Welcome back to our deep dive. Today, we're taking
a look at a figure who, well, he operates less
like a traditional artist and much more like
a high performance engine. That's probably the
best way to describe him, honestly. Right. Because
usually when we talk about prolific writers,
we have a certain scale in our heads. You know,
maybe they manage a book a year. Or if there's
someone like Stephen King or Isaac Asimov, they
hit that stride where it's a book every six months
for a while. Which, by the way, is already a
pace that burns out most mortals. Exactly. But
today we're looking at a man who leaves those
numbers completely in the dust. We are talking
about George's Seminon. And just to set the stage
for you, the raw data of his career is it's almost
impossible to process. We aren't talking about
40 or 50 books over a lifetime. We are looking
at a bibliography of around 400 novels. It's
a number that sounds like a typo, doesn't it?
When you first read that 400 novels, your brain
just kind of rejects it. It really does. 192
novels under his own name and then over 200 more
under this dizzying array of pseudonyms. He sold
over 500 million copies worldwide. I mean, that
puts him in the company of the Bible, Shakespeare.
Agatha Christie. And this is the part I really
want us to dig into right away. Critics used
to joke that he made his living by killing someone
every month because he could write a full, atmospheric,
psychologically dense novel in just over a week.
Yeah. It was usually seven to 11 days. And we're
not talking about a rough draft here. It wasn't
something that needed six months of heavy editing
and revisions. We're talking about a manuscript
that was basically ready for the typesetter the
moment he pulled the last page out of the typewriter.
It creates this image of a machine. rather than
a man, like a text generator before AI even existed.
But I feel like that's the trap we fall into,
right? We hear fast and we instantly think cheap.
We think formulaic pulp. But when you actually
read Simenon, and I'm not just talking about
the famous Magritte detective stories, but his
other works, you don't find a robot at all. You
find something incredibly dark, sweaty, and deeply
human. And that right there is the central paradox
of George's Simenon. If you produce that much
work, That fast logic dictates it should be shallow.
But Simonon's work is entirely obsessed with
depth. He was fixated on what he called the naked
man. Let's unpack that term immediately, because
as we go through our sources today, this concept
seems to be the thesis statement for his entire
life, the naked man. What exactly are we looking
at here? It's his term for humanity stripped
of its pretenses. Simonin believed that we all
walk around wearing masks in our daily lives.
These are our clothes, metaphorically speaking.
You know, we have our job titles, our social
status, our polite manners, our little everyday
lives. That is the clothed man. But Simonin believed
that if you apply enough pressure, whether that's
fear, exhaustion, jealousy, or just a sudden
crisis, the mask dissolves. And what you are
left with is the naked man, the raw, instinctual
human animal. So his novels were basically laboratory
experiments. He'd take a character, drop them
into a psychological pressure cooker, and just
wait to see the naked man emerge. Precisely.
He wanted to push characters to their absolute
limits to see that naked truth. And frankly,
we have to understand that this wasn't just a
literary technique for him. That was his lifestyle.
His own life was just as chaotic, stripped of
pretense, and morally ambiguous as any fiction
he ever wrote. And that is our mission for this
deep dive. We want to understand the man behind
this impossible output, because as we go through
his history, we aren't just looking at a famous
mystery writer. We're looking at a life filled
with controversy, obsession, these gritty, hard
novels, and a domestic situation that genuinely
rivaled anything he put on the page. It is a
wild ride. And to truly understand that chaos,
we have to start right where the pressure cooker
began, Liege, Belgium, in 1903. Right. A gloomy
industrial city at the turn of the century. And
right off the bat, we hit a snag with the truth.
Because even his birthday is a lie, isn't it?
It is. And it tells you absolutely everything
you need to know about his mother. So Simonin
was born in February 1903. The official records
and his actual bliss certificate say he was born
at 1130 p .m. on Thursday the 12th. But that
is a complete fabrication. He was actually born
just after midnight, which would make it Friday
the 13th. Friday the 13th. I mean, the ultimate
bad omen. Exactly. And his mother, Henriette.
was incredibly superstitious. She was just this
bundle of nerves and anxiety. The idea of her
firstborn son coming into the world on Friday
the 13th was totally unacceptable to her. So
the story goes that his father, Desiree, falsified
the certificate to say the 12th. Simenon's life
literally began with a deception just to appease
his mother's anxiety. Talk about starting life
on a complicated note. You mentioned the parents
there, Desiree and Henriette. From all the research
we've gathered, it seems like they were polar
opposites. It wasn't just a mild difference in
personality. It was a fundamental difference
in how they viewed the world. Completely. And
that specific tension defines Simonin. He absolutely
idolized his father, Desiree. He saw him as this
gentle, noble figure. Desiree was an insurance
clerk, a man of routine. He was very tall, very
calm, and he just accepted his lot in life without
complaint. In fact, Simonin... later claimed
that he modeled Inspector Maygray's temperament.
