The Sixth and Seventh Simenon Omnibus

Maigret and the Wine Merchant was first published as Maigret et le marchand de vin in 1970. It was translated by Eileen Ellenbogen. Oscar Chabut was a very successful man. He had started from nothing and made himself proprietor of one of the most successful wine businesses in France. But he had a chip on his shoulder, a need to humiliate and dominate every man and woman he dealt with. Someone had enough. Leaving a bordello one evening, Chabut is shot dead. There seem to be too many suspects, far too many. Maigret finds himself following one false lead after another. Then an anonymous caller telephones him to accuse Chabut, and later, Maigret receives several anonymous letters repeating these accusations. The substance of both calls and letters seem to be true: Chabut was a “filthy swine”, though as usual Maigret tries to understand just why he behaved as he did. But it is clear the caller and writer of these accusations is the murderer, and as is often the case, he gives himself up and confesses. Maigret must send a man to jail with whom he secretly sympathises. Halfway between a crime puzzle and a character study, the story works as neither. A lesser Maigret.

The Prison was first published as La Prison in 1968, and was translated into English by Lyn Moir. The man in prison is Alain Poitaud, an ex-journalist on an almost unbelievable trajectory of success. First the magazine he founded has become one of the most successful in France. The magazine, Toi, is designed to saturate the everyday reader with a surfeit of everyday facts and images, and the formula works. Another of Alain’s magazines looks as though it will be equally successful. Poitaud starts writing and recording songs, and again is successful. He is not only rich, but a star. But then his wife, his closest companion, is arrested for the murder of her sister, an ex-lover of Poitaud, as are most of the attractive women he comes in contact with. Poitard is not involved with the murder, which comes as a complete shock to him. Trying to understand what has happened, he discovers he does not know anything about his wife. She is just one of the many companions he is compelled to surround himself with. His wife and her sister, in fact, have preferred a relationship with someone who is not a star, one of his own staff members, and have become rivals. Slowly he realises he has no relationships with any of these people, no relationships at all. They are merely hangers on. And Poitaud has wanted it this way because of an enormous fear within himself, the driving power of his success, but which has produced only a simulacrum of friends and family. He has built himself a prison. Shattered by this discovery, Poitaud’s world collapses like a house of cards, and he kills himself. Perhaps an interesting reflection on Simenon’s own spectacular success, and failed marriages, this characterisation of Poitaud is yet unconvincing, and feels schematic and contrived, not developed as we have come to expect of Simenon.

The Rich Man was first published as Le Riche homme in 1970; it was translated by Jean Stewart. It is the story of Victor Lecoin, the big man of his village, Marsilly, where he controls the oyster and mussel fishing. Lecoin has started from nothing, worked hard all his life, invested in land, and become rich. He is an imposing figure, tall, muscular, with enormous endurance, of work and of alcohol, and of enormous sexual stamina as well. His closest companion is the equally enormous deaf mute Doudou. His wife, the village schoolmistress, whom he looks up to, has become his close business partner and nothing more. When a destitute orphan, Alice, is taken on as maid, Lecoin finds himself for the first time in his life falling in love. Somehow detached from all those around him, Lecoin has suppressed a longing for intimacy, and he now tries to establish this with the girl Alice, scarcely sixteen and a previous victim of sexual abuse, behind his wife’s back. It is an attempt doomed to failure. Alice is passive, submissive, unresponsive. Lecoin, mustering all the tenderness he is capable of, tries to arouse her. But Alice has learned that “men are like that” and will do nothing more than allow his caresses. During Lecoin’s absence from his village Alice is approached by another man and submits to him. The deaf mute Doudou, unfailingly loyal to Lecoin, drives the man away and kills Alice. Lecoin is left trying to understand just why his attempt to find love hasn’t worked. This is another portrait of an outwardly successful man with failed relationships, like The Prison of 1968, and again may be the product of self examination on Simenon’s part. I found the climax overly melodramatic, and the process that Lecoin goes through not fully developed. For all its impressive portrait of the village and the people and their way of life, this is another Simenon misfire, even if more interesting than most other authors’.

The Sixth Simenon Omnibus, Penguin Books, 1973. Maigret and the Wine Merchant, 1970, rated ◊◊◊◊; The Prison, 1968, rated ◊◊◊◊; The Rich Man, 1970, rated ◊◊◊◊.

Maigret and the Killer was first published as Maigret et le tueur in 1969. It was translated into English by Lyn Moir. Like the following year’s Maigret and the Wine Merchant, this is a story about an apparently unmotivated crime. A young man is struck down by knife blows as he walks home through the evening streets of Paris, near the residence of Doctor Pardon, Maigret’s friend, where Maigret and his wife are visiting at the time. The doctor, and then Maigret, become involved, and it soon becomes evident there is no reason for the crime, that a psychopathic killer has struck for the sheer need to experience a kill. A weakness of this story is the apparent connection of the murder with a series of thefts, still unsolved, which Maigret must first investigate, at length, to see there is no connection to the murder at all. As usual with Simenon, the murderer is seen from the inside, a sad man struggling with a horrendous urge he cannot control. There is little detection though, as the man contacts Maigret and gives himself up. In fact, not a lot happens in the story, and it had little impact for me. Maigret is predictably disappointed when the killer is given a heavy sentence for the murder, but the killer is hardly a fully realised character, and so Maigret’s response seems perfunctory and low key.

