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Georges Simenon

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Georges-Joseph-Christian Simenon
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Georges Simenon.
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Georges Simenon. (credit: © Jerry Bauer)
(born Feb. 13, 1903, Liège, Belg. — died Sept. 4, 1989, Lausanne, Switz.) Belgian-born French novelist. During 1923 – 33 he wrote more than 200 pseudonymous books of pulp fiction. His first novel under his own name was The Case of Peter the Lett (1931), in which he introduced one of the best-known characters in detective fiction, the Parisian police official Inspector Maigret. He wrote some 80 more Maigret novels, as well as about 130 psychological novels, numerous short stories, and autobiographical works, and was one of the most prolific and widely published authors of the 20th century. Simenon's central theme is the essential humanity of even the isolated, abnormal individual and the sorrow at the root of the human condition. Employing a style of rigorous simplicity, he evokes a prevailing atmosphere of neurotic tensions with sharp economy.

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Biography: Georges Simenon
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The Belgian novelist Georges Simenon (1903-1989), who wrote in French, was one of the most productive and popular writers of the twentieth century. Author of more than 500 novels, translated into dozens of languages, he was most famous for his detective novels featuring Inspector Maigret.

Georges Simenon was born in Liège on Feb. 13, 1903. An able pupil, he was determined to become a writer at the age of 11 and left school 4 years later. In 1919 he began working as a reporter for a Liège newspaper and after military service published his first novel under the pen name of Georges Sim. Between 1921 and 1934 he wrote nearly 200 novels, which he published under more than a dozen pseudonyms. Simenon moved to Paris in 1924, and in 1930 he began the famous Maigret series of detective novels, which he published under his own name. Through the dozens of novels in which he appears, as well as through many films and television adaptations of them, Inspector Maigret, of police headquarters in Paris, has become as well known as Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Maigret, a sensible and tolerant but not brilliant man with simple tastes, puzzles his way to the solution of his cases by patient thought and insight - all the while peacefully puffing his pipe. The added psychological dimension enriches the reader's normal interest in learning the solution to the mystery.

For many critics, however, Simenon's best novels are those that lie outside the Maigret series. In the 1930s he wrote many other thrillers, a notable example being L'Homme qui regardait passer les trains (1938; The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By). Pedigree, written during the war years and published in 1948, is a largely autobiographical novel that presents a powerful and convincing picture of the life of a boy and his parents in Liège from 1903 to 1918. Subsequently Simenon wrote novels in which the psychological analysis of the leading character, exceptional in some way, forms the center of interest. Examples include Les Volets verts (1950; The Heart of a Man), which portrays the closing stages in the life of a great actor, and Le Petit saint (1965; The Little Saint), which treats the formative years in the life of a great artist.

Simenon is above all a storyteller; his readers are immediately gripped by their desire to know "what happens next" and by the compelling atmosphere. An astonishing range of characters move through Simenon's world; he said, "Some people collect stamps; I collect human beings." He excludes politics, religion, history, and metaphysics from his books, concentrating on psychology and on the minor details, often extraordinary, of human existence. Simenon's style is deliberately simple, "since I do not write for a single language." He aims at a kind of "universal vocabulary," building up action and atmosphere through careful brief touches.

Simenon retired from writing fiction in 1974 after producing a range of novels, short stories, diaries, and other works. His last long novel was Intimate Memoirs (1984), written as an attempt to explore the causes of his daughter's suicide in 1978. Although he described himself as a craftsman, his popular Maigret novels as well as his more serious works came to be admired by distinguished French critics. Nobel laureate André Gide called him "perhaps the greatest and most genuine novelist of today's French literature." He died in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1989.