You know, that calmness, that patience, that
incredible ability to just sit and listen, partly
on his father. And Henriette. She was the opposite
of calm, I take it. Henriette was the storm.
She was difficult, devoutly religious, and constantly
obsessively terrified of falling into poverty.
She had a very strained relationship with Georges.
She actually favored his younger brother, Christian,
quite openly, which Georges resented deeply.
They lived in a neighborhood called Autremuse,
and the family dynamic there was tight, claustrophobic
even. But they didn't live alone, right? I read
in our sources that this household was basically
a revolving door of strangers, which seems like
a crucial detail for a writer who specializes
in intense human observation. This is arguably
the most important formative experience for him.
In 1911, to help alleviate Henriette's financial
panics, they moved to a larger house on the Rue
de la Loire and started taking in lodgers. And
these weren't just random local travelers. These
were students from Eastern Europe, Russians,
Jews, political refugees fleeing various crises.
So you have to picture this. As a kid, he's living
in a house that smells like foreign cooking.
He's hearing all these languages he doesn't understand.
And he's seeing people from completely different,
often desperate walks of life right in his own
hallway. Exactly. It was his window into the
wider world. But much more importantly, it made
him a voyeur. He wasn't just hearing stories
about these people. He was seeing their secret
lives up close. He saw their peculiar habits,
their deep fears, their poverty. He saw them
when they thought no one else was looking. He
learned really early on that everyone has a secret
life behind their closed door. He actually later
wrote a book called The Lodger and another one
called Pedigree that draw directly on this specific
childhood experience. So he's essentially seeing
the naked man before he even has a name for it.
He's seeing people when they aren't performing
for society. Right. He's seeing the late night
struggles, the illicit affairs, the heavy drinking.
It gave him a very unvarnished, unsentimental
view of humanity from a very young age. Then,
of course, global history crashes into his living
room. 1914. World War I breaks out and the Germans
occupy Liege. For a boy of 11, this must have
been a massive shift in reality. And here is
where we really see that trademark cynicism starting
to harden into concrete. Because while his father
strongly disapproved of the occupation on moral
grounds, his mother actually saw it as a business
opportunity. She started taking in German officers
as lodgers because they paid in stable currency.
So the literal enemy is sleeping down the hall.
Yes. And young Simonin watched this extreme moral
flexibility unfold in real time. He later made
a really striking observation about that period.
He said, my father cheated, my mother cheated,
everyone cheated. That is a very dark thing for
a kid to internalize, the idea that everyone
cheated. It is. But he also freely admitted that
the war years were some of his, quote unquote,
happiest times. Because it was chaotic. The old
rules were broken. The traditional authority
figures had collapsed. He suddenly had a certain
kind of dangerous freedom. He played truant from
school. He read heavy Russian classics. And he
even turned to petty theft just to buy pastries.
He was seeing the world in a state of total anarchy,
and he realized he was actually quite good at
navigating it. He was feral, essentially, just
figuring out how to survive. He was surviving.
And he was learning that morality is often just
a luxury that disappears completely when basic
survival is at stake. Now, he didn't stay in
school very long after that, did he? No, not
at all. In 1918, his father was diagnosed with
a severe heart condition. Simenon used this family
crisis as an excuse to drop out of school entirely
without taking his final exams. He was barely
16 years old. And almost immediately, he dives
headfirst into the world of journalism. He manages
to get a job. at the Gazette de Liège. A 16 -year
-old crime reporter. I mean, that really explains
the blinding speed he developed later in life.
You have to write fast in a busy newsroom, especially
back in those days. Precisely. He wasn't just
doing light reporting. He was churning out copy
daily to fill empty space. He wrote a gossip
column under the fantastic name Monsieur Lecoq.
