SIMENON SIMENON. UNE BONNE PREMIERE LECTURE DANS LA SERIE DES MAIGRET
Une suggestion pour un premier aperçu du monde de Maigret, à travers le regard de Simenon
SIMENON SIMENON. UNA PRIMA BUONA LETTURA NELLA SERIE DEI MAIGRET
La suggestione di una prima scoperta del mondo di Maigret attraverso lo sguardo di Simenon
A
few weeks ago, while musing about the difficulty of picking the best
introduction to the Maigret series, I could not come up with a good
answer. I now suggest Maigret and The Man on the Bench because, when
considering it recently as a translation, it seemed a very suitable
starter. Here are the reasons:
First, exactly where one
begins to read the series does not really matter because the appearance
of the 103 works did not match the chronology of Maigret’s career.
Indeed, Penguin has chosen to release its brand new translations in the
same order as the original publications.
Second, the
story and its telling are typical of Maigret and Simenon. Murdered Louis
Thouret turns out not to be the ordinary man he seemed. His wife
believes his life consisted of an ordinary daytime job as a shopkeeper
while his daughter protects his secret of lounging on a bench for hours,
dressing up in outlandish clothes, and dallying with a girlfriend.
Using his regular tools (subconscious intuitions, serial deductions,
intense interrogations, and one temporary trance), Maigret pieces
together accurate images of the unconventional dead man and the somewhat
more conventional types that surrounded him. Realizing Thouret’s double
life must have required substantial income, which would attract other
criminals, the chief inspector ferrets out multiple guilty players,
eventually arresting three while letting two others go free.
Third,
beyond solid Maigret, steady Mme Maigret, and three familiar sidekicks
(Janvier, Lucas, and Lapointe), Simenon sends out a parade of nicely
fleshed out characters: the sad sack victim and his overbearing wife,
his pregnant daughter and her whining boyfriend, a cooperative concierge
and an uncooperative madam, a platonic mistress and an acrobatic
clown….
Fourth, Simenon runs the gamut of his customary
props. For example, we get cold rain, fine mist, dense fog, black
coffee, ham sandwiches, veal stew and, of course, glasses of beer, grog,
and brandy for Maigret.
Finally, as if to show how the
exception proves the rule, this otherwise representative novel alludes
to sex frequently: numerous bare breasts within loose robes, full nudity
at least twice, one frank mooning through a window, and one outright
proposition in a bedroom.
So, that’s why I submit this well-written, thoughtful novel as a very good start.
David P Simmons
