One of the highlights of NoirCon (this past weekend; no, I didn't blog about it this weekend; yes, I suck) was listening to Scott Phillips and Bill Boyle talk about Georges Simenon. For years I'd written ol' Georges off as the author of a detective series that looked a bit too stuffy for my tastes. Then Al Guthrie turned me on to his short "hard" (or "pure") novels, and the scales fell from eyes. Simenon's stuff can be as bleak as it gets, and that's what Scott and Bill discussed, as well as Simenon's amazing writing process and his love of simple language. I could have listened to those guys for hours, even though I was still suffering from a mind-crippling hangover at 2 p.m.Coincidentally, Bruce Grossman over at Bookgasm mentioned a paperback called For Bond Lovers Only, a collection of James Bond/Ian Fleming essays, and it includes a piece about Fleming and Simenon. I read the "The Thriller Business" last night, and right in the middle is the best defense of the "short novel" I've ever heard. (This is Simenon talking.) Right on Georges! Anyway, For Bond Lovers Only is worth tracking down this piece alone.
"I have a theory about the novel. We do not write novels as they did in Dickens' time. For many reasons. First there is photography. We do not have to describe any more. Everybody has seen the Eiffel Tower. There are many problems we do not have to explain any more. What Balzac had to explain we do not have to. Now in every newspaper there are articles telling you almost everything. We do not have to write long novels any more. A novel ought to be read in one sitting. You would not go one day to see the first act of Hamlet and one week later the second. It is the same with the novel. This is why I choose to write short novels."Right on Georges! Anyway, For Bond Lovers Only is worth tracking down this piece alone. The cheesecake shots of the Bond girls aren't bad, either.
Posts
7 comments:
Great panel, until some jackass breaks his chair, crashes to the floor and lies there with his sneakers in the air thinking, "god, I hope no one noticed." Man, they just let in anyone.
Wish I could have been there!
I've just recently started reading Simenon myself so had to jump in here.
Some of the Maigret are pretty good: Lock 14, The Yellow Dog, Maigret Goes home. A Man's Head is interesting as the criminal is like the kind of characters you see a lot more of in the "romans durs." The Maigrets are fairly traditional mysteries - bits of business about misplaced hats etc to jog the plot along, and often a "here is what happened" scene to wrap things up - but even here Simeneon does give a great sense of displaced, broken lives in a short space.
Romans Durs:
-"Man who watched trains go by": Very funny as well as dark. Gogol meets Camus.
-"Little man from Archangel" - fine tale, of isolation,
-"Red Lights" - (Poss SPOILER: recent movie version gives a diff intrerpretation as to whether a key section of the book is in a character's mind, or "for real")
-Dirty Snow (stain on the snow) - the only one so far that made no real impression on me. Interesting - in light of your quote about short novels, "Snow" runs longer than the typical Simenon. (And the only Maigret so far I didn't much care for also runs long ("Man on the Bouevard".
I agree,
brevity is the soul of Simenon.
(Perhaps I should learn something from this.....:) )
Which Simenon novels did the panel especially remark on?
"Andre S."
I was at that discussion. A number of the novels you mentioned came up. Scott and Bill also talked lots about The Watchmaker of Everton.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
I forgot to mention that if you really want to get "a great sense of displaced, broken lives in a short space" from detective stories, the man you want to read is Friedrich Glauser.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Great- thank you Peter! I will look out for Glausner.
Andre S.
We read a book of Simenon's in college. Our professor said that his writing method was basically to shut himself in a room for two weeks and write. If he didn't finish the novel in that time frame, he would never touch it again.
sounds crazy, but I think he died with like 200 books under his belt, so something worked.
Glauser is probably closer to the Maigret books than to the romans durs, which I haven't read. Simenon also wrote early stories about a kind of proto-Maigret: an investigating magistrate whose cases involved wretched, marginal people. Simenon seems to view the characters with a detachment that borders on voyeurism.
Glauser, on the other hand, has intense sympathy with characters who have been beaten down by their circumstances, possibly because his own life was marked by drug addiction, imprisonment and instituationalization. But there nice touches of humor in the books, too.
OK, I'll shut up now, since this is Duane's blog and not mine. I hope you try Glauser and like him.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
Post a Comment