He covered gruesome local crimes. He interviewed
international figures who passed through. He
even took a forensic science course at the local
university just to understand police methods
better. He was actively building the exact toolkit
he would use for the next 50 years of his career.
So he's learning to write fast, and he's learning
how cops actually think and operate. But it wasn't
all just work and study. We have to talk about
Lecoq. When I was reviewing the notes, this sounded
like something straight out of a gothic novel.
The Herring Barrel. Yes, Lecoq. It was this tight
-knit group of young bohemians, aspiring artists,
and general rebels he fell in with around 1919.
They would meet late at night in this dingy,
atmospheric place, drink heavily, discuss dark
philosophy, and experiment with drugs, mainly
morphine and cocaine. It was very much that post
-war nihilism. They desperately wanted to shock
the bourgeoisie and reject the society that had
just led them through a world war. And it took
a really tragic turn, didn't it? Because it wasn't
just kids playing at being edgy. A very dark
turn, yes. In 1922, one of the core members of
the group, a young man named Joseph Klein, was
found hanged at the doors of the St. Fulian Church.
He had spent the entire previous night partying
with the group. Simenon was actually one of the
very last people to see him alive. That's terrifying
to be 19 years old and have your close friend
hanging from a church door the next morning.
It deeply haunted him. It wasn't just a macabre
story to him. It was real visceral tragedy happening
right in his circle. He actually processed it
the only way he knew how he wrote about it much
later in a novel called The Hanged Man of St.
Fillion. That event completely reinforced his
core theme that chaos, despair and death are
always just lurking around the corner. So if
we recap the resume of this guy by the time he's
20 years old, he's seen a brutal war occupation.
He's lived with desperate refugees. He's been
a gritty crime reporter. He's hung out with drug
addicted nihilists and experienced the suicide
of a friend. And then the final blow, his father
dies in 1921. Which was really the final severing
of his ties to his childhood. He called his father's
death the most important day in a man's life.
With Desiree gone, he felt he had absolutely
no reason to stay in Liège anymore. So he finished
his mandatory military service, and in 1922,
he packs up his life and moves to Paris. And
he's not alone for this move. He's with his new
wife, Regine. Though, looking at the sources,
he didn't actually call her that. No, he renamed
her Taiji. Simenon had this very distinct habit
of renaming the women in his life. Which, honestly,
is a whole psychological discussion on its own.
This deep -seated need to define and control
his domestic partners. But yes, he and Tyge move
to Paris. And this is the era where the legendary
productivity really kicks into high gear. This
is what we can call the Paris Pulp Factory phase.
Right, because he didn't just arrive in Paris
and instantly become a famous, respected author.
He had to grind. It was an unbelievable grind.
He initially worked as a secretary for an eccentric
marquee, which gave him a fascinating glimpse
into the decaying aristocracy. His real sustaining
income came from writing pulp fiction. He was
writing under at least a dozen different pseudonyms.
He churned out adventure stories, saucy romances,
westerns, literally anything that a publisher
would pay for. He was basically a content mill
of one person. But there's a critical moment
here that alters his trajectory, and it involves
the famous French writer Colette. She was working
as the literary editor at a paper he was submitting
pieces to, and she gave him a piece of advice
that changed everything for him. She really did.
Simenon submitted some short stories to her desk,
and she rejected them outright. But her feedback
was simple and completely devastating. She told
him, make it less literary. Make it less literary,
which sounds so counterintuitive for a young
raider trying to make a name for himself. Usually
you're trying to be more literary, you want to
show off your vocabulary. Exactly. But she saw
right through what he was doing. She saw that
he was trying way too hard. He was using flowery
adjectives, complex metaphors, just desperately
trying to sound writerly. She told him to cut
all of that out immediately. Stop trying to be
poetic. Just describe exactly what is physically
there. Use concrete words. If it's raining, say
it's raining. Don't tell the reader the sky is
weeping. So strip the language down to the naked
truth, just like his characters. Precisely. And
Simonin took this advice totally to heart. He
stripped his vocabulary down to the absolute
bare minimum. He estimated later in life that
he purposefully limited himself to a working
stock of about 2 ,000 words. 2 ,000 words. That
is tiny. For context, that's barely above basic
conversational fluency in a language. It is incredibly
restrictive. But that's exactly why his books
are so readable and why they translate so seamlessly
into dozens of languages. He stopped focusing
on intellectual wordplay and focused entirely
on atmosphere. on the sensory details. He wanted
you to smell the wet Parisian pavement, to taste
the cheap sour wine in a bistro, to feel the
cold fog on your face. It made his writing intensely
visceral. It completely bypasses the intellectual
part of your brain and just hits you right in
the gut. Speaking of visceral, his personal life
in Paris wasn't exactly boring during this period
either. I saw the name Josephine Baker pop up
prominently in the source material. Oh, yes.