Further Reading

Many studies of Simenon's life and work have been published in recent years: Assouline, Pierre, Simenon: A Biography, Knopf, 1997; Bertrand, Alain, Maigret, Labor (Bruxelles, Belgium), 1994; Bertrand, Alain, Georges Simenon, La Manufacture, 1988; Marnham, Patrick, The Man Who Wasn't Maigret, Harcourt Brace & Co., 1994; Eskin, Stanley, Simenon: A Critical Biography, McFarland & Co., 1987; Bresler, Fenton, The Mystery of Georges Simenon: A Biography, Beaufort Books, 1983; Young, Trudee, Georges Simenon: A Checklist of His "Maigret" & Other Mystery Novels & Short Stories in French & in English Translations, Scarecrow Press, 1976; Foord, Peter, Georges Simenon: A Bibliography of the British First Editions in Hardback and Paperback and/or the Principal French and American Editions, with a Guide to Their Value, Dragonby, 1988; Raymond, John, Simenon in Court (1968), a penetrating critique that contains much valuable information.

French Literature Companion: Georges Simenon
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Simenon, Georges (1903-89). Belgian-born novelist, one of the best-known and most prolific writers of the century. Born in Liège to a childhood of genteel poverty and promising studies cut short by his father's ill health, he was reporter and columnist on the Gazette de Liège before moving to Paris in 1922 to work as secretary to a novelist, and to an aristocrat. Over the next dozen years he wrote, under 20 or more pseudonyms, thousands of short stories and hundreds of popular novels. His independence thus assured, he began travelling the world, living in various places in France and the USA before settling in Switzerland at the end of the 1950s. His restless travelling is as legendary as his womanizing.

The 200-odd novels signed with his own name, from Pietr-le-Letton (1931), which introduced Commissaire Maigret, to the last, Maigret et Monsieur Charles (1972), use elements of his own experience: Le Pendu de Saint Pholien (1931) recounts an incident from his youth; the avid, ill-assured provincials of Les Noces de Poitiers (1946) and other titles are reflections of Simenon himself. He began his autobiography with Je me souviens (1945) and Pedigree (1948). His novels and stories, like his journalism, explore self-knowledge and dignity in perpetually renewed developments on the basic pattern of closed settings in which misplaced characters come to some realization.

In the 80 or so Maigret novels and stories the detective, by empathizing with victim and situation, achieves understanding of the killer's vérité humaine. After the first dozen Maigrets, Simenon began to publish novels without the character, though murder remained frequent: the first non-Maigret novel, Le Passager du ‘Polarlys’ (1932), is scarcely different; Il pleut, bergère (1941) contains a man-hunt, but turns on a child's realization of how trivialities can provoke adult quarrels. In Maigret (1934) the detective is retired until Maigret revient (1942), after which the number of Maigret titles rises gradually to about half of the six or so books published yearly.

Abandoning novels in 1972, Simenon returned to autobiography; the first of a score of volumes, Un homme comme un autre (1975), is significantly titled: Simenon's short novels take ordinary people in ordinary settings developed to the point at which they overturn into the exceptional.

[Stephen Noreiko]

Bibliography

  • S. G. Eskin, Simenon: A Critical Biography (1987)
 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Georges Simenon
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Simenon, Georges (zhôrzh sēmənôN'), 1903-89, Belgian novelist. One of the most prolific of modern authors, he is best known for the detective stories featuring Inspector Maigret. He also wrote more than a hundred pyschological novels, which he called romans durs (hard novels), such as The Stain on the Snow (1938) and The Cat (1976).

Bibliography

See his Intimate Memoirs (1981, tr. 1984); study by L. Becker (1977); biographies by F. Bresler (1985) and P. Assouline (1998).

Quotes By: Georges Simenon
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Quotes:

"Writing is not a profession, but a vocation of unhappiness."

Writer: Georges Simenon
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  • Born: Feb 13, 1903 in Liege, Belgium
  • Died: Sep 04, 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland
  • Occupation: Writer
  • Active: '40s-2000s
  • Major Genres: Drama, Mystery
  • Career Highlights: Monsieur Hire, The Clockmaker, La Veuve Couderc
  • First Major Screen Credit: Le Chien Jaune (1932)

Biography

One of the most prolific writers of detective fiction in France and the creator of Inspector Maigret, Georges Simenon was only a teen when he got his start working as a newspaper journalist. By the time he was 19, he had published his first novel and had begun supplying stories for a number of French tabloids. As a novelist he wrote around two score novels under 17 different names between 1924 and 1933. He introduced his Maigret character in 1931 and later wrote 83 novels chronicling his exploits. The character went on to appear in numerous French feature films helmed by the country's biggest directors. By the time of his death in 1989, Simenon had sold hundreds of millions of books and was still popular around the world even though he hadn't penned a new novel since 1973. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Wikipedia: Georges Simenon
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Georges Joseph Christian Simenon (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʀʒ simˈnɔ̃]) (February 13, 1903 – September 4, 1989) was a Belgian writer. A prolific author who published nearly 200 novels and numerous short works, Simenon is best known for the creation of the fictional detective Maigret.

