Too Few Cookbooks

Abstract

In 1938, a 12-city promotional tour for The American Magazine became a 13-city tour. I suspect, but cannot prove, Rex Stout was behind the change. There came a time when a decision was made to add to The American Magazine’s “Living Issue” tour a substantial dollop of damn good fun for Stout — the specifics of when, why, how, and by whom that decision was made remain a perfect mystery, as best I can tell. The decision was to add a 13th stop to what was, by all accounts, a 12-stop tour. The tour included a visit to St. Louis on Wednesday, May 11, and a visit to Cincinnati on Friday, May 13. Falling neatly between those cities was (and is) Indianapolis and falling neatly between those days of the week was (and is) Thursday. That is where and when the troupe made an additional stop that is not recorded in John McAleer’s biography of Stout or anywhere else — in a 1966 letter Stout himself described the tour as “a series of luncheons in twelve different cities” — except a handful of contemporary reports in Indianapolis-area newspapers. Here is how it may have happened.

Keywords: John Farrar, Farrar & Rinehart, Nero Wolfe, Pola Stout, Christian Science Monitor, Gene Sarazen, Helen Von Baumann, Borden Chase, Railroad, Sherlock Holmes, James Whitcomb Riley, Cookbook, Greenbrier