The Confessional was first published as Le Confessionnel in 1966, and was translated by Jean Stewart. André Bar has problem parents. As he slowly builds up a relationship with Francine, a girl he likes at school, he becomes aware of the dysfunctional family he has been born into. Francine’s family is quite different. Her mother and father have a warm, open relationship, into which their daughter fits quite intimately. They all trust one another. But in André’s family distrust is the norm. It’s a harsh lesson for André: his mother feels unattractive, and clings to her fleeing physical charms by cultivating a bohemian friend whom she doesn’t really like, and by having random affairs. André’s father can show her compassion, but not tenderness. Both parents turn to their son to justify their behaviour, and to make him their ally in this misalliance. To make matters worse, André finds his mother has taken to drink to relieve her unhappiness. André fights for his freedom to pursue his own life, conduct his own blossoming relationships, while his parents unavailingly try to justify their failure to have a viable relationship. André has become their confessional, not just their son. This sketch is unresolved, ending as it had begun, the situation of the Bar family unchanged. But it’s a sketch without drama, penetrating and acute in its analysis but not involving.

Maigret Takes the Waters was first published in 1968 as Maigret à Vichy. It was translated by Eileen Ellenbogen. Maigret is taking the cure at Vichy under doctor’s orders, together with his wife. While there, he enjoys himself by noting the patients and their oddities. One woman he takes note of is later found strangled, and Maigret is unavoidably drawn into the investigation. It is not a matter of robbery, but seems a crime of passion. Yet the woman had no friends, almost no acquaintances, seemingly a real loner. Her only relative is her sister, and when she arrives to take charge of the funeral some interesting facts emerge. The dead woman had a regular source of income from an unknown donor, from which both sisters benefited. It suggests blackmail to Maigret, and he deduces the killer may be the one blackmailed, and a man connected in some personal way with the dead woman and perhaps a patient at Vichy. What he uncovers in the end is a deception of such cold-hearted cruelty that he thinks the murder almost justified. He finds and arrests his man, who is in the end exonerated for his crime under French law. This is quite a good tale of detection, but very low key.

The Seventh Simenon Omnibus, Penguin Books, 1974. Maigret and the Killer, 1969, rated ◊◊◊◊; The Confessional, 1966, rated ◊◊◊◊; Maigret Takes the Waters, 1968, rated ◊◊◊◊.

Summary
Having reached the half way mark in reviewing the 14 Penguin Omnibuses it seems a good time to sum up my impression so far. Of the 21 novels I’ve read, nine are well above average, and four in my opinion are masterpieces. The publication period is 1952 to 1970, and there appears to be a sharp falling off, the last seven books written being all below average. Simenon was to abruptly stop writing fiction in 1973: perhaps his inspiration was already flagging in 1968. The above average books are half Maigret stories, half ‘hard’ novels, so it’s not the case that Simenon put his genius into the ‘hard’ novels and merely his talent into the Maigrets. I would call Monsieur Monde Vanishes (1952), The Little Saint (1965), The Old Man Dies (1966) and Maigret’s Pickpocket (1967) masterpieces. On this sample, that would give Simenon close to 100 masterpieces over his whole output should the same proportion hold. As there is no work before the 50s (so far) it remains unclear if Maigret’s best work came early, or late, or was evenly distributed over his career.

A guide to the Maigret books can be found here: http://www.trussel.com/maig/bookcol8.htm

©2011 Original material copyright Phillip Kay. Images and other material courtesy Creative Commons. Please inform post author of any violation.

The Fifth Simenon Omnibus

Maigret’s Boyhood Friend was first published as L’Ami d’enfance de Maigret in 1968. It was translated into English by Eileen Ellenbogen. Leon Florentin is Maigret’s boyhood friend, with whom he went to school, and hasn’t seen since. Now Florentin is involved with a murder. Maigret soon realises that the clown of the form at school has come down in the world and is now a con man. He’s not only a swindler, but a kind of pimp. And as it turns out, a liar.

The murder is that of a young woman called Josée Papet, who entertains three elderly ‘friends’ in her apartment once a week: each has his day. She also supports the ineffectual Florentin, but may have found a substitute, someone she really loves. Now she has been shot, and Maigret must find the murderer.

The story has some interesting reflections on guilt, as the guilty one turns out to be Florentin, though he is not guilty of murder but of less punishable crimes. The murder, on the other hand, is not really a murder, or rather, is not technically, but is so morally. This is also a rare case where Simenon shows himself the equal of Agatha Christie in plotting, something he is not normally interested in doing. The three suspects all leave clues indicating their guilt, but only one is guilty. One almost expects Maigret to make remarks about little grey cells. Like all detective stories though, this one has no characterisation (except that of Maigret) so I didn’t much care which of the three ciphers pulled the trigger. Rather a dull Maigret I thought.

Big Bob was first published as Le Grand Bob in 1954 and translated by Eileen M Lowe. Robert Dandurand has died, a cheerful, popular rogue of a man known to his many friends as ‘Big Bob’. Did he die accidentally? Did he commit suicide? What kind of a man was he anyway? His friend Charles starts an investigation into the life of Bob, trying to understand how he died, and why.

Bob and his wife Lulu had a large circle of friends. They were always surrounded by people, attracted by Bob’s cheerfulness and ready wit. Charles discovers that Bob is the son of a distinguished lawyer, and was destined for the law himself, but had fled his wealthy family and chosen to live on his wits in Montmartre, where he met his wife to be, an almost prostitute called Lulu. Driven by urges he himself doesn’t understand, Bob has a philosophy. If only every person in the world could make just one other person happy, what a wonderful world it would be. Bob chooses to make Lulu happy, and he becomes the centre of her world. Charles discovers that behind the drunkenness, easy virtue and raffishness of the life Bob and Lulu share, there is a great love story. Fenton Bresler says in The Mystery of Georges Simenon that this story was based on fact, on the life of one of Simenon’s relatives.

