Word: simenon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Heart of a Man, Novelist Simenon poses a standard fictional question: What does a man think, feel, and do when suddenly forced to face the imminent reality of death? Unfortunately, the answer in this case tends to dribble away in leaky flashback reveries with seamy Gallic overtones...
...spots, Author Simenon writes with deft satire about his fellow countrymen. Where he tries for something like tragic irony, he achieves only the stale, sentimental cliche about the iron mask of success hiding suffering human clay...
...Georges Simenon, 48, is fashioned of no ordinary human clay himself. With some 350 novels behind him, ranging from crime thrillers to racy pulp romances, he still maintains the working habits of a one-man assembly line. Up at 6:30 a.m., with a pot of coffee at his side, he types a 20-page chapter in 2½ hours, completes a twelve-chapter novel (common in France) in twelve days. (His translators' pace: three to six months.) Explains Simenon in halting English: "I write fast because I have not zee brains to write slow...
International fame came to him when he created a slow-motion, absent-minded detective named Inspector Maigret, who got his man in a new book almost every month between 1929 and 1931. Maigret was later put on the shelf in favor of serious psychological novels, but Simenon still gets him down for an occasional workout to please such fans as T. S. Eliot, Deems Taylor, Claude Rains...
...resident since 1945, Simenon now lives in Lakeville, Conn, with his French-Canadian wife and two sons, plays a bad accordion and good bridge for relaxation. Mum about a novel and two novelettes in the plotting stage, Simenon says only: "I know I am not great. But I like to write...