Simenon

“Novelist and not writer and even less a man of letters,” Georges Simenon said of a title he well deserved.

Simenon is now, 20 years since his death, enjoying a renaissance—not as a popular novelist, but as a critical darling.

On the Simenon bookshelf, it stands alone, anomalous, and awkwardly aloof.

It is pleasant enough to swim in these waters, but with Simenon it is always much pleasanter to drown.

It does show that, for all his bluster, Simenon could write with formal elegance and beauty.