There’s an unsteady treatment to the story that distracted me from the involvement I usually experience with Simenon’s books. Most of them are lived through imaginative crises of Simenon’s, and I find make compelling reading. Perhaps because he is here telling a ‘true’ story, Simenon seems a little external, as it were, seeing from the outside. There’s no doubt the story is extremely touching. Bob chooses a death that will look like an accident, and conceals from Lulu the illness he is suffering from. It’s his way of caring for her. She is distraught that he hadn’t confided in her. Bob’s paternalistic attitude has made him Lulu’s support in life: without him, she withers and dies. We are left with a portrait of Bob that paints him halfway between a saint and an emotional fraud, and probably that ambiguity was important for Simenon to show (most of us fall between two stereotypes).

November was first published as Novembre in 1969 and translated by Jean Stewart. The Le Cloanec family live an isolated life in a gloomy house outside Paris. The daughter of the family, Laure, tells their story in November, a gloomy story set in a gloomy winter month. Her mother feels neglected, and has taken to drink; her father and younger brother compete for the favors of their Spanish maid Manuela, and slowly leave their isolated regime, each cut off from the other, to quarrel over her. Laure herself despairs over her family, and has involved herself deeply in her work as a medical researcher. She has become the mistress of her chief, though he is married and can offer her no future, feeling the need to sacrifice herself for his good.

This intolerable regime goes on, and no family member can help another. Then the maid Manuela, the one bright, cheerful person in the household, disappears. Laure fears her unstable mother has murdered her. The mystery is never solved, but the maid’s disappearance does encourage Laure to reassess her mother, and to feel some pity for her. Professor Shimak, her lover, suffers a grievous blow when his wife dies in a car accident, and slowly the balance of Laure’s relationship with the Professor changes, into something less self-sacrificing on her part and more fulfilling. This wintry book seems to be saying that in every deadlocked relationship there can be a ray of hope, and that sometimes it takes a crisis for us to see it. This is not Simenon at his best. The evocation of the house and the characters who live there is as authentic as ever, but the insight into these peoples’ motivations seems somehow obscured.

The Fifth Simenon Omnibus, Penguin Books, 1972. Maigret’s Boyhood Friend, 1968, rated ◊◊◊◊; Big Bob, 1954, rated ◊◊◊◊◊; November, 1969, rated ◊◊◊◊.

©2011 Original material copyright Phillip Kay. Images and other material courtesy Creative Commons. Please inform post author of any violation.

The Fourth Simenon Omnibus

This project is to review the novels published in the Penguin Simenon Omnibus series.

The Little Saint was first published as Le Petit saint in 1965. It was translated by Bernard Frechtman. The book was very successful in France and England when first published: Simenon said of it that if only one of his books could be kept, he would like it to be that one. It is the story of Louis Heurteau, a painter reminiscent in some ways of Chagall, and told in two parts, the first showing the little boy growing up in the neighbourhood of Les Halles, where his mother works selling vegetables, and the second part covering his adult years when he is recognised as a painter of talent.

In effect it is a self portrait of Simenon himself. For this reason (as Simenon was a writer not a painter), the first part, which recreates vividly the life in the rue Mouffetard and the personalities of Louis, his family members, neighbours, and the atmosphere of the immediate locality, is by far the more successful. In many ways it parallels the achievement of Pedigree, his long autobiographical novel of 1946 which I think his greatest work (unlike Simenon himself and most critics). This first part of the novel contains an astonishingly vivid portrait of Louis’ mother Gabrielle, unfortunately heavily idealised. Simenon seems here and in Pedigree to be able to recreate the way a child sees the world in a very convincing way. Louis is an observer, so overwhelmed by sensory information he can hardly react emotionally, and acquires the nickname ‘the little saint’ for his forbearance in accepting the rough treatment meted out by his school fellows.

As an adult, Louis sees himself as a little boy still, thinking that the innocence and astonishment with which he sees the world around him is the source of what success he has had as a painter. The second half of the book lacks the richness of particularisation that the first part had. It is a series of vignettes depicting Louis’ adventures with women, his rising fame, and his late growing self realisation. The characters from the first part of the book are mentioned only to tell of their death (interestingly Louis’ mother Gabrielle is shown as vital into her seventies and her death is not recorded, which to psychologists may reveal the source of Simenon’s creative powers). It is told from a point of view in the future, when, long after Louis’ death, people have recognised Louis’ talent, and there has been much written about him, his life and his work. Simenon achieves an elegiac tone in this part of the book which may explain its popularity, but it is a retreat from the vivid immediacy of the first part which I myself regretted. Of course it tells you nothing about an artist’s development, neither Chagall’s nor Simenon’s. The first part brings Simenon’s and Louis’ childhood to life as overwhelmingly as Simenon’s one time mentor Colette was able to do in her reminiscences of childhood: that’s quite an achievement.

Maigret and the Headless Corpse was first published as Maigret et le corps sans tête in 1955. It was translated by Eileen Ellenbogen. Body parts of a dismembered corpse are found in the Seine when a coal barge goes aground, and Maigret is called in to investigate. On the very first day he stumbles across the solution, quite by accident. Perhaps for that reason, he feels compelled to investigate the causes of the crime, hidden deep in the past of the people concerned.

Quite unlike most conventual mysteries, where the solution is the main point of the story, here it is the motive that is investigated. Maigret delves several generations into the past, and finds a repellent nouveau riche, and a daughter deeply divided between adoration, and hatred and contempt. The daughter Aline, perhaps feeling an incestuous passion like Simenon’s own daughter, and mired in self hatred, elopes with a peasant retainer on her father’s estate and shuts herself up in a canal side bistro with him, where each lives their own life. Her rationale, if she has one, is to mortify and hurt her father through her own degradation. Now Omer Calas, her husband, has disappeared. Could he be the man whose body was found in the canal?

