The Brownstone of Nero Wolfe: Death of a Doxy. And Koufax or Mays?
We haven’t been to the Brownstone since April of last year. Pfui! So here we have the forty-third Nero Wolfe post at Black Gate. The Wolfe stories are my favorite private eye series. Which, given my Solar Pons, and Sherlock Holmes, credentials, is saying something. I am pretty much always re-reading or listening yet again to Michael Prichard’s terrific audiobooks. I never tire of Wolfe’s World.
Rex Stout was a baseball fan, keeping score at Mets’ games (and possibly NY Giants’ ones as well). Archie uses some baseball terms, and even (briefly) watches a Mets game on TV, with actual players mentioned. And of course, there’s Ron Seaver. “Three Men Out” is set at game seven of a World Series game between Boston and the Giants, though all of the characters are entirely fictional in that one.
I’ve written some baseball snippets for inclusion in future stories, including Archie annoying Wolfe by talking about the Rocky Colavito – Harvey Kuenn trade; and Archie recounting attending Willie Mays’ last World Series, against the A’s. Archie and baseball go together.
Which leads us to talking about Death of A Doxy today. This may well be my favorite Wolfe novel. And I think that A&E did a terrific episode of it. It’s got a neat little baseball reference, which I’ll tease out for this essay. But first, let’s talk about something that should be banned by law – The Epithon!
THE EPITHON
In Death of a Doxy, Archie is at Lily Rowan’s penthouse, listening to a poet read a self‐dubbed ‘Epithon.’ It is called such because it was epic, and took hours to read. Add in that the man wrote it himself, and you’ve got the idea. ‘Pfui’ isn’t strong enough.