Yeah. You really can't talk about 1920s Paris
without talking about Josephine Baker. She was
the absolute icon of the jazz age. In the mid
-20s, Simenon started a wildly passionate affair
with her. It was a complete whirlwind. He was
absolutely infatuated with her star power and
her energy. He was even acting as her part -time
secretary for a bit, handling her massive correspondence
while they were together. It seems like he was
getting completely sucked into the celebrity
lifestyle, which is dangerous for a guy who needs
to sit alone in a room and write a book a week.
He was entirely distracted. And to his credit,
he realized it was dangerous for his work. The
parties, the aggressive press, the constant social
chaos. He just couldn't write the way he wanted
to. So, in true Simonin fashion, when the pressure
got too high, He ran away. And he ran away to
a boat. He felt he desperately needed to escape
the distractions of Paris to find his focus again.
So he bought a boat called the Ostrogoth. He
and Taiji, along with their housekeeper, Boule,
who we will definitely need to discuss later
because she becomes a central tragic figure in
his bizarre domestic life. They all went on a
long tour of the canals of France and the Netherlands.
And this boat trip is where the magic happens,
right? This is the birth of his most famous creation.
The legend. Which Simenon loved to tell, says
it happened in Delft Seal, which is a port town
in the Netherlands, while the boat was docked
and being repaired. Simenon was sitting on a
crate by the water, just typing away. And he
started imagining a new kind of character. He
didn't want a dashing, action -oriented hero.
He didn't want a super genius. He envisioned
a large, heavy man. A man with a pipe. A man
who felt incredibly solid and grounded. Inspector
Jules Magret. Exactly. And this is where we really
need to make that sharp distinction you hinted
at earlier. Magritte is absolutely not Sherlock
Holmes. Holmes is all about deduction, logic,
finding the hidden clue, puzzle solving. He stands
above the crime, looking down at the messy humans
like a scientist looking at a petri dish. Right.
Holmes is a human computer. So what is Magritte?
Is he more like a sponge? That's a great way
to put it, actually. Magritte immerses himself.
When murder happens, Magritte goes to the scene.
But he doesn't just look for footprints. He sits
in the cafes where the victims sat. He drinks
the same cheat alcohol they drank. He literally
soaks up the local atmosphere. He talks to the
suspects not to aggressively trap them in a logical
lie, but to understand the emotional pressure
that pushed them to the breaking point. He wants
to know the why much more than the how. He wants
to know the human cost of the crime. He rarely
judges the people he arrests. There's a profound,
heavy empathy in Magritte. He fundamentally understands
that the criminal is usually just a naked man
who cracked under an unbearable burden. So he
writes this first official Magritte novel, Petrololitan,
and he launches it in the most spectacular, over
-the -top way possible. This wasn't a quiet wine
and cheese book release in a dusty shop. No,
it was the ball anthropometric. It was a massive,
incredibly lavish, fancy dress party in 1931
with a strict criminal underworld theme. Guests
showed up dressed as gangsters, corrupt cops,
and streetwalkers. They literally took people's
fingerprints at the door as they entered. It
was a huge, expensive publicity stunt, and it
worked flawlessly. The books absolutely took
off. By 1933, just a couple years later, he had
written 19 full Magritte novels. 19 novels in
roughly three years. That is insane productivity.
I mean, he found the golden ticket. He had a
beloved character, massive sales, fame. It was
everything a pulp writer dreams of. But here
is the massive twist in his career. Just as Magritte
becomes a legitimate global phenomenon, Simmon
shocks his publishers and his fans. In 1933,
he simply decides to retire the character. He
stops writing Magritte. Why on earth would he
do that? He was making money hand over fist.
Ambition. Pure, unadulterated ego. Simmon didn't
want to just be remembered as a popular writer
or a highly paid genre writer. He wanted to be
recognized as a great literary writer. He explicitly
wanted the Nobel Prize in literature. He actually
famously set a personal goal to win the Nobel
Prize by the year 1947. That is an extremely
specific timeline for winning the Nobel Prize.