Maigret and Aline feel their way to some kind of understanding as the investigation continues. Maigret, like Simenon, knows there is no crime, and there should be no punishment. He desperately tries to understand, in the belief that with understanding will come forgiveness, and with forgiveness, the troubles that drive people to crime will be somehow lessened.

The Man with the Little Dog was first published as L’Homme au petit chien in 1964. It was translated by Jean Stewart. I once heard a religious drama broadcast when I was a child, I think it was called ‘The Hour of St Francis’. It was about a man who had died in the street, and who had no identification. Nobody knew who he was. Eventually, someone recognised him, and he was taken to the apartment where he had lived. There, it transpired, nobody knew anything about him. He had lived his life without, it appeared, human contact. As far as other people were concerned, he was a cypher. The point of the broadcast was, I think, that such a life might appear to be meaningless, but it was not meaningless to god. The Man with the Little Dog is Simenon’s take on this story, about a little man, who in this case had at least a little dog he cared for, who dies in the street and seems to be a nobody, with no other human being to care for him, whose life appears to have been meaningless.

Felix Allard and his little dog Bib have their story told by Simenon, and so Felix turns out to be far from a nobody. Felix keeps a notebook. He is ill, and has resolved to kill himself by an overdose of sleeping tablets before his illness can incapacitate him. Before doing this, he attempts a summing up. It turns out to be the life story of a rather frigid, complacent man, well-off, learned, who ineffectually drifts through life until overtaken by financial ruin, jealousy and, finally, crime. It’s the story of a man here purely because a spermatozoa fertilised an egg, bound to develop in a certain way because of biological processes he has no control over, living in a society which determines his opportunities, and through that, his personality. A cypher. Simenon’s genius makes him an everyman.

It’s hard not to be moved by this book. Felix’s attitudes are limited, and many of his actions are foolish. His attitude, though, and his reflections, are those of any person who has ever reflected on the question, “why?” His plight is that of every human being who has ever lived. Not that different from Bib the dog, who gives his affection, performs his tricks, follows his instincts, and is rescued from one animal shelter only to end up, at Felix’s death, in another.

The Fourth Simenon Omnibus, Penguin Books, 1971. The Little Saint, 1965, rated ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊; Maigret and the Headless Corpse, 1955, rated ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊; The Man with the Little Dog, 1964, rated ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊.

©2011 Original material copyright Phillip Kay. Images and other material courtesy Creative Commons. Please inform post author of any violation.

The Third Simenon Omnibus

Maigret Has Doubts was first published as Vue Confidence de Maigret in 1959, and was translated into English by Lyn Moir. Doctor Pardon, Maigret’s old friend, confides the details of one of his cases after he has entertained the Maigrets to a dinner in his apartment. It is the story of a dying Polish tailor whom he cannot save. Pardon is more concerned about the man’s hysterical wife, needlessly as it turns out. Maigret understands. In turn he tells Pardon about one of his own cases, something he rarely does with anyone. The story is told in flashback, as the two men drink and smoke after their dinner. It was the story of Adrien Josset, a pharmaceutical firm executive accused of the savage murder of his wife.

The law of criminal procedure has recently been changed, and Maigret makes no secret of his regret at the loss of autonomy he has consequently experienced. Cases are now completely in the hands of the examining magistrate, who controls whatever evidence the police uncover. This is particularly uncongenial for Maigret, who likes to question and understand the background of everyone involved with his cases before making up his mind what to do. Slowly, he begins to form his impression of Josset, and it is not unfavourable. Then a malicious witness sends a letter to the newspapers, and the story is eventually tried and judged by journalists, who inflame public opinion. Everyone believes Josset is guilty long before his trial. The examining magistrate is under pressure to achieve a quick conviction, and his instructions to Maigret end up suppressing a lot of inconvenient evidence.

The book provides a convincing portrait of Josset and his world. He was a man who achieved good fortune by luck rather than his own efforts, who unfortunately comes across in the newspapers as a bit of a gigolo. Maigret of course finds a lot more than such a stereotype. But his hands are tied. He cannot save Josset. There is no resolution to the story. Even the rumours concerning someone who could be the real killer are not substantiated. The real tragedy for Maigret is that the man was not adequately tried. His guilt is still, at least in Maigret’s mind, undecided. He has doubts.

The Old Man Dies was first published as La Mort d’Aguste in 1966. It was translated by Bernard Frechtman. This is a story of Les Halles in Paris, the old marketplace torn down in 1970. It is the story of Auguste Mature who comes to Paris and opens a restaurant called Chez l’Auvergnat and prospers. With supreme economy Simenon creates what is virtually a two generation family saga in his usual scope of 120 pages. Auguste grows old, still vain of his virility, mustache and muscles. He stays in close touch with other shopkeepers from his district of the Auvergne. His health is poor now, and he is on a strict regime set by his doctor which he rebels against when he can. His wife Eugénie, whom he married when she was sixteen, has grown old too, and has lost her reason, spending her time in a dream world where no one can contact her. Auguste has three sons. The eldest, Ferdinand, has become a magistrate, though he and his wife and children have to struggle on a low salary to survive. The second son, Antoine, works with his father in the restaurant, and has become his partner. The youngest, Bernard, is a wastrel living on borrowed money.

Both Ferdinand and Bernard have grown apart from their family: involved with their own affairs, they seldom have time to visit. With loving detail, Simenon gives the daily routine of Antoine and his wife Fernande. They rise at five, Antoine does the shopping then sets the menu. He is as well known and liked in the area as his father was before him. The routine of preparing food, greeting customers, ordering supplies, dealing with staff, give an extremely realistic flavour to the story. The other brothers are treated with as much detail. We understand their life and their values and concerns. Then, quite suddenly, Auguste has a stroke and dies.

The brothers and their families gather to plan the funeral. Ferdinand and Bernard realise for the first time that the restaurant is a prosperous business, and that their father has been putting substantial sums of money away for years, and that therefore there is an inheritance for them. Both are needy men, and the realisation slowly affects their judgment till they turn against their brother Antoine, suspicious he is trying to defraud them.

Here is an everyday tragedy familiar to many, yet a tragedy nevertheless. Part of Simenon’s genius is that he never exaggerates yet can clearly show the effect of strong emotions on actions his characters take. The conclusion of The Old Man Dies, with it’s unexpected twists and turns, is among the most moving passages he ever wrote.

Maigret and the Minister was first published as Maigret Chez le Ministre in 1954. It was translated by Moura Budberg. The Calame Report, an architect’s warning about an unsafe public project which has collapsed and resulted in the death of 128 young children, was disregarded when it was first published, and has subsequently disappeared. Now it has resurfaced, with allegations that several politicians and contractors involved with the project may have previously had it suppressed to avoid a scandal.

Maigret enters the shifty world of politics in this story, dodged by members of the security police wherever he goes. He has been appealed to by the Minister of Public Works to act privately on his behalf, and finds a situation where the very existence of the report can be used by unsavoury and unscrupulous politicians to lever influence. In an unfamiliar world of decadent diplomatic officials, fanatic followers of political parties, officials of the security police whom neither he nor his superiors can know anything about officially, renegade members of that force and suspicious staff in politicians’ entourage, Maigret grimly sticks to what he knows best: finding the perpetrators of criminal acts.

This is a story which will appeal to lovers of the traditional detective story. Despite the quite believable situation described, the story revolves on tracing identity and following clues which slowly reveal the true course of events.

The Third Simenon Omnibus, Penguin Books, 1971. Maigret Has Doubts, 1959, rated ◊◊◊◊◊◊; The Old Man Dies, 1966, rated ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊; Maigret and the Minister, 1954, rated ◊◊◊◊◊◊.

©2011 Original material copyright Phillip Kay. Images and other material courtesy Creative Commons. Please inform post author of any violation.

The Second Simenon Omnibus

The Patience of Maigret was first published as La Patience de Maigret in 1965. It was translated into English by Alastair Hamilton. The story is about a 20 year series of jewel thefts which have baffled the police. At the centre of things is an ex slum boy, Palmari, who has become an underworld king pin, with whom Maigret nevertheless feels a certain affinity. Now someone has shot Palmeri, confined to a wheelchair after surviving a previous attack, someone close to him, and Maigret is on the case. The main locale is an apartment block where Palmeri lived, and Simenon takes us through a dozen case histories as Maigret investigates.

Rare in a Simenon book we have an aside from the author, a reflection of Maigret’s: “Basically there was fear. He had often discussed it late at night with Doctor Pardon who had also had an experience of men and was not far from sharing his conclusions. Everybody is afraid. People try to erase children’s fear by reading fairy stories and the minute a child goes to school he is afraid to show his parents a copybook with bad marks. Fear of water. Fear of fire. Fear of animals. Fear of the dark. Fear at fifteen or sixteen of choosing badly one’s destiny, of failing one’s life…” It is this fear all trail behind them which results in violence, and violence which leads to crime. For Maigret, it is understanding the fear driving his suspects, without prejudice but with compassion, that enables him to understand motive. Proceeding by intuition in a way no police officer would ever admit doing, Maigret is like a bloodhound. He goes by smell.

Unusually in a detective story it is an incident of the war years 20 years earlier on which the solution hangs. Viewers who have seen Rene Clement’s 1952 film Jeux Interdits (Forbidden Games) will recall the opening section of that film as Maigret reconstructs the event. But it’s the bars and nightclubs, the food and the weather one remembers afterwards, not the plot.

The Accomplices was first published as Les Complices in 1955. It was translated by Bernard Frechtman. This is a story where Simenon invites comparison with Patricia Highsmith, as he draws the reader further and further into the mind of a rather repellent man guilty of a crime. Or is he guilty? The contrast between the two writers is illuminating: Highsmith takes ordinary, mundane facts and occurrences, statements and observations, and imperceptibly twists them into unbalanced, obsessive reactions until the reader doubts their own sanity and reads on with horror as the plot unfolds. Simenon works in the reverse direction, as it were, showing how horrific acts and repellent attitudes are formed gradually by details rooted in everyday, fully realised events and environments. The context, so superbly rendered, is an important part of his technique.

Joseph Lambert is the head of a successful building firm, a big wheel in his little town, yet somehow out of place. His father was a mason, a working class man who was in the right place at the right time, and with the aid of two of his sons, became prosperous. Joseph’s brother Marcel takes advantage of this upward mobility to better himself, but somehow the elder brother Joseph, a drinker and womanizer who scandalises everyone, cannot. He is just a proletariat with a lot of money. One day Joseph, making love to his secretary in his car, causes an accident which results in the death of a busload of school children. The event finally destroys him, and Simenon’s book is an examination into his guilt, of what he was guilty of, and whether he was indeed guilty.

With his trademark compassion Simenon portrays a sullen, selfish man that most people, even his wife, dislike, yet shows him to be trapped in a life he does not desire and has no affinity for, a man reaching for his place, and affirming his unhappiness by drunkeness, seductions, rudeness, and feeling this behaviour is justified. He is not guilty, he tells himself. Even the horrific accident he was the cause of was a result of what he sees as a search for fulfillment. It is easy to dismiss Joseph as a monster. For Simenon there are no monsters.

Maigret’s Pickpocket was published as Le Voleur de Maigret in 1967. It was translated by Nigel Ryan. A thief steals Maigret’s wallet on a bus, then returns it in an apparent fit of remorse. Interviewed, he discloses the horrific death of his wife, who has been shot. Maigret begins an investigation into the murder, which has happened on the fringes of the film world. His confidant, his pickpocket, is a tortured genius whose poverty has deformed him. The circle of his acquaintances whom Maigret meets confuse the real with the apparent.

Maigret is…Maigret. To understand the crime he has to understand the people concerned. Simenon, who knew quite a bit about the film world (he was a regular at Cannes, where he sometimes judged, and an intimate of Federico Fellini) describes the financial poseurs who act as producers, the actresses who will do anything for a part, the writers and directors hungering to be proclaimed as geniuses, the hangers on who put their careers on hold for easy film money. For anyone with an interest in cinema this is a fascinating depiction.

Unlike many detective stories this tale is so beautifully balanced between a depiction of a milieu and a description of a crime and its solution that it holds its fascination literally until the very last page.

The Second Simenon Omnibus, Penguin Books, 1970. The Patience of Maigret, 1965, rated ◊◊◊◊◊; The Accomplices, 1955, rated ◊◊◊◊◊; Maigret’s Pickpocket, 1967, rated ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊.

©2011 Original material copyright Phillip Kay. Images and other material courtesy Creative Commons. Please inform post author of any violation.

The First Simenon Omnibus

Reading a novel of Georges Simenon’s is more like watching a film than reading a book. Simenon’s books are short, 120 pages or so, each of eight or nine chapters. He wrote three or four a year for many years, produced over 300 titles, and was for a time the world’s best selling author. You can read a book at one sitting if you desire, just as you sit through a film. The novels usually present a character going through a crisis, and the reader understands this as they do when presented with a dramatic situation in a film, or with friends or acquaintances in their own life: that is, gradually, a bit at a time, until, quite suddenly, they get the whole picture, and realise what’s going on. This development is grounded in place. Simenon is one of the greatest of all masters of mise en scène. He is able to do two things consistently that others often can not. His empathetic understanding of character enables him to involve the reader in the protagonist’s crisis, which often forms a type of catharsis, or release of conflict. And he is able to convey to the reader a perspective of the protagonist’s life, and of human life in a more general sense, which can be, for some, reassuring.

Monsieur Monde Vanishes was first published as La Fuite de Monsieur Monde in 1952. It was translated into English by Jean Stewart. The novel begins like a Maigret novel, with a depiction of a Paris police station. Ill-lit, grimy, a waiting room of working class people waiting to fill out identity forms, Simenon presents the bureaucratic side of police work here. Into this drab environment sweeps an arrogant, self-centered woman, Madame Monde, reporting the disappearance of her husband Norbert. In his delineation of Madame Monde Simenon adroitly both sets the atmosphere, and states the man’s problem. Monsieur Monde is the owner and manager of a successful export business, the fourth generation of his family to hold this position. He, it becomes clear, is both very able and very conscientious, and feels responsible as well, for those, family and employees, in his care. He has let himself become over the years a prisoner of his responsibilities. Unlike his father, who led an irresponsible, self-indulgent life which almost bankrupted the family firm, Norbert is disciplined, hard working and successful. On his 48th birthday (Simenon was 48 when he wrote the book) he does a kind of summing up, propelled to do this by the fact that no-one has remembered his birthday but himself. He has divorced his first wife, shocked by her lack of a moral sense, and married again, primarily out of regard for his two young children. His second wife, he has discovered, is one of those persons entirely taken up with her own wants and needs, and arrogantly dismissive of everyone who cannot share this obsession with her. Monsieur Monde considerately accedes to her wishes, defers to her demands, and yet earns her contempt. His daughter has married, lives with her husband in her family’s home, and has little contact with her father but to ask for money. His son, who has failed to do anything with his life, has been taken on in the family firm. It gradually becomes clear to Monsieur Monde, that while he loves his son unselfishly, the boy is, like his wife, self-obsessed, and effeminate as well, earning the contempt of his fellow workers by making sexual advances to a teenage truck driver, although ineffectually. The effort to care for others has only succeeded in attracting to Monsieur Monde a group of selfish, self-obsessed exploiters. He longs for release from this pressure, which is a constant challenge to his rather idealistic morality. He decides to leave it all behind, to just walk away, to vanish. He’s intelligent, and competent, and does so successfully.

Poor Monsieur Monde! He wants to run away from all this effort, to be carefree, to just exist, but he can’t run away from his own nature. In the seedy hotel in Nice where he ends up, he hears a quarrel in the adjoining room, hears a man leave in anger, hears a woman in hysterics, and goes in to offer aid. The woman has taken an overdose of sleeping pills, and Norbert calls a doctor. Slowly he gets involved in the woman’s life. They become lovers. Simenon draws an astonishingly concise and evocative picture of this woman’s whole life in a few paragraphs. Unlike Norbert’s wife, Julie has few expectations, illusions or inhibitions. Precisely because she does not expect Norbert to care for her or stay with her weakens the bond between them. The two remain friends and occasional lovers, but in the life Julie has led, men don’t stay around for long. And so when Norbert stumbles across his first wife, now living a drug addicted bohemian life and facing destitution, he begins to care for her, loses touch with Julie, and soon finds himself in his usual role of carer.

But Monsieur Monde is an intelligent man. He soon becomes aware of the pattern in his own life. This is something he cannot run away from. The awareness changes him profoundly. Instead of a life made up of well meant good intentions, it has become apparent to him that all people have needs, and that some people have needs that can never be satisfied. He is aware what a terrible thing this is. At the end of the book, when he has returned to his life in Paris, he is a colder, more disillusioned man, but a more accepting man as well, able to deal efficiently with other people’s limitations as he had never been before.

