Editing Rex Stout (section)

==Writings==
[[File:Information Please 1 premiere.jpg|thumb|A frequent guest panelist on the NBC radio series ''[[Information Please]]'', Stout was featured in the first of 18 RKO-Pathé short film versions that screened in American theaters. Sitting on the steps of the Radio City Music Hall lobby after the September 1939 premiere are (from left) Pathé chief Frederic Ullman Jr., Stout, director Frank P. Donovan, [[John Kieran]], [[Franklin P. Adams]] and [[Dan Golenpaul]], creator of the radio program.]]
[[File:Stout-Family-High-Meadow-Look-1940.jpg|thumb|The Stout family at High Meadow, "The House That Nero Wolfe Built" (''[[Look (American magazine)|Look]]'', February 13, 1940)]]

Rex Stout began his literary career in the 1910s writing for magazines, particularly [[pulp magazine]]s, writing more than 40 stories that appeared between 1912 and 1918. Stout's early stories appeared most frequently in ''[[All-Story Magazine]]'' and its affiliates, but he was also published in magazines as varied as ''[[Smith's Magazine]]'', ''[[Lippincott's Monthly Magazine]]'', ''[[Short Stories (magazine)|Short Stories]]'', ''[[The Smart Set]]'', ''Young's Magazine'', and ''Golfers Magazine''. The early stories spanned genres including romance, adventure, science fiction/fantasy, and detective fiction, including two murder mystery novellas ("Justice Ends at Home" and ''The Last Drive'') that prefigured elements of the Wolfe stories.

By 1916, Stout grew tired of writing a story whenever he needed money. He decided to stop writing until he had made enough money to support himself through other means, so  he would be able to write when and as he pleased. He wrote no fiction for more than a decade, until the late 1920s, when he had saved substantial money through his school banking system. Ironically, just as Stout was starting to write fiction again, he lost most of the money that he had made as a businessman in the [[Great Depression]] of 1929.

In 1929, Stout wrote his first published book, ''How Like a God'', an unusual psychological story written in the second person. The novel was published by the [[Vanguard Press]], which he had helped to found. Stout published a total of four psychological novels between 1929 and 1933, the first three with Vanguard and the fourth at [[Farrar & Rinehart]], to which he was recruited by editor [[John C. Farrar]]. 

In the 1930s, Stout turned to writing detective fiction, a genre that he and Farrar thought might be more financially rewarding than his previous novels. In 1933, he wrote ''[[Fer-de-Lance (novel)|Fer-de-Lance]]'', which introduced [[Nero Wolfe]] and his assistant [[Archie Goodwin (character)|Archie Goodwin]]. The novel was published by Farrar & Rinehart in October 1934, and in abridged form as "Point of Death" in ''[[The American Magazine]]'' (November 1934). The same year, Stout also published a political thriller ''[[The President Vanishes]]'' (1934), which was originally published anonymously.

''Fer-de-Lance'' was the first of 72 Nero Wolfe stories (33 novels and 39 novellas) that Stout published from 1934 to 1975. Stout continued writing the Nero Wolfe series for the rest of his life. Beginning in 1940, Nero Wolfe began to appear in novellas as well as full-length novels, at the behest of his editors at ''The American Magazine''.  Stout wrote at least one Nero Wolfe story every year through 1966 (except in 1943, when war-related activities took priority). Stout's rate of production declined somewhat after 1966, but he still published four further Nero Wolfe novels prior to his death in 1975, at the age of 88.

The characters of Wolfe and Goodwin are considered among Stout's main contributions to detective fiction. Wolfe was described by reviewer [[Will Cuppy]] as "that [[Falstaff]] of detectives".<ref name="McAleer">{{cite book |last=McAleer |first=John J. |date=1977 |title=Rex Stout: A Biography |location=Boston |publisher=[[Little, Brown and Company]] |isbn=9780316553407 }}</ref>{{Rp|287}}<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Rothe |editor-first=Anna |date=1947 |title=Current Biography, 1946: Who's News and Why |location=New York |publisher=H. W. Wilson Co. |page=576 |isbn=9780824201128 }}</ref>{{efn|Essays by both Will Cuppy ("How to Read a Whodunit") and Rex Stout ("Watson Was a Woman") appeared in ''The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays'', edited by Howard Haycroft (Simon and Schuster, 1946). Cuppy likened Wolfe to Falstaff in 1936, in his review of ''The Rubber Band''. In 1959, Stout's beloved character Hattie Annis stated the comparison to Wolfe himself, immediately after being introduced to him in the novella "[[Counterfeit for Murder]]".}}

Stout also wrote several non-Wolfe mystery novels during the 1930s, but none approached the success of the Nero Wolfe books. In 1937, Stout's novel ''[[The Hand in the Glove]]'' introduced the character of Theodolinda "Dol" Bonner, a female private detective who is an early and significant example of the female PI as fictional protagonist. Bonner would also appear as a character in some later Nero Wolfe stories. Stout also created two other detective protagonists, [[Tecumseh Fox]] (who appeared in three books) and [[Alphabet Hicks]] (one book). His novel ''[[Red Threads]]'' featured [[Inspector Cramer]], a familiar character from the Wolfe books, working on his own. After 1938, Stout wrote no fiction but mysteries, and after 1941, almost entirely Nero Wolfe stories.