Contents

Early life and education

Georges Simenon was born at 26 rue Léopold (now number 24) in Liège to Désiré Simenon and his wife Henriette. Désiré Simenon worked in an accounting office at an insurance company and had married Henriette in April 1902. Although Georges Simenon was born on February 13, 1903 superstition resulted in his birth being registered as having been on the 12th. This story of his birth is recounted at the beginning of his novel Pedigree.

The Simenon family traces its origins back to the Limburg region, his mother's family being from Dutch Limburg. One of her more notorious ancestors was Gabriel Brühl, a criminal who preyed on Limbourg from the 1720s until he was hanged, in 1743. Later, Simenon would use Brühl as one of his many pen names.

In April 1905, two years after Georges Simenon's birth, the family moved to 3 rue Pasteur (now 25 rue Georges Simenon) in the city's Outremeuse neighborhood. Georges Simenon's brother Christian was born in September 1906 and eventually became their mother's favorite child, much to Georges Simenon's chagrin. Later, in February 1911, the Simenons moved to 53 rue de la Loi, also in the Outremeuse. In this larger home, the Simenons were able to take in lodgers. Typical among them were apprentices and students of various nationalities, giving the young Simenon an important introduction to the wider world; this marked his novels, notably Pedigree and Le Locataire.

At the age of three, Simenon learned to read at the Saint-Julienne nursery school. Then, between 1908 and 1914, he attended the Institut Saint-André. In September 1914, shortly after the beginning of the First World War, he began his studies at the Collège Saint-Louis, a Jesuit high school.

In February 1917, the Simenon family moved to a former post office building in the Amercoeur neighborhood. June 1919 saw another move, this time to the rue de l'Enseignement, back in the Outremeuse neighborhood.

Using his father's heart condition as a pretext, Simenon decided to put an end to his studies in June 1918, not even taking the Collège Saint-Louis' year-end exams. He subsequently worked a number of very short-term odd jobs.

A career begins in Liège, 1919-1922

In January 1919, the sixteen-year-old Simenon took a job at the Gazette de Liège, a newspaper edited by Joseph Demarteau. While Simenon's own beat only covered unimportant human interest stories, it afforded him an opportunity to explore the seamier side of the city, including politics, bars, cheap hotels, but also crime, police investigations, and lectures on police technique by the criminologist Edmond Locard. Simenon's experience at the Gazette also taught him the art of quick editing. Indeed, he wrote more than 150 articles under the pen name "G. Sim."

Simenon's first novel, Au Pont des Arches was written in June 1919 and published in 1921 under his "G. Sim" pseudonym. Writing as "Monsieur Le Coq," he also published more than 800 humorous pieces between November 1919 and December 1922.

During this period, Simenon's familiarity with nightlife only increased: prostitutes, drunkenness, and general carousing. The people he rubbed elbows with included anarchists, bohemian artists, and even two future murderers, the latter appearing in his novel Les Trois crimes de mes amis. He also frequented a group of artists known as "La Caque." While not really involved in the group, he did meet his future wife Régine Renchon through it.

In France, 1922-1945

Désiré Simenon died in 1922 and this served as the occasion for the author to move to Paris with Régine Renchon (hereafter referred to by her nickname "Tigy"), at first living in the 17th arrondissement, not far from the Boulevard des Batignolles. He became familiar with the city, its bistrots, cheap hotels, bars, and restaurants. More importantly, he also came to know ordinary working-class Parisians. Writing under numerous pseudonyms, his creativity began to pay financial dividends.

