"The League of Frightened Men" by Rex Stout

“In the labyrinth of any problem that confronts us, we must select the most promising paths; if we attempt to follow all at once we shall arrive nowhere. In any art—and I am an artist or nothing—one of the deepest secrets of excellence is a discerning elimination. Of course that is a truism.”

Eugene Peterson used to amuse himself by reading the Rex Stout corpus as “a parable of the Christian contemplative presence in the world.” He wrote about the way the Nero Wolfe could be seen as an analogy of the church. I, however, have always preferred to see Wolfe’s man-of-action, Archie Goodwin, as the better stand-in for a Christian. Archie is the narrator of the stories, the Waston to Wolfe’s Holmes. He is better, though, in that he is an excellent detective himself. The joy is to follow Goodwin as he wrestles with following Wolfe’s instructions. He second guesses and disagrees with Wolfe constantly but never doubts or distrusts his genius.

In “The League of Frightened Men,” Archie is frustrated with Wolfe’s passivity in their latest case. There are several leads and clues that could be followed up on and investigated. Wolfe, however, is content to follow his own plan, and unconcerned with many elements of the case. The reason for this is clear in the end, of course. Wolfe’s clarification, quoted above, is a great lesson for life. We can do so much good in our endeavors, but often, we are too busy doing good, side-tracked things, that we are too busy or miss altogether the truly great things that are our true purpose.