SIMENON SIMENON. PLUSIEURS PERSONNES EXPRIMENT DES IDEES SUR LA COMPOSITION D'UN GRAND ROMAN
Encore davantage sur le grand roman
SIMENON SIMENON. DIVERSE IDEE DI COME CREARE UN GRANDE ROMANZO
Altre opinioni su come si scrive un romanzo
Here are some more interesting takes on Simenon and the big novel as a mosaic:
First
is a 1955 quotation from a most informative interview with Simenon by
Carvel Collins (Georges Simenon, The Art of Fiction No. 9
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5020/the-art-of-fiction-no-9-georges-simenon).
Here is where Simenon’s mosaic explanation seems to have come up
originally. At the very end of the interview, more as a statement than
an answer, Simenon says: ‘For instance, all the critics for twenty years
have said the same thing: “It is time for Simenon to give us a big
novel, a novel with twenty or thirty characters.” They do not
understand. I will never write a big novel. My big novel is the mosaic
of all my small novels. You understand?’
Then, 34 years
later, ironically in 1989 the year Georges Simenon died, Charles
Champlin revisits the mosaic description in this way: “Now the big novel
is complete, and, as we can see, it ended in 1972 with the last Maigret
(who is part of the dramatis personae, whether Simenon would have it so
or not). And it will remain a quietly incisive and almost perfectly
detailed portrait of French life across nearly half a century. It is a
social history to set alongside the work of the great French novelists
of earlier times. And it is such marvelous reading and re-reading.” (A
Gift Extending to the Tips of His Fingers
http://articles.latimes.com/1989-09-17/books/bk-462_1_georges-simenon/2).
Fast forward to just a year ago, when referring in
February 2015 to the developing Penguin translation series, Elliott
Colla opines: “Now that the entire Inspector Maigret series is coming
out, we can read Simenon’s small novels as a huge mosaic — and
conceivably, in their sum, as one great big novel.” (Maigret’s
Jurisdiction https://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/maigrets-jurisdiction.)
Thus, having only recently run into multiple writers weighing in on
the big novel as a mosaic, I can’t help feeling a little smug that I
arrived at this concept independently.
David P Simmons
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