He was a man of schedules, but he felt that detective
fiction, no matter how good it was, was too limiting
for his legacy. In a detective story, you always
have established rules. There's a crime, the
detective investigates, the culprit is caught,
and the moral order of society is restored. Simonin
wanted to break those rules. He wanted to write
what he called romance doors. Which translates
to hard novels. Yes. And we should clarify, he
didn't mean hard as in difficult to read or intellectually
dense. He meant hard as in tough, uncompromising,
and deeply bleak. These were pure psychological
thrillers about the naked man, where there is
absolutely no reassuring detective coming to
save the day or explain it all at the end. So
how do these differ functionally from the Magritte
books? Can you walk us through an example from
the sources? Sure. Take a prominent book from
this era, like The Man Who Watched the Trains
Go By. It starts with this very respectable,
boring... dutch businessman he is the ultimate
closed man he has a nice family a steady job
a solid reputation in his town but then quite
suddenly he discovers his boss has completely
bankrupted their company through fraud his entire
financial and social safety net vanishes overnight
and he just snaps he completely abandons his
family flees to paris and descends into this
chaotic spiral of madness lust and violent crime
And Maeglet doesn't show up in Chapter 10 to
track him down and restore order. No, nobody
stops him. We just watch him fall. As a reader,
you are trapped inside his deteriorating mind
as he unravels. In the Maeglet novels, order
is always restored, which is comforting. In the
Romansters, the characters face absolute ruin
or a crushing existential despair. The horror
comes from the terrifying realization that any
of us, you, me, anyone listening could become
a monster if the circumstances pushed us just
right. And the fascinating thing is the literary
establishment actually stood up and took notice
of these hard novels, didn't they? This wasn't
just him being pretentious and failing. They
absolutely did. André Gide, who is a towering
figure in literature and a Nobel laureate himself,
publicly called Simenon perhaps the greatest
novelist in contemporary French literature. That
was exactly the high culture validation Simenon
so desperately craved. He proved he could write
devastating high art. using his strict 2 ,000
-word vocabulary. He was also traveling extensively
during this period, wasn't he? He wasn't just
locked in a room in Paris. He was a relentless
globetrotter in the 1930s. He traveled through
Africa, which actually led to him writing some
fiercely anti -colonial articles and novels like
Tropic Moon, which exposed the brutal realities
of the colonial system. He went to Turkey and
managed to secure an interview with Leon Trotsky.
He was constantly feeding that observational
engine of his, looking for new, intense atmospheres
to soak up and pour into his books. So he's essentially
at the very top of his game. He has the critical
literary acclaim. He has massive wealth from
his pulp days. But then... History intervenes
again. We hit 1939. World War II begins. And
looking at the materials, this seems to be a
period where his life gets very, very murky.
It is undoubtedly the most complex and debated
part of his entire biography. When the war starts,
he is living in France, and he actually steps
up initially. In 1940, he takes on the role of
commissioner for refugees in the city of La Rochelle.
He spent exhausting months organizing aid and
shelter for thousands of desperate Belgian refugees
who were fleeing the rapid German advance. Which
sounds incredibly heroic, a very noble use of
his organizational skills. It was a very noble
effort. But then his personal life throws him
a massive curveball that fundamentally alters
his approach to writing. He goes to a doctor
in the region for a checkup, and this doctor
examines him and misdiagnoses him with a severe
terminal heart condition. The exact same type
of heart condition his father died from. Very
similar, yes. The doctor looks Simmon in the
eye and tells him he has a major coronary blockage
and only has a very short time left to live,
maybe two years at most. He explicitly tells
him to stop working immediately, stop having
sex, sit in a chair, and basically just wait
to die. Whoa. Talk about a forced naked man moment.
The great observer of human breaking points is
suddenly facing his own terrifying expiration
date. Exactly. And he believed the doctor completely.