Simenon and Tigy returned briefly to Liège in March 1923 to marry. Despite his Catholic upbringing, Simenon was not a believer. Tigy came from a thoroughly non-religious family. However, Simenon's mother insisted on a church wedding, forcing Tigy to become a nominal convert, learning the Catholic Church's catechism. Despite their father's lack of religious convictions, all of Simenon's children would be baptized as Catholics. Marriage to Tigy, however, did not prevent Simenon from having liaisons with numerous other women, perhaps most famously, Josephine Baker.

A reporting assignment had Simenon on a lengthy sea voyage in 1928, giving him a taste for boating. In 1929, he decided to have a boat built, the Ostrogoth. Simenon, Tigy, their cook and housekeeper Henriette Liberge, and their dog Olaf lived on board the Ostrogoth, traveling the French canal system. Henriette Liberge, known as "Boule" (literally, "Ball," a reference to her slight pudginess) was romantically involved with Simenon for the next several decades and would remain a close friend of the family, really part of it.

In 1930, the most famous character invented by Simenon, Commissaire Maigret, made his first appearance in a piece in Detective written at Joseph Kessel's request.

1932 saw Simenon travel extensively, sending back reports from Africa, eastern Europe, Turkey, and the Soviet Union. A trip around the world followed in 1934 and 1935.

Between 1932 and 1936, Simenon, Tigy, and Boule lived at La Richardière, a 16th century manor house in Marsilly at the Charente-Maritime département. The house is evoked in Simenon's novel Le Testament Donadieu. At the beginning of 1938, he rented the villa Agnès in La Rochelle and then, in August, purchased a farm house in Nieul-sur-Mer (also in the Charente-Maritime), where his and Tigy's only child, Marc, was born in 1939.

Simenon lived in the Vendée during the Second World War. Simenon's conduct during the war is a matter of considerable controversy, with some scholars inclined to view him as having been a collaborator with the Germans while others disagree, viewing Simenon as having been an apolitical man who was essentially an opportunist, but by no means a collaborator. Further confusion stems from the fact that he was denounced as a collaborator by local farmers while at the same time the Gestapo suspected him of being Jewish, apparently conflating the names "Simenon" and "Simon". In any case, Simenon was under investigation at the end of the war because he had negotiated film rights of his books with German studios during the occupation and in 1950 was sentenced to a five-year period during which he was forbidden to publish any new work. This sentence, however, was kept from the public and had little practical effect.

The war years did see Simenon produce a number of important works, including Le Testament Donadieu, Le Voyageur de la Toussaint, and Le Cercle des Mahé. He also conducted important correspondence, most notably with André Gide.

Also in the early 1940s, Simenon had a health scare when a local doctor misdiagnosed him with a serious heart condition (a reminder of his father), giving him only months to live. It was also at this time that Tigy finally surprised her husband with Boule. He and Tigy remained married until 1949, but it was now a marriage in name only. Despite Tigy's initial protests, Boule remained with the family.

The ambiguities of the war years notwithstanding, the city of La Rochelle eventually honored Simenon, naming a quai after him in 1989. Simenon was too ill to attend the dedication ceremony, however, in 2003, his son Johnny participated in a different event honoring his father.

In the United States, 1945-1955

Simenon escaped questioning in France and in 1945 arrived, along with Tigy and Marc, in North America. He spent several months in Québec, Canada north of Montréal, at Domaine L'Esterel (Ste-Marguerite du Lac Masson), where he lived in a modern style house, and wrote three novels in one of the log cabins (LC5). Boule, due to visa difficulties, was initially unable to join them. During the years he spent in the United States, Simenon regularly visited New York City. He and his family also went on lengthy car trips, traveling from Maine to Florida and then west as far as California. Simenon lived for a short time on Anna Maria Island near Bradenton, Florida before renting a house in Nogales, Arizona, where Boule was finally reunited with him. His novel The Bottom of the Bottle was heavily influenced by his stay in Nogales, Arizona.

Although enchanted by the desert, Simenon decided to leave Arizona, and following a stay in California, settled into a large house, Shadow Rock Farm, in Lakeville, Connecticut. This town forms the background for his 1952 novel La Mort de Belle ("The Death of Belle").

