THE MYSTERY OF GEORGES SIMENON: A Biography

by Fenton Bresler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 15, 1983

The Sex Life of Georges Simenon is more like it--since this chatty, irritating biography dwells (leeringly at times) on the Belgian's writer satyriasis, on his unhappy marriages and ""bizarre"" personality. Drawing heavily (if critically) on Simenon's own confessional memoirs, as well as interviews with GS and the family, Bresler starts with ""the early, precocious sexuality"" of little Georges, son of a frail insurance-agent father and a tough little mother. (His first amour was a ""satin-skinned young Jewess."") His father's death forced him to work--as a teenage newspaperman, moving to Paris in the 1920s, where this ""arch-ram"" oddly married the plain, unsensual Rogine. He found financial success as a prolific producer of potboilers (adventures, westerns), had ""something close to a real affair"" with ""negress singer"" Josephine Baker. . . and created Inspector Maigret--after which came ""frenzied"" 1930s travel, a ""bizarre"" interlude as a Paris hedonist, fame and fortune. But Simenon always wanted primary recognition for his non-Maigret novels, scorning his genre niche. And his private life was unsatisfying too: hypochondria; the fading of marriage #1 (despite fatherhood); stormy marriage #2, beginning in America after the war, with volatile Denise (at 63 ""she still gives off an aura of smouldering sexuality""); sexual kinkiness, violence, drinking, the ""slow attrition of his talent"" in the 1960s, the suicide of his young daughter (hints of her incestuous feelings). . . and his longtime, unwed relationship with housekeeper Teresa. The point of all this? That ""in the very core of his being, Georges Simenon""--sexually adolescent, selfish, cruel--""does not exist."" But Bresler doesn't support this psycho-existential verbiage with analysis throughout the book. Nor, despite a murky comment or two about Maigret as ""father-figure"" and Simenon's alter-ego, does he effectively relate the Simenon psychopathology to the fiction. And the little literary-criticism here is humdrum, while Bresler's own prose features fatuous rhetorical questions, clichÉs, and dubious generalizations. An unsatisfying biography, then--but the unpleasant, detailed private-life chronicle (with an occasional cross-reference to the novels) is undeniably informative.

Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Beaufort

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION