Paris: Simenon's favorite city where he placed his unforgettable curator Jules Maigret.
George Simenon, creator of the famous commissioner Maigret, has sold more than five hundred million of books of his work, composed by more than three hundred books. Those who made him famous were the 78 starring Commissioner Maigret, from the first, Pierre the Latvian (1929), until the last, Maigret and Mr. Charles (1972)
Simenon I was able to write a novel in fifteen days: at that time no one could talk to him or bother him. He defined it as a period of intense suffering. One day Alfred Hitchcock phoned him and when they answered that Mr. Simenon couldn't get on because he had just started a new novel, they say that the filmmaker replied, "Well, I hope."
The beginnings of George Simenon.
Simenon nIt was Friday the 13th February 1903 in Liège (Belgium). Su mother, enrolled him in the register 12 day to avoid the fatal number.
I was looking for the names of the characters in the phone book. He pronounced names and surnames aloud until he found the ones that sounded best when it came to shaping his characters.
George had a little brother, Christian, his mother's favorite, who died in the Indochina war where he had fled to avoid being condemned for his Nazi past. His mother always reproached Simenon for not having died instead of his brother.
He made his first money off a newsstand short novel that he wrote on a morning in 1924. Soon he began to earn a lot of money and each month he sent a quantity to his mother. One day, she returned everything to him, intact.
In the 20s, Simenon moved to Paris. There the bohemian group La Caque joined. It was a stage of excesses: sex, drugs and the Charleston was accompanied by the uncontrolled consumption of alcohol. At that time, it became in lover of Josephine Baker.
Simenon and Baker, united by their overwhelming passion for sex.
Simenon was a journalist before he was a writer, a profession that allowed him to learn about society's chiaroscuro and to be close to police reports that laid the foundations for his future detective books.
A life marked by his obsession with women.
Besides being a prolific writer, he was a sex addict. With these words explains Simenon his addiction in his Intimate memories:
«Women are what has fascinated me the most in life. I was hungry for all the women I crossed paths with whose undulating rump was enough to inflame me to physical pain. How many times have I appeased this hunger with girls older than me, on the threshold of a house or in some dark alley? Or he would sneak into some of those houses in whose windows a more or less fat and desirable woman wove placidly ».
Married three times. He and his second wife, mother of his daughter, had a transgressive sexual relationship: they went to brothels together to have sex with other women. His third wife was the maid hired to care for the second during his illness.
I did the math once. From the age of twelve, I had ten thousand women in bed »(George Simenon)
After the Second World War, went into exile in the United States fleeing suspicions that fell on him for having collaborated with the Nazis. The Nazi past of his brother Christian and anti-Semitic articles written by Simenon himself, forced by the regime according to him, were the seeds of suspicion.
At the age of 37, he was diagnosed with a very serious heart problem. Simenon believed that he was going to die, so he wrote his childhood and youth memories so that his son Marc would know who his father was. The diagnosis was wrong and Simenon lived to be 86.
Simenon was also addicted to pipe tobacco. He had pipes of great value: his favorites were the meerschaum that he cleaned with alcohol, calvados, cognac or bourbon, although his favorite pipe was a briar one.
«Since I was 15 or 16 years old, I have lit a pipe when I got up and continued to smoke until I went to bed. This implies that I always carry at least two pipes in my pocket, and that I have about a dozen on my desk. It's true that I fill them all out before I start working, so I can do it without interruption ».
The sad end of the literary genius.
Simenon had three children and a daughter, Mary Jo who committed suicide at the age of 25. There were always rumors that the relationship between father and daughter bordered on the incestuous.
“Mary Jo was described by one of her doctors in her adult life as 'a snail without a shell'. The correspondence between them reads more like love letters than an exchange between father and daughter. (Patricia Highsmith)
One of his big novels, Pedigree (1948) was removed from bookstores after having suffered three lawsuits for defamation by people close to the author who recognized themselves in the characters of the novel.
Simenon died in Laussane (Switzerland) in 1989 after having lived in more than 33 houses.
«I look around me and say: what am I doing here? And I don't know the answer, ”Simenon confessed.