Last weekend I read the third and last of the Maigret novels I had taken out of the library and will be giving Simenon a rest for now. I don't regret having read them but am happy for a break.
More than anything reading them reminded me of Boris Gasparov's reflection of the overuse of the conjunction "and" in early medieval Russian narrative prose, which I discussed here. Back in 12th or 13th century Russia the idea of the strict sequencing of narrative events was newish. In Simenon's world -- and especially in the last one I read, the 1952 Maigret and the Gangsters, it's the conventions of detective and suspense that seem altogether novel. The idea that gangsters would all have guns and be quite accustomed to using them seems so shocking to the Paris cops, they're almost beside themselves. So we have a sense of a genre emerging.
Which is a little odd given how much precedent there was, from Conan Doyle and Christie to the hardboiled genre. Chandler's novels were coming out at the same time. Maybe Simenon was just such a machine that he didn't have time to read much.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll pick one up here and there but I'm not altogether sold.
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