Reading group: which Georges Simenon book should we read in February?
Last month, Penguin republished Maigret and Monsieur Charles, the last Maigret written by Georges Simenon in a new translation by Ros Schwartz. It marks the end of what author John Banville called “a positively heroic publishing venture”. Over the past six years, Penguin has brought out all 75 of the Maigret books that Simenon wrote, producing a new translation every six months, which is, as Banville says, a fitting monument to one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
It feels like a good reason to investigate Simenon here on the Reading Group. We can discover why André Gide called him “perhaps the greatest and the most truly a novelist in contemporary French letters”. Why Camus said he learned from him. Why Muriel Spark and Henry Miller adored him. Why William Faulkner compared him to Chekhov. Why the famous Belgian remains one of the most widely read French-language writers of the 20th century.
Simenon’s genius is well recognised and his fans are legion – but he has always attracted a few doubters. He wrote more than 400 books, going at a ferocious rate. Naturally, he couldn’t maintain standards in all of them – and it has been asked if he properly cared about any.
There’s a joke that Alfred Hitchcock once wanted to talk to the writer on the phone and was told that he was unavailable because he was working on a new book. “That’s OK,” said Hitchcock, “I’ll wait.” Another joke in the satirical French newspaper Le Canard enchaîné was that “M Simenon makes his living by killing someone every month and then discovering the murderer”.
In fact, Simenon could easily go faster than one murderer a month. At the peak of his productivity, it took him a week and a half to write a novel, at the rate of 80 pages a day. He would write these in the morning. Then he would vomit from the tension – and spend the afternoon relaxing.
Simenon also recommended that his books should be consumed fast. “You can’t see a tragedy in more than one sitting,” he said – and that gives a big clue to the appeal of his work. It isn’t mystery he cares for, nor the plot twists and surprises of contemporaries such as Agatha Christie. Simenon shows us pathos, pain and human frailty. In the Maigret novels I’ve read, little happens that feels extraordinary. Usually you know who has committed the crime right from the start. There’s satisfaction in watching Maigret at work, but there’s no sense of triumph. Maigret doesn’t win. The murderers and their victims always lose. Maybe the former, most of all. “The criminal is often less guilty than his victim,” said Simenon.
That makes for engrossing novels. So, too, does Simenon’s blunt, pared-down style. In a 1955 interview, the Paris Review asked him what he cut during the revision process. He replied: “Adjectives, adverbs, and every word which is there just to make an effect. Every sentence which is there just for the sentence. You know, you have a beautiful sentence – cut it.”
This dislike of beauty is not to be mistaken for a paucity of ambition. He added: “I tried to give to my words just the weight that a stroke of Cézanne’s gave to an apple. That is why most of the time I use concrete words. I try to avoid abstract words, or poetical words, you know, like ‘crepuscule’, for example. It is very nice, but it gives nothing.”
That interview is also notable for his bleak summation of the novelist’s craft: “Some readers still would like to read very reassuring novels, novels which give them a comforting view of humanity. It can’t be done.”
It sounds like just the kind of thing we need to counter the saccharine forces of up lit. Yet while it’s clear that Simenon and Maigret will make a fascinating topic for the Reading Group, it’s less obvious where to start.
When the Paris Review asked Simenon which of his books he’d most like to recommend for survival, he said, “not one”. In contrast, when asked which of Simenon’s books a beginner should read, his No 1 fan Gide replied: “All of them.”
I’d tend to take Gide’s side in that argument, but alas, we have only one month. You can read these books fast – but not that fast. My suggestion instead is that we try for just a couple of the novels. One we should decide by public vote, so please put your recommendations below the line. And while we’re waiting for those nominations to come in, let’s also start reading Pietr the Latvian. This was the first Maigret novel, and also the first book that Simenon thought good enough to have his name on the cover (after writing more than 100 pulp fiction titles under various pseudonyms). I’ll post about that next week – and then on the winner of the vote the following week.
We are about to encounter the work of a genius. I hope you’ll join me.
As an added inducement, and thanks to publisher Penguin, we have five copies of Pietr the Latvian to give to the first five people from the UK to post “I want a copy please”, along with a nice, constructive thought in the comments section below. If you’re lucky enough to be one of the first to comment, email the lovely folk on culture.admin@theguardian.com, with your address and your account username so they can track you down.
