A few months ago, NPR launched their "In Character" story series. They chose a bunch of lame characters (because, let's face it, NPR folks don't get out much, if they're all gonna be on the radio at 5:00 am; what I can't figure out, though, is how they all use the same microphone, if someone is in Cairo, and then they cut back to Washington. Amazing). Also, as is their wont, they selected a bunch of data points from the same place (what's up with Isaac Dickson Elementary School, anyway, and why do they have a monopoly on lame characters?).
So, I submitted the below writeup on Nero Wolfe. They didn't like it, I guess because I wasn't from Isaac Dickson Elementary School. Or maybe they consider talking about "fun to read" books, instead of "the world is such a horrible place" books to be worse than getting evidence on a divorce.
In a time before New Yorkers had neuroses, there was Nero Wolfe: a seventh-of-a-ton gourmand who never takes the stairs, refuses to leave his house on business, and spends a sixth of every day hybridizing orchids. Even so, Wolfe can solve mysteries moving nothing more than his genius, through his legman, Archie Goodwin's intelligence (guided by experience).As a professor, I would be a witling if I did not see myself in Wolfe, as I stick to a location during office hours, or demand to a student: "Report!" We each refuse to do tasks if our self-esteem will not allow it (Wolfe and divorce cases go together like a mathematician and 1040's). The student/professor relationship is as sybmiotic as Wolfe and Goodwin, prodding us out of our self-satisfying activities to pay the bills--or in my case, serve the greater good. Satisfactory.
Wolfe's character is as strong as they come, but when characters surprise us (as Wolfe frequently does), we're given hope that our situation isn't carved in stone either. Satisfactory.