During World War II, Stout cut back on his detective writing to focus on war-related activities. For four years, he chaired the [[Writers' War Board]], which coordinated the volunteer services of American writers to help the war effort. He also joined the Fight for Freedom organization and hosted three weekly radio shows. After the war, in addition to continuing to write the Nero Wolfe books, Stout supported democracy and world government. He served as president of the [[Authors Guild]] and of the [[Mystery Writers of America]], which in 1959 presented Stout with the Grand Master Award – the pinnacle of achievement in the mystery field.

Stout was a longtime friend of British humorist [[P. G. Wodehouse]], writer of the [[Jeeves]] novels and short stories. Each was a fan of the other's work, and parallels are evident between their characters and techniques. Wodehouse contributed the foreword to ''Rex Stout: A Biography'', John McAleer's [[Edgar Award]]-winning 1977 biography of the author (reissued in 2002 as ''Rex Stout: A Majesty's Life''). Wodehouse also mentions Rex Stout in several of his Jeeves books, as both Bertie and his Aunt Dahlia are fans.

===Public activities===
In the fall of 1925, [[Roger Nash Baldwin]] appointed Rex Stout to the board of the [[American Civil Liberties Union]]'s powerful National Council on Censorship; Stout served one term.<ref name="McAleer"/>{{Rp|196–197|date=October 2013}} Stout helped start the radical Marxist magazine ''[[The New Masses]]'', which succeeded ''[[The Masses]]'' and ''[[The Liberator (magazine)|The Liberator]]'' in 1926.<ref>{{cite book |last=Aaron |first=Daniel |author-link=Daniel Aaron |date=1992 |title=Writers on the Left: Episodes in Literary Communism |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=smr4WKZNUEMC&q=rex+stout+clarence+darrow&pg=PA102 |location=New York |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |page=102 |isbn=9780231080385 }}</ref> He had been told that the magazine was primarily committed to bringing arts and letters to the masses, but he realized after a few issues "that it was Communist and intended to stay Communist", and he ended his association with it.<ref name="McAleer"/>{{Rp|197–198|date=October 2013}}

Stout was one of the officers and directors of the [[Vanguard Press]], a publishing house established with a grant from the [[Garland Fund]] to reprint left-wing classics at an affordable cost and publish new books otherwise deemed "unpublishable" by the commercial press of the day. He served as Vanguard's first president from 1926 to 1928, and continued as vice president until at least 1931. During his tenure, Vanguard issued 150 titles, including seven books by [[Scott Nearing]] and three of Stout's own novels—''How Like a God'' (1929), ''Seed on the Wind'' (1930), and ''Golden Remedy'' (1931).<ref name="McAleer"/>{{Rp|196–197|date=October 2013}}

In 1942, Stout described himself as a "pro-Labor, pro-[[New Deal]], pro-Roosevelt left liberal".<ref name=Manly>{{cite web |url=http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Harold%20Dies%20Committee%20Files/Dies%203-Ring%20Gray%20Binder/Dies%20Binder%2030.pdf |title=Manly, Chesly, 'Writer's War Board' Aids Smear Campaign. |publisher=[[Washington Times-Herald]], June 4, 1942. The Harold Weisberg Archive, Digital Collection, [[Hood College]] |access-date=2013-10-25}}</ref>

During [[World War II]], he worked with the advocacy group Friends of Democracy, chaired the [[Writers' War Board]] (a propaganda organization), and supported the [[Declaration by United Nations|embryonic United Nations]]. He lobbied for [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] to accept a fourth term as president. He developed an extreme anti-German attitude and wrote the provocative essay "We Shall Hate, or We Shall Fail"<ref>"[http://www.nerowolfe.org/pdf/stout/activism/war-time/1943_01_NYTimes_We_shall_hate_or_we_shall_fail.pdf We Shall Hate, or We Shall Fail]" (PDF), ''[[The New York Times]]'', January 17, 1943, with response by [[Walter Russell Bowie]] and reply from Rex Stout; at The Wolfe Pack. Retrieved 2013-10-18.</ref> which generated a flood of protests after its January 1943 publication in ''The New York Times''.<ref name="Townsend">{{cite book |editor1-last=Townsend |editor1-first=Guy M. |editor2-last=McAleer |editor2-first=John J. |editor3-last=Sapp |editor3-first=Judson C. |editor4-last=Schemer |editor4-first=Arriean |date=1980 |title=Rex Stout: An Annotated Primary and Secondary Bibliography |location=New York and London |publisher=Garland Publishing, Inc.|isbn=0-8240-9479-4 }}</ref>{{Rp|95}} The attitude is expressed by Nero Wolfe in the 1942 novella "[[Not Quite Dead Enough (novella)|Not Quite Dead Enough]]".