Facing his own imminent mortality, his priorities
shifted instantly. He stops writing commercial
fiction and starts writing a deeply personal
memoir called Je Me Souviens, which translates
to... I remember. It was initially meant as a
long private letter to his young son, Mark, so
the boy would know who his father really was
after he died. This medical misdiagnosis actually
sparked a massive period of intense introspection
that eventually evolved into his sprawling autobiographical
masterpiece, Pedigree. So if that specific provincial
doctor hadn't made that colossal medical mistake,
we probably wouldn't have gotten those deeply
personal revealing books. It's highly likely
we wouldn't have. The sheer terror of death.
unblock something very raw and personal in him
that ambition alone couldn't reach. But while
he is quietly writing his memoirs and waiting
for his heart to give out, the Nazis are fully
occupying France. And this is where we have to
address the difficult question of collaboration.
Right, because this is something that heavily
shadows his legacy today. What actually happened
during the occupation? Did he collaborate with
the Nazis? It's a situation that requires a lot
of nuance, and our sources try to present it
as impartially as possible. He was certainly
not a Nazi ideologue. He didn't write political
propaganda for them or join fascist rallies,
but he was a pragmatist to a deeply uncomfortable
fault. He wanted to keep his career going, and
he wanted to maintain his lavish lifestyle. So
he sold the lucrative film rights to five of
his novels to a production company called Continental
Films. And for context, Continental Films was
what exactly? It was a German -funded, German
-controlled film company operating out of occupied
Paris. And crucially, by direct order. It strictly
banned Jewish actors, Jewish directors, and Jewish
staff from working there. By choosing to do business
with them, Simonin was willingly taking German
money and functionally legitimizing a cultural
system that actively excluded and persecuted
Jews. That is the really damning part. He didn't
have to sell those rights. He didn't. And there
was a very specific ugly scandal involving a
movie adaptation of his book, Strangers in the
House. The film was released in 1942 by this
company. The screenplay was heavily adapted by
others in a way that injected and exaggerated
blatant anti -Semitic themes that weren't really
present in Simonin's original novel. It effectively
became a piece of harmful propaganda. Did he
try to stop the release or protest the changes?
The historical consensus is that he didn't do
nearly enough. He was largely focused on cashing
the check and keeping his head down. And yet,
and this is where the history gets incredibly
ironic and bizarre, at the exact same time his
work is being twisted into anti -Semitic propaganda,
the Vichy government actually suspected Simenon
himself of being Jewish. Wait, really? Because
the name Simenon sounds vaguely like Simon. Exactly
that. Just phonetic suspicion. So in 1942, the
Commissariat for Jewish Affairs officially demanded
he prove he wasn't Jewish. So while taking money
from a German company, he had to frantically
scramble to get birth certificates and baptismal
records from his family back in Liege to prove
his quote -unquote Aryan lineage just to avoid
persecution or deportation himself. So he's taking
their money with one hand and desperately showing
them his Catholic baptismal papers with the other
to avoid being arrested. It's an incredibly tight,
morally bankrupt rope he was walking to survive.
It was, and there were consequences. After the
war ended and France was liberated, he was immediately
placed under house arrest by the new authorities
on suspicion of collaboration. He was intensely
investigated for three months. In the end, he
was officially cleared of all criminal charges.
He hadn't denounced anyone to the Gestapo. He
hadn't written explicit political propaganda.
But the moral stain of conducting business as
usual with the occupiers definitely lingered
over him in France. And it seems like probably
because of that oppressive atmosphere and perhaps
a growing fear of the communists gaining power
in post -war France, he decides to just leave
Europe altogether. Yes. In 1945, he packs up
and moves to the New World. He goes first to
Canada and then settles in the United States.
And this kicks off what we can call his American
exile phase. And if you thought his life was
chaotic before the war, wait until you hear about
the domestic arrangements he sets up in America.
Yeah, this is the three -way household section
I saw on the outline. I have to say, this part
reads entirely like a daytime soap opera. It
is endlessly fascinating and also quite disturbing
when you look at the power dynamics. So, do you
remember Boulay? The young housekeeper they took
on the boat trip back in the 1920s. Right, the
one who lived with him and his wife, Tigey. Well,
she had just been cleaning the house. She had
been Simenon's secret lover for years. His wife,
Tigey, eventually found out about it and surprisingly
chose to tolerate it, provided that she... Taigi,
remained the respected madame of the house in
public. It was a very strange, silent, pragmatic
contract between the three of them. But then
when they arrive in Canada, Simonon meets a young
French -Canadian woman named Denise Hume. Enter
the third wheel, or I guess in this house, the
fourth wheel. Exactly. Denise was much younger,
she was fiery, and she was very sexually liberated.
