Simenon

Before Simenon wrote Maigret novels, he wrote pulp fiction under 17 pen names and worked as a police reporter and rubbed elbows with prostitutes, murderers, and thieves, which helped make his novels more exciting. He once said, "We are all potentially characters in a novel"

It's the birthday of Belgian mystery writer Georges Simenon (books by this author), born in Feb. 13, 1903, Liège, Belgium(1903). He wrote over 500 novels and short stores, many of them featuring a compassionate detective named Jules Maigret, who enjoyed fine wine, his wife, and solving cases by pondering human nature, rather than using violence. Simenon said he got the idea for his detective while on a boating trip in The Netherland Canals. He said he imagined:

"[A] large, powerfully built gentleman I thought would make a passable inspector. As the day wore on, I added other features: a pipe; a bowler hat; a thick overcoat with a velvet collar; and, as it was cold and damp, I put a cast-iron stove in his office."

Before Simenon hit it big with the Maigret novels, he wrote pulp fiction under 17 pen names and worked as a police reporter and rubbed elbows with prostitutes, murderers, and thieves, which helped make his novels more exciting. He once said, "We are all potentially characters in a novel " with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to the full."

Simenon could write 80 pages a day and sometimes finish the draft of a novel in 10 days, a rigid schedule that required him to have doctor's checkups before the start of each new work. He found characters' names by thumbing through telephone directories from around the world and often wrote out detailed maps of the towns and cities in his books. William Faulkner was a big fan of Simenon, saying, "He makes me think of Chekhov."

Georges Simenon's Maigret books include Maigret and the Yellow Dog (1931), Maigret's Dead Man (1948), Maigret's Memoirs (1951), and Maigret Takes the Waters (1968).

On writing, he said:

"Writing is considered a profession, and I don't think it is a profession. I think that everyone who does not need to be a writer, who thinks he can do something else, ought to do something else. Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy."

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Georges Simenon

Belgian-French author

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Last Updated: Feb 9, 2021 See Article History

Alternative Title: Georges-Joseph-Christian Simenon

Georges Simenon, in full Georges-Joseph-Christian Simenon, (born Feb. 13, 1903, Liège, Belg.—died Sept. 4, 1989, Lausanne, Switz.), Belgian-French novelist whose prolific output surpassed that of any of his contemporaries and who was perhaps the most widely published author of the 20th century.

Simenon began working on a local newspaper at age 16, and at 19 he went to Paris determined to be a successful writer. Typing some 80 pages each day, he wrote, between 1923 and 1933, more than 200 books of pulp fiction under 16 different pseudonyms, the sales of which soon made him a millionaire. The first novel to appear under his own name was Pietr-le-Letton (1929; The Strange Case of Peter the Lett), in which he introduced the imperturbable, pipe-smoking Parisian police inspector Jules Maigret to fiction. Simenon went on to write 83 more detective novels featuring Inspector Maigret, as well as 136 psychological novels. His total literary output consisted of about 425 books that were translated into some 50 languages and sold more than 600 million copies worldwide. Many of his works were the basis of feature films or made-for-television movies. In addition to novels, he wrote three autobiographical works—Pedigrée (1948), Quand j’étais vieux (1970; When I Was Old), and Mémoires intimes (1981; Intimate Memoirs), the last after the suicide of his only daughter—and a critically well-received trilogy of novellas about Africa, selections of which were published in English as African Trio (1979).

Despite these other works, Simenon remains inextricably linked with Inspector Maigret, who is one of the best-known characters in detective fiction. Unlike those fictional detectives who rely on their immense deductive powers or on police procedure, Maigret solves murders using mainly his psychological intuition and a patiently sought, compassionate understanding of the perpetrator’s motives and emotional composition. Simenon’s central theme is the essential humanity of even the isolated, abnormal individual and the sorrow at the root of the human condition. Employing a style of rigorous simplicity, he evokes a prevailing atmosphere of neurotic tensions with sharp economy.

Simenon, who traveled to more than 30 countries, lived in the United States for more than a decade, starting in 1945; he later lived in France and Switzerland. At the age of 70 he stopped writing novels, though he continued to write nonfiction.