Wanted, Male]]", chapter 2.</ref>

He restricts his visible reactions: as Archie puts it, "He shook his head, moving it a full half-inch right and left, which was for him a frenzy of negation."<ref>"[[Instead of Evidence]]", chapter 1.</ref>

Wolfe states that "all music is a vestige of barbarism"<ref>"[[Blood Will Tell (short story)|Blood Will Tell]]", chapter 2</ref> and denies that music can have any intellectual content.<ref>''[[The Father Hunt]]'', chapter 12.</ref> He takes a dim view of television, but TV sets did find their way into the brownstone in the later stories. Archie notes in ''[[Before Midnight (novel)|Before Midnight]]'', "It was Sunday evening, when he especially enjoyed turning the television off." Wolfe's attitude toward television notwithstanding, the TV set in Fritz's basement quarters proved handy in ''[[The Doorbell Rang]]'', when the volume was turned up to foil potential eavesdroppers.<ref>''[[The Doorbell Rang]]'', chapter 7.</ref>

Wolfe displays a pronounced, almost pathological, dislike for the company of women. Although some readers interpret this attitude as simple [[misogyny]], various details in the stories, particularly the early ones,<ref>''[[The League of Frightened Men]]'', chapter 10</ref> suggest it has more to do with an unfortunate encounter in early life with a ''femme fatale''. It is not women themselves that he dislikes: rather, it is what he perceives as their frailties, especially a tendency to hysterics—to which he thinks every woman is prone. "In the all-male Wolfe household that is an apparent bulwark of men's-club solidarity, Wolfe's misogyny is part pose, part protection, but above all, a shrewd tool of detective strategy", wrote critic [[Molly Haskell]]. "Archie does the romancing while Wolfe prods and offends, winnowing out the traitorous and brattish women and allowing the cream, the really great women, to rise to the top. ... We deduce from the glow of those special women who do earn the detective's good will just how discriminating and interested an observer of womankind the author is."<ref>{{cite news |last=Haskell |first=Molly |author-link=Molly Haskell |date=December 23, 2001 |title=Beware a Brand-New Kind of Man |newspaper=[[The New York Observer]] }}</ref> These women include Clara Fox (''[[The Rubber Band]]''), Lily Rowan (introduced in ''[[Some Buried Caesar]]''), Phoebe Gunther (''[[The Silent Speaker]]'') and Julie Jaquette (''[[Death of a Doxy]]''). In ''The Rubber Band'', Wolfe says, "It has been many years since any woman has slept under this roof. Not that I disapprove of them, except when they attempt to function as domestic animals. When they stick to the vocations for which they are best adapted, such as chicanery, sophistry, self-adornment, cajolery, mystification and incubation, they are sometimes splendid creatures."

That Wolfe disapproves of women is well established, but Archie claims that there are nuances: "The basic fact about a woman that seemed to irritate him was that she was a woman; the long record showed not a single exception; but from there on the documentation was cockeyed. If woman as woman grated on him you would suppose that the most womanly details would be the worst for him, but time and again I have known him to have a chair placed for a female so that his desk would not obstruct his view of her legs, and the answer can't be that his interest is professional and he reads character from legs, because the older and dumpier she is the less he cares where she sits. It is a very complex question and some day I'm going to take a whole chapter for it." (''[[The Silent Speaker]]'', chapter 30.)

Wolfe has an aversion to physical contact, even shaking hands. Early in the first novel Archie explains why there is a gong under his bed that will ring upon any intrusion into or near Wolfe's own bedroom: "Wolfe told me once ... that he really had no cowardice in him, he only had an intense distaste for being touched by anyone ..."<ref name="ReferenceA">''[[Fer-de-Lance (novel)|Fer-de-Lance]]'', chapter 3.</ref>{{efn|In "[[Help Wanted, Male]]" Archie states that the gong was installed "... some years previously when Wolfe had got a knife stuck in him. The thing had never gone off except when we tested it ..."}} When Jerome Berin, creator of ''saucisse minuit'', repeatedly taps Wolfe on the knee, Archie grins at "Wolfe, who didn't like being touched, concealing his squirm for the sake of sausages."<ref>''[[Too Many Cooks (novel)|Too Many Cooks]]'', chapter 1.</ref> In ''[[Prisoner's Base]]'', Wolfe speaks coldly as he tells the DA and Inspector Cramer that the despised [[Nero Wolfe supporting characters#Lieutenant Rowcliff|Lieutenant Rowcliff]] "put a hand on me. ... I will not have a hand put on me, gentlemen. I like no man's hand on me, and one such as Mr. Rowcliff's, unmerited, I will not have."<ref>''[[Prisoner's Base]]'', chapter 6.</ref> Wolfe's prejudices make it all the more surprising when, in "[[Cordially Invited to Meet Death]]", Archie finds Wolfe in the kitchen with a woman who has solved the problem of preparing corned beef hash: "Standing beside him, closer to him than I had ever seen any woman or girl of any age tolerated, with her hand slipped between his arm and his bulk, was Maryella."<ref>"[[Cordially Invited to Meet Death]]", chapter 6.</ref>