The Neighbours was first published in 1967 as Le Déménagement, and was translated by Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson. Emile Jovis, his wife Blanche and son Alain have just moved to a new apartment on the outskirts of Paris. Emile is a self-made man, a hard worker who has built a good life for his wife and son, looks good to assume a chief managerial position at the travel agency where he has a responsible job, and is outwardly happy and successful. But things are not what they seem. Emile’s plain and unassertive wife Blanche is unable to have any more children, his son Alain seems cynical and secretive, and Emile begins to question whether he has done the right thing, whether he and his family are as happy as he thinks they are. In the new apartment the walls are as thin as paper, and lying awake one night Emile hears the couple next door making love. They seem to like exchanging obscene phrases, trying out deviant practices. This overheard conversation rocks Emile’s little world and all his assumptions.

Simenon tells something of Emile’s childhood: his father, a schoolteacher, has taught him to do the right thing, to always give of his best, but has shown him little tenderness. Emile has grown up in a narrow world where duty is the keyword. He dutifully does well at school, studies accountancy and then, later, languages, works for a solicitor and then betters himself by joining a travel agency and gaining a manager’s job. Money is scarce, but Emile is careful. He provides for his family, and eventually has enough to buy into a new apartment complex outside Paris. He has done all the right things. But no-one has taught Emile how to live. He tells himself over and over that he is happy. Or should be. Here is a sad and compassionate look into the lives of people who have been denied the possibility of fulfilling themselves, and given the opportunity of buying things instead, if they work hard and save carefully.

Once Emile’s neighbours have given him a glimpse of another world his fragile grasp on contentment is gone. He believes these people are dishonest, perhaps gangsters, totally immoral. Not only are they sexually depraved, they are seemingly shameless, confident, affluent. Emile discovers they work in a nightclub in Paris. Obsessing over the conversation he has heard, a catalyst which has uncovered the cracks in his contentment which he has hidden in his subconscious, Emile, for the first time, deceives his wife Blanche. He makes up a story to give him a pretense for being out at night, and goes to the nightclub, which features striptease dancers. He watches the women undress, has sex with one of the dancers, gets drunk. For the first time in his life he has not done his duty. While the neighbours seem to prosper in this world, for Emile the results are tragic.

Maigret and the Nahour Case was first published as Maigret et l’affaire Nahour in 1976. It was translated by Alastair Hamilton. Maigret’s friend Doctor Pardon has treated a woman who has been shot, but the woman and her companion have vanished. Then he is called in to investigate a murder. A wealthy Lebanese gambler, Monsieur Nahour, has been murdered, but everyone connected to this case seems determined to hide information. Maigret must decide whether the two shootings are connected.

The details of police work are presented realistically in this and all the Maigret stories, though the emphasis is on quick sketches of the people in the jobs. There is a wide audience for the kind of deductive reasoning a police detective needs to make (though none at all for the similar processes a tax accountant, say, or an archaeologist must pursue) and any Maigret story will satisfy this interest. Yet the dominating element in all these stories is Maigret’s mood, his reaction to the weather, to atmosphere, to what he feels about the people he interviews. In this particular story it is said that Maigret’s only friend is Doctor Pardon, and that the bond that unites them is their experiences dealing with human nature, which they enjoy talking over at monthly dinners together.

Slowly Maigret narrows the search until he has four suspects. All four are capable of murder, all four tell him lies. Only one has committed a murder. Simenon follows the conventions of the detective story, which demands that either information is concealed from the reader, or that characters act from concealed motives not apparent in the story, so as to preserve the element of surprise at the ‘solution’ of the mystery. Not surprisingly Maigret is dissatisfied at the justice of his case. Shouldn’t being capable of violence that could end in murder be the crime?

The First Simenon Omnibus, Penguin Books, 1970. The title refers to the fact that the volume includes three novels by Simenon. Monsieur Monde Vanishes 1952, rated ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ (where The Brothers Karamazov is rated ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊); The Neighbours, 1967, rated ◊◊◊◊◊◊; Maigret and the Nahour Case, 1967, rated ◊◊◊◊◊.

See also The Second Simenon Omnibus,  The Third Simenon Omnibus, The Fourth Simenon Omnibus, The Fifth Simenon Omnibus, The Sixth and Seventh Simenon Omnibus.

©2011 Original material copyright Phillip Kay. Images and other material courtesy Creative Commons. Please inform post author of any violation.

Man of 100 masterpieces: Georges Simenon

There are two Georges Simenons. In Europe and Latin America he is a major author, mentioned in the context of Dostoevsky, Durrenmatt and Patricia Highsmith. In English language countries he is just a detective story writer, a peer of Agatha Christie and Mickey Spillane.

While the legitimacy of assigning works of fiction to a graded rank of genre classification is now seen as a little suspect, there are other reasons why Simenon loses face in the English speaking critical world.

Firstly he over-produced. He wrote 87 books featuring his detective Maigret and 113 other books describing crimes, and as many again under a host of pseudonyms, as many as 12 books a year over a 40 year period (as Simenon).

Secondly he was spectacularly successful. His personal contacts and genius as a publicist made the launch of his first eight books in 1931, all featuring Maigret, a national media event in France and himself a national celebrity. Simenon went on to become one of the highest grossing authors in history (1.5 billion books sold) and was a mainstay of French cinema (and still is today).

Thirdly he wrote stories of crime. The English speaking world has a strange attitude to books of this nature. They’re popular, but not critically considered. To be considered critically the subject of crime has to be disregarded, as happens with Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment for instance. There is a huge audience for detective fiction, and as Simenon wrote a large number of books featuring a detective, English readers usually only have the opportunity to read these, and remain ignorant of the bulk of Simenon’s output, that which is valued more highly by Europeans.