Simonon fell incredibly hard for her. He later
called their meeting a thunderbolt. She quickly
became his personal secretary and inevitably
his new lover. And eventually, through sheer
force of his will, they all end up living under
the same roof. Simona, his legal wife, Taigi,
his longtime lover and housekeeper, Bull, and
his brand new lover, Denise. That sounds like
an absolute recipe for disaster. How on earth
did that household function on a day -to -day
basis? It functioned with incredible suffocating
tension. It really highlights Simonin's overwhelming
need for total control over his environment.
He basically wanted to have everything at once.
He wanted the social stability and shared history
of his wife. He wanted the domestic comfort and
loyalty of the housekeeper. And he wanted the
raw passion of the new mistress. Eventually,
the pressure cooked over. Tygee agreed to a formal
divorce, but she actually stayed living nearby
in a separate house for the sake of their son,
Mark. Simenon then married Denise in 1950. And
despite all this swirling domestic drama, he
somehow lands in Lakeville, Connecticut, and
sets up what sounds like a literal fiction factory
in his house. Yes, Lakeville is really the absolute
peak of his terrifying efficiency. He was living
in this quiet, idyllic town in Connecticut, and
his writing routine was strictly military. He
would wake up every morning at 6 a .m. sharp.
He would write continuously until 9 -0 a .m.
And in those three hours, he would reliably produce...
Four to five thousand publishable words. That
is a full novel every ten days. Done before most
people have finished their morning coffee. Exactly.
But I really want to stress the physical toll
this took on him. He didn't just sit and casually
type. He treated the act of writing like a violent
physical exorcism. He would enter what he described
as a state of trance. He said he would literally
become the character he was writing about. He
would sweat profusely at the typewriter. His
blood pressure would dangerously spike. He would
actually lose significant physical weight during
the 10 days of writing a novel. He was literally
sweating the story out of his system. He was.
It was a completely visceral, exhausting process.
And ironically, he wrote some of his absolute
darkest material here in America. The Snow Was
Dirty, for example. It's an incredibly bleak,
punishing story about a young man in an unnamed,
occupied European city who commits horrific crimes
just to feel something, anything at all. He wrote
that dark masterpiece while looking out his window
at the peaceful, sunny Connecticut countryside.
So he was actively channeling the leftover trauma
and darkness of occupied Europe into his work,
right from the safety of the American suburbs.
Exactly. And professionally, he was incredibly
successful there. He was highly respected. He
was even elected president of the prestigious
Mystery Writers of America. He was wealthy beyond
belief. But on a personal level, he was growing
deeply disillusioned. He never quite felt at
home in the U .S. He felt the culture was too
sanitized and didn't suit his temperament. And
more importantly, his relationship with Denise
was becoming highly volatile. She was struggling
terribly with severe mental health issues and
growing alcoholism. So in 1955, after a decade
in North America, he abruptly packs up the entire
circus and heads back to Europe. And this return
to Europe leads us into the final major act of
his life, the Swiss fortress era. Yes. He eventually
settled in Switzerland, where he built a massive
custom -designed home in a town called Ipalinges.
It was huge, incredibly impersonal, and strictly
organized visitors said it felt almost like a
sterile hospital or a concrete bunker. It had
something like 20 rooms. And inside that bunker,
the domestic drama just continued to spiral out
of control. What ultimately happened with Denise?
Their marriage completely fell apart. They were
both drinking heavily by this point. Simonin,
in his later memoirs, admitted to being physically
abusive to her during their fights. Denise's
mental health severely deteriorated, and she
spent extensive time in various psychiatric clinics.
Eventually, the situation was untenable and they
permanently separated. And what about Bull, the
faithful housekeeper who had literally been with
him since the 1920s on the boat? That is a deeply
sad ending that really highlights a profound
ruthlessness in Simenon's character. In 1964,
after nearly 40 years of dedicated service, companionship,
and intimacy, Simenon simply fired her. Wow,
that is ice cold. 40 years and he just fires
her. It was incredibly cold. But there was, predictably,
a new woman in the picture. therese's beryllin
she had originally been hired as a maid in the
swiss house and she gradually became his final
romantic companion she stayed with him and cared
for him until the very end of his life but casting
bullae aside so casually after four decades Our
sources point out that it shows how, for Simenon,
people in his life ultimately played roles. And
when he decided your role was done, you were
just written out of the script. In 1973, he makes
another massive public announcement. He decides
to officially stop writing fiction altogether.