Wolfe likes to solve the crossword puzzle of British newspapers in preference to those of American papers, and hates to be interrupted while so engaged.{{efn|Archie most frequently mentions Wolfe working on the crossword puzzle in ''[[The Observer]]'' (''[[Too Many Clients]]'', chapter 10) and ''[[The Times]]'' (''[[Murder by the Book]]'', chapter 1).}}

Wolfe is very particular in his choice of words. He is a [[Linguistic prescription|prescriptivist]] who hates to hear language being misused according to his lights, often chastising people who do so. One example is his dislike of the word "contact" being used as a verb; when Johnny Keems says that "contact" ''is'' a verb, transitive and intransitive, Wolfe replies "Contact is not a verb under this roof". One of his most severe reactions occurs in the first chapter of ''[[Gambit (novel)|Gambit]]'', when he burns [[Webster's Third New International Dictionary]] in the front room fireplace because it states that the words "imply" and "infer" can be used interchangeably. Wolfe generally abhors slang (though in "[[Murder Is Corny]]" he says "There is good slang and bad slang"<ref>''[[Trio for Blunt Instruments]]''</ref>) and expects Archie to avoid slang and other language he disapproves of when speaking to him. However, as with other worldly concerns, he sometimes relies on Archie's greater familiarity with slang when business demands it.

In nearly every story, Wolfe solves the mystery by considering the facts brought to him by Archie and others, and the replies to questions he himself asks of suspects. Wolfe ponders with his eyes closed, leaning back in his chair, breathing deeply and steadily, and pushing his lips in and out. Archie says that during these trances Wolfe reacts to nothing that is going on around him. Archie seldom interrupts Wolfe's thought processes, he says, largely because it is the only time that he can be sure that Wolfe is working.

===Fictional entities===
The books frequently mention brands that do not exist: for instance, Wolfe owns a Heron automobile, which Archie drives, and Wethersill automobiles are also mentioned. A Marley revolver (also Carley, in ''Die Like a Dog'') is Archie's weapon of choice. A semi-fictional revolver brand is the [[James Richard Haskell|Haskell]] (mentioned in ''A Right to Die''). The Rabson lock likewise does not exist; the name was borrowed by [[Lawrence Block]] and used in his [[Bernie Rhodenbarr]] mysteries. Wolfe serves Remisier brandy or Follansbee's gin to guests and drinks Remmers' beer. Archie goes dancing at the Flamingo Club, which is now the name of more than one place in the New York City area, but the one in the books antedates them. Archie also frequently goes to Manhattan addresses that do not exist, for instance, 171 East 52nd Street in ''[[Might as Well Be Dead]]''. Wolfe's address, as mentioned above, is also fictional.

(Stout initially used many real brands: Archie drives a [[Ford Motor Company|Ford]], carries a [[Colt pistol]] or revolver, and uses an [[Underwood Typewriter Company|Underwood]] typewriter. Stout was bothered when his [[stationer]] mentioned that, every time Stout mentioned Underwood's in a story, sales of that brand went up – and so switched to fictional brands.  [[Ian Fleming]], a fan of Stout, borrowed the technique for the [[James Bond]] novels, both fictional and real.)

On the other hand, real names and places also occur in the text, presumably for verisimilitude; Wolfe serves [[Bar-le-duc jelly|Bar-Le-Duc]] to a visitor on one occasion. The "Churchill Hotel" (officially the Hotel Churchill), mentioned many times, is a real hotel in Manhattan, and [[Sardi's]] is a real restaurant. Real people, for example, [[J. Edgar Hoover]] (notably in ''The Doorbell Rang''), [[Walter Winchell]] and [[Texas Guinan]] are also mentioned.