On the other hand, Simenon’s detective fiction is quite unlike any other author’s in that genre, and much closer to his other work than is often recognised. The Maigret novels, like the ‘hard’ stories (Simenon’s term) are novels of atmosphere, both of landscape and of feeling. In the ‘hard’ novels Simenon does what Highsmith does, gets inside the mind of someone under tremendous psychological pressure and allows us to experience what it is like to commit a crime of violence. In the Maigret novels Maigret gets inside the mind of someone under tremendous psychological pressure and intuits how a crime was committed.

Simenon’s method of composition was unusual. His books were a psychological process, a kind of primal therapy. He began as other authors have, naming his characters and keeping a card file on their characteristics and history. Slowly he would identify with one of these characters and experience a catharsis through this involvement, writing all through the process. Those who lived with him said it was a devastating experience for him.

Two characteristics of Simenon’s writing are his intimate sense of place, and his sensitivity to smells. Belgian though he was he knew Paris better than most Parisians and as well as Dickens knew London, and in the same way, through tirelessly walking its backstreets. He also travelled restlessly throughout Europe, often sailing his own barge around its canals. And he not only saw his world. Simenon was as sensuous a writer as Keats.

There is a writers’ adage that says what makes a work great is not what you put in but what you leave out. Simenon found this out. His early pseudonymous work, after his time as a journalist, was not very distinguished. He committed all the faults authors can. Slowly Simenon learnt to write until he was ready to write as Simenon. His mature writing is exceptionally sparse. Few writers can draw such convincing pictures with so few words. You read Simenon quickly because he doesn’t distract you. You are in his world without a jarring note and once there you experience his character’s obsessive passion. This is why film makers like Simenon’s books.

Another characteristic of Simenon’s work is its compassion. He describes people’s actions under pressure. The festering hate that consumes an elderly couple that have grown to detest one another; the fantasies that obsess someone who spies on another until they lose all sense of reality; the fight against family rivals to gain an inheritance until murder seems logically the only solution. Throughout his work there is never a judgement. Nobody is ever condemned. I, and you, he says, could come to this.

To talk about specific works of Simenon is quite a problem. Look for Simenon today in an English language bookshop and you’ll find only a handful of Maigret novels, not necessarily the best ones. You have to be prepared to shop second hand, or learn to read French. The complete works, in a learned edition, are available in French, and apparently sell very well.

Simenon retired from writing fiction in 1973 and for the next 10 years poured out a stream of autobiographical writings. It is interesting then that one of his very best works is an autobiographical novel called Pedigree, published in 1948. It was a rewrite as fiction of a straightforward memoir (‘I Remember’), under the encouragement of Andre Gide, who thought and proclaimed Simenon as France’s greatest writer.

The most accessible of Simenon’s work may still be the Penguin omnibuses. There were 14 of these published 1970-80 and still many second hand copies available. They consisted of three novels each and include some of Simenon’s best work: Monsieur Monde Vanishes; The Old Man Dies; November; The Cat; Betty…the effect of many is poignant and moving, with the lighter Maigret titles included providing some welcome entertainment. Number 1. Number 2.

Over 55 films based on Simenon’s books have been made (over 120 including TV episodes and series), beginning with Jean Renoir’s 1931 film La Nuit du carrefour, and including Marcel Carné’s La Marie du port, 1950, with Jean Gabin; Henry Hathaway’s 1956 film, The Bottom of the Bottle, starring Van Johnson and Joseph Cotton; 1963′s L’Ainé des Ferchaux, directed by Jean-Pierre Melville and starring Jean-Paul Belmondo; L’Horologer de Saint-Paul of 1974, director Bernard Tavernier and star Philippe Noiret; Patrice Leconte’s 1989 film Monsieur Hire with Michel Blanc and Sandrine Bonnaire; and Claude Chabrol’s Betty of 1992 with Marie Trintignant. It’s been a fruitful collaboration. A surprising number of these turn up with an Amazon search of ‘simenon’. Monsieur Hire is still in the video libraries.

The Little Man from Archangel was written in 1957 and translated by Nigel Ryan. It is the story of Jonas Milk, a refugee who has married a younger woman not of his choosing who now has left him. Milk does not know what has happened to his wife. A victim of persecution in the past, he feels wary of his neighbours and makes up a story that his wife is visiting relations. When his neighbours find that Milk’s wife has vanished while he is still pretending she has not they assume he has killed her and call in the police. This is the story of how persecution begets persecution, of how fear breeds violence. The opening of a Simenon, with its beautifully condensed layout, is always worth quoting.

“He made the mistake of telling a lie. He felt it intuitively the moment he opened his mouth to reply to Fernand Le Bouc, and it was actually from timidity, lack of sangfroid, that he did not alter the words which came to his lips.

What he said was: “She’s gone to Bourges.”

Just as succinctly Jonas’ relationship with his wife is sketched.

“They sometimes ate without uttering a word, as quickly as possible, as if to have done with a chore, and he would still be at table when she began, behind his back, to wash up the dishes at the sink”.

Husband and wife, with their differing backgrounds and temperaments, are shown as uncomprehending of each other. Both behave in what seems a normal manner to each of them, yet the interaction proves fatal. Jonas, it transpires, carries the ghetto around with him and the neighbours eventually sense this and turn on him. Jonas’ fear does the rest.

This short book sketches in a believable community, a plausible family relationship and a needless tragedy and shows the inner springs of the behaviour which make it all possible. There are more than 100 such books as good as this by Simenon.

Though I don’t read French and the translations vary in quality, I have been reading Simenon’s novels for many years with pleasure. He’s the best represented author in my book collection (about 150 titles). Collectively these titles form a major reading experience and make Simenon one of the most influential authors I have read.

©2009 Original material copyright Phillip Kay. Images and other material courtesy Creative Commons. Please inform post author of any violation.