Yes. He realized that as he aged, he simply didn't
have the physical stamina for that trance state
anymore. It was becoming too physically dangerous
for his heart to become someone else so intensely
for ten days straight. So he put the typewriter
away and switched to dictating. He would sit
in his chair with a tape recorder and just talk
about his life. He actually produced 21 volumes
of sprawling memoirs this way. But the real tragedy
of his later years, the event that truly broke
him, wasn't the loss of his ability to write
fiction. It was his daughter, wasn't it? Marie
Jo. She was his daughter from his marriage with
Denise. She was a deeply troubled, sensitive
soul who absolutely idolized her father. She
was obsessed with him, arguably to an intensely
unhealthy degree. She had struggled terribly
with severe mental illness, depression, and anxiety
for many years. What exactly happened to her?
In 1978, at the age of just 25, she committed
suicide in her apartment in Paris. She shot herself
with a .22 caliber pistol. That is just devastating.
It completely destroyed him. The man who seemed
impervious to everything was finally broken.
He later wrote, One never recovers from the loss
of a daughter. It leaves a void that nothing
can fill. His final massive memoir, which he
called Intimate Memoirs, was basically written
as a long, desperate letter to her. He was trying
to explain his complicated life to her ghost,
trying to understand why he, the great novelist
who supposedly understood every dark corner of
human psychology, couldn't figure out how to
save his own child. That is the cruelest irony
of his entire life, isn't it? He could see the
naked man perfectly in his fictional characters.
He could manipulate their psychology effortlessly
on the page. But real life, real mental illness
in his own home was far harder to control than
a plot outline. It was the one tragedy he couldn't
write his way out of. It was a problem that no
amount of typing could solve. Simonin eventually
passed away in 1989 in Lausanne after suffering
a fall. When we look back at this massive, sprawling
life, the 400 books, the complicated relationships
with women, the constant travel, the wartime
scandals, the unbelievable wealth, what is the
ultimate takeaway? Why does his work still matter
to us today? I think his profound contribution
to literature is often underestimated simply
because of the sheer volume. People tend to assume
quantity over quality. But Simonin fundamentally
changed the crime genre forever. Before him,
detective stories were mostly clever puzzles.
The questions were always, who did it and how
did they do it? Right. It was the clue board
game approach to murder. Professor Plum in the
library with the candlestick. Exactly. It was
an intellectual game. Simon shifted the entire
focus of the genre to why did they do it? He
taught readers that crime isn't always about
evil, calculating masterminds. Sometimes it's
just a regular flawed guy pushed a little too
far by debt or jealousy who suddenly snaps. He
essentially democratized the tragedy of crime.
And that lifelong obsession with the naked man,
the terrifying idea that under the right social
pressure, absolutely anyone could crack. That
feels incredibly modern and relevant even today.
It really does. He stripped away all the polite
romance of the 19th century novel and gave us
the raw, unfiltered anxiety of the 20th century.
William Faulkner avidly read him. Albert Comus
was deeply influenced by him when writing The
Stranger. He wasn't just a fast pulp writer.
He was a dark existentialist who happened to
own a very fast printing press. It's just an
incredible story to write that much, to live
that intensely, to hurt that many people and
to observe humanity that closely. Honestly it's
exhausting just talking about it. It really is.
It's a life that genuinely feels too large for
fiction. Before we wrap up today I want to leave
you the listener with a final thought to mull
over. We talked extensively about that medical
misdiagnosis back in 1940. The provincial doctor
who wrongly told him she was dying of heart failure.
The great catalyst of his mid -career. Exactly.
If he hadn't been told he was dying, if that
doctor had just said he was fine, would Simonin
have ever looked inward deeply enough to write
his memoirs? Would he have ever written Pedigree?
Sometimes the stark, terrifying fear of the end
is the only thing that strips away our own masks
and makes us truly honest with ourselves. Maybe
that's the ultimate lesson we can take from Georgia
Simenon. You have to write or live like you're
rapidly running out of time. Because whether
a doctor tells you or not, eventually you are.
On that appropriately dark and existential note,
thank you for joining us on this deep dive into
the fascinating, chaotic mind of Georgia Simenon.
It has been... quite a ride it has thank you
for having me we will catch you next time on
the deep dive