Maigret

Hi EF, I read most of the Maigrets years ago. If memory serves, they had a special and somewhat delicate feel to them. They're still on my bookshelf. Maybe I should get one down and take another look.

I read them when I was learning French. Aside from a bit of slang, very obsolete these days, and a few specialized vocabulary items, they are very easy to read in French. I understand the standard English translations are good too.

EG, I read some Camus in French, but I read only translations of Maigret. Now I doubt if I could ready my way through a menu in French. Wait. Not true. I could probably get through a menu. But not much else.

I recall that the Maigret books were not like the slam-bam police procedurals written by Americans. Hence my recollection that they were delicate.

"Delicate" isn't the first word I would have thought of, but I guess it fits. I like their sense of compassion and their moral complexity. Speaking of moral complexity, in quite a different sense though, did you know that Maigret's author, Georges Simenon, claimed to have slept with more than a thousand women?

Actually, I liked Maigret only when I was younger. (Never thaught, however, the stories to be delicate.)

Have been to Morsang-sur-Seine (where Simenon wrote " Un crime en Hollande") and to Dilfzijl (where he got the ideas for the latter and wrote his first Maigret book "Maigret et Pietr the Lette").

I remember Simeons (saw some films of the Maigret-TV-series as well), as a writer who was long on character and short on plot. Doesn't like this (now) that much any more.

EF, Simenon slept with over a thousand women? Well, he was a long way from catching up to Wilt Chamberlain, but that's a lot of women.

As for the term delicate. I'm using it from distant memory. Just the feeling reading the books left with me. And as my memory isn't what it used to be, I could be wrong. But it was the first word that popped into my head when I saw the name Maigret.

Never heard of Wilt Chamberlain. Who is he? Anyway, I wouldn't complain if I only reached a thousand or so. Better get crackin', though. I have (I think) 1982 to go, and I'm almost 60. So lets say that I live to be 90, and they keep making Viagra better and better, I'll have to find a new one every six days or so. The line starts at the right, ladies.

Wilt Chamberlain was a great U.S. professional basketball player. In his autobiography, he said that he had slept with about 20,000 women!!! And this was in the days before Viagra.

I've read some of Simenon and have liked the books. Haven't read any lately. I remember them as short, with relatively spare writing. I suppose I agree that the plotting is not especially complex, relative to some police procedurals that seem to be knitting cabled sweaters.

I distinguish, usually, between books on the best seller racks and some crime writing that is to me more thoughtful, delicate if you will. Books like those by best selling writer John Sandford, who writes the Prey series, seem to have aggressive sensational episodes every 'x' number of pages, pulsed to keep you on the edge of your Barcolounger. Not to single Sandford out, it is a type of writing.

I have an old boss who writes medical thrillers. They are clearly written to a pattern. I can only read them since I can hear his voice from almost all of the characters, though not all the time, and other old friends in some part of the characterizations of villains and good guys/gals.

I liked the way Maigret would go home for lunch with his wife. Surprising that with such a homebody feel given to his books, the author would claim to be such a rounder.

When it comes to police procedurals on this side of the Atlantic, I'm a Wambaugh admirer.

His characters ring true.

Piffka - does this work equate to the English "bounder"? As in cad?

Rounders was a game we used to play.


As an extra - Simenon himself claimed 10,000 conquests, although his 2nd wife, Denise, reckoned it was only 1,200

Another aside: Years ago, I read an interview with the writer who had created the Kojak character on the television show. He described Kojak as a New-Yorkified Maigret and even went so far as to say that some episodes were adapted, with permission, from the plots of Simenon's novels.

I'm not sure I would have picked up on the parallel. The personalities are very different, at least on the surface. But I can see it. There were episodes in which Kojak, like Maigret, does the moral thing rather than the legal one, others in which he is just a little too slow figuring things out and someone gets killed as a result, and at least one in which he considers a criminal a friend, albeit one he intends to put away as soon as he can.

I haven't watched television since the Kojak era. I wonder if there are police shows that good now?

Margo -- Yikes -- I thought maybe I didn't have the word aright. I don't know many of these guys and so don't use that word TOO much, but I looked it up on Google. Whew. It is a word on this side of the 'quator and I meant the second definition. Actually, suits him pretty well. Love that other one, philanderer, too.



So Mrs. Simenon cut him down to size? Still, that's a lot of "conquests."

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Didn't watch Kojak; don't watch police shows in general, though I like Inspector Morse.

Ahhh, another nontvwatcher (now, anyway). There are a few of us here at a2k.