On August 9, 1942, Stout conducted the first of 62 wartime broadcasts of ''[[Our Secret Weapon]]'' on [[CBS Radio]]. The idea for the counterpropaganda series had been that of Sue Taylor White, wife of [[Paul White (journalist)|Paul White]], the first director of [[CBS News]]. Research was done under White's direction. "Hundreds of Axis propaganda broadcasts, beamed not merely to the Allied countries but to neutrals, were sifted weekly", wrote Stout's biographer John McAleer. "Rex himself, for an average of twenty hours a week, pored over the typewritten yellow sheets of accumulated data ... Then, using a dialogue format – Axis commentators making their assertions, and Rex Stout, the lie detective, offering his refutations – he dictated to his secretary the script of the fifteen-minute broadcast." By November 1942, Berlin Radio was reporting that "Rex Stout himself has cut his own production in detective stories from four to one a year and is devoting the entire balance of his time to writing official war propaganda." ''Newsweek'' described Stout as "stripping Axis short-wave propaganda down to the barest nonsensicals ... There's no doubt of its success."<ref name="Townsend"/>{{Rp|121–122|date=October 2013}}<ref name="McAleer"/>{{Rp|305–307}}

In September 1942, Stout defended FDR's policy of sending Japanese-Americans to concentration camps in a debate with the Socialist civil libertarian [[Norman Thomas]]. Stout charged "that Japanese-Americans include more fifth columnists than any other comparable group in the United States." When Thomas condemned the military's role as a "disgrace to our democracy" and comparable to "the powers of totalitarian dictators," Stout responded that moving "Japanese-Americans inland hardly constitutes Totalitarianism."<ref>{{cite book | last=Beito | first=David T. | title=The New Deal's War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR's Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance | edition=First | pages=185| location=Oakland | publisher=Independent Institute | year=2023 | isbn=978-1598133561}}</ref>

During the later part of the war and the post-war period, he also led the [[Society for the Prevention of World War III]] which lobbied for a harsh peace for Germany. When the war ended, Stout became active in the [[United World Federalists]].<ref>Steven Casey, "The campaign to sell a harsh peace for Germany to the American public, 1944–1948." ''History'' 90.297 (2005): 62–92. [http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/archive/00000736 online]</ref>

[[House Un-American Activities Committee#Dies Committee (1938–1944)|House Committee on Un-American Activities]] chairman [[Martin Dies, Jr.|Martin Dies]] called him a Communist, and Stout is reputed to have said to him, "I hate Communists as much as you do, Martin, but there's one difference between us. I know what a Communist is and you don't."<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/29497223/ |title=CLAP-TRAP Some Quips That Flew In From the Air Front |date=26 April 1945 |publisher=[[Amarillo Globe-News|Amarillo Globe-Times]], April 26, 1945 |access-date=2013-10-26}}</ref>

Stout was one of many American writers closely watched by [[J. Edgar Hoover]]'s FBI. Hoover considered him an enemy of the bureau and either a Communist or a tool of Communist-dominated groups. Stout's leadership of the [[Authors Guild|Authors League of America]] during the [[McCarthyism|McCarthy era]] was particularly irksome to the FBI. About a third of Stout's FBI file is devoted to his 1965 novel ''[[The Doorbell Rang]]''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Mitgang |first=Herbert |author-link=Herbert Mitgang |date=1988 |title=Dangerous Dossiers: Exposing the Secret War Against America's Greatest Authors |location=New York |publisher=Donald I. Fine |isbn=1-55611-077-4 |url=https://archive.org/details/dangerousdossier00mitg_0 }}</ref>{{Rp|216–217, 227}}{{efn|For more information, see the articles on [[Where There's a Will (novel)#The FBI and "Sisters in Trouble"|''Where There's a Will'']] and [[The Doorbell Rang#The FBI and The Doorbell Rang|''The Doorbell Rang'']].}}{{efn|In its April 1976 report, the [[Church Committee]] found that ''The Doorbell Rang'' is a reason that Rex Stout's name was one of 332 placed on the FBI's "not to contact list", which it cited as evidence of the FBI's political abuse of intelligence information.<ref>{{cite book |last=Final Report of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities |date=1976 |chapter=E. Political Abuse of Intelligence Information, subfinding c, footnote 91 |title=Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book II |chapter-url=https://archive.org/stream/finalreportofsel02unit#page/239/mode/1up |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |page=239 }}</ref>}}