While in the United States, Simenon and his son Marc learned to speak English with relative ease, as did Boule. Tigy, however, had a great deal of trouble with the language and pined for a return to Europe.

In the meantime, Simenon had met Denyse Ouimet, a woman seventeen years his junior. Denyse, who was originally from Montréal, met Simenon in New York City in 1945 (she was to be hired as a secretary) and they promptly began an often stormy and unhappy relationship. After resolving numerous legal difficulties, Simenon and Tigy were divorced in 1949. Simenon and Denyse Ouimet were then married in Reno, Nevada in 1950 and eventually had three children, Johnny (born in 1949), Marie-Jo (born in 1953) and Pierre (born in 1959). In accordance with the divorce agreement, Tigy continued to live in close proximity to Simenon and their son Marc, an arrangement that continued until they all returned to Europe in 1955.

In 1952, Simenon paid a visit to Belgium and was made a member of the Académie Royale de Belgique. Although he never resided in Belgium after 1922, he remained a Belgian citizen throughout his life.

Return to Europe, 1955-1989

Simenon and his family returned to Europe in 1955, first living in France (mainly on the Côte d'Azur) before settling in Switzerland. After living in a rented house in Echandens, he purchased a property in Epalinges, north of Lausanne, where he had an enormous house constructed.

Simenon and Denyse Ouimet separated definitively in 1964. Teresa, who had been hired by Simenon as a housekeeper in 1961, had by this time become romantically involved with him and remained his companion for the rest of his life.

His long-troubled daughter Marie-Jo committed suicide in Paris in 1978 at the age of 25, an event that darkened Simenon's later years.

Simenon underwent surgery for a brain tumor in 1984 and made a good recovery. In subsequent years however, his health worsened. He gave his last televised interview in December 1988.

Georges Simenon died in his sleep of natural causes on the night of September 3 or morning of September 4, 1989 in Lausanne.

Simenon's works

Simenon was one of the most prolific writers of the twentieth century, capable of writing 60 to 80 pages per day. His oeuvre includes nearly 200 novels, over 150 novellas, several autobiographical works, numerous articles, and scores of pulp novels written under more than two dozen pseudonyms. Altogether, about 550 million copies of his works have been printed.

He is best known, however, for his 75 novels and 28 short stories featuring Commissaire Maigret. The first novel in the series, Pietr-le-Letton, appeared in 1931; the last one, Maigret et M. Charles, was published in 1972. The Maigret novels were translated into all major languages and several of them were turned into films and radio plays. Two television series (1960-63 and 1992-93) have been made in Great Britain, and one in France (1991 - 2005) staring Bruno Cremer.

During his "American" period, Simenon reached the height of his creative powers, and several novels of those years were inspired by the context in which they were written (Trois chambres à Manhattan (1946), Maigret à New York (1947), Maigret se fâche (1947)).

Simenon also wrote a large number of "psychological novels", such as "The Strangers in the House" (1940), La neige était sale (1948), or Le fils (1957), as well as several autobiographical works, in particular Je me souviens (1945), Pedigree (1948), Mémoires intimes (1981).

In 1966, Simenon was given the MWA's highest honor, the Grand Master Award.

In 2005 he was nominated for the title of De Grootste Belg / Le plus grand Belge (The Greatest Belgian) in two separate television shows. In the Flemish version he ended 77th place. In the Walloon version he ended 10th place.

Selected Bibliography

note: this selection based on editions currently available in English.

The 100 Years of Georges Simenon coin

Simenon in numismatics

Simenon has left such a legacy behind, that he was the main motive for one of the most recent and famous silver commemorative coin: the Belgian 100 Years of Georges Simenon coin, minted in 2003. The obverse side shows his portrait.

Film adaptations

Simenon's work has been widely adapted to cinema and television. He is credited on at least 171 productions.[1] Notable films include:

Notes

  1. ^ Georges Simenon

External links

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Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
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French Literature Companion. The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
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Writer. Copyright © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Georges Simenon".  Read more