WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.720 Welcome back to our deep dive. Today, we're taking 00:00:02.720 --> 00:00:06.080 a look at a figure who, well, he operates less 00:00:06.080 --> 00:00:08.560 like a traditional artist and much more like 00:00:08.560 --> 00:00:10.720 a high performance engine. That's probably the 00:00:10.720 --> 00:00:13.099 best way to describe him, honestly. Right. Because 00:00:13.099 --> 00:00:14.919 usually when we talk about prolific writers, 00:00:15.060 --> 00:00:17.399 we have a certain scale in our heads. You know, 00:00:17.399 --> 00:00:20.160 maybe they manage a book a year. Or if there's 00:00:20.160 --> 00:00:22.719 someone like Stephen King or Isaac Asimov, they 00:00:22.719 --> 00:00:25.039 hit that stride where it's a book every six months 00:00:25.039 --> 00:00:27.059 for a while. Which, by the way, is already a 00:00:27.059 --> 00:00:29.760 pace that burns out most mortals. Exactly. But 00:00:29.760 --> 00:00:31.879 today we're looking at a man who leaves those 00:00:31.879 --> 00:00:34.640 numbers completely in the dust. We are talking 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:38.159 about George's Seminon. And just to set the stage 00:00:38.159 --> 00:00:41.679 for you, the raw data of his career is it's almost 00:00:41.679 --> 00:00:44.520 impossible to process. We aren't talking about 00:00:44.520 --> 00:00:47.700 40 or 50 books over a lifetime. We are looking 00:00:47.700 --> 00:00:51.020 at a bibliography of around 400 novels. It's 00:00:51.020 --> 00:00:52.719 a number that sounds like a typo, doesn't it? 00:00:52.960 --> 00:00:55.719 When you first read that 400 novels, your brain 00:00:55.719 --> 00:00:59.500 just kind of rejects it. It really does. 192 00:00:59.500 --> 00:01:02.960 novels under his own name and then over 200 more 00:01:02.960 --> 00:01:07.120 under this dizzying array of pseudonyms. He sold 00:01:07.120 --> 00:01:10.420 over 500 million copies worldwide. I mean, that 00:01:10.420 --> 00:01:12.299 puts him in the company of the Bible, Shakespeare. 00:01:13.069 --> 00:01:15.569 Agatha Christie. And this is the part I really 00:01:15.569 --> 00:01:17.829 want us to dig into right away. Critics used 00:01:17.829 --> 00:01:19.849 to joke that he made his living by killing someone 00:01:19.849 --> 00:01:22.549 every month because he could write a full, atmospheric, 00:01:22.750 --> 00:01:26.090 psychologically dense novel in just over a week. 00:01:26.269 --> 00:01:28.530 Yeah. It was usually seven to 11 days. And we're 00:01:28.530 --> 00:01:30.650 not talking about a rough draft here. It wasn't 00:01:30.650 --> 00:01:33.030 something that needed six months of heavy editing 00:01:33.030 --> 00:01:35.409 and revisions. We're talking about a manuscript 00:01:35.409 --> 00:01:37.989 that was basically ready for the typesetter the 00:01:37.989 --> 00:01:40.310 moment he pulled the last page out of the typewriter. 00:01:40.430 --> 00:01:42.930 It creates this image of a machine. rather than 00:01:42.930 --> 00:01:45.790 a man, like a text generator before AI even existed. 00:01:45.989 --> 00:01:48.329 But I feel like that's the trap we fall into, 00:01:48.510 --> 00:01:51.090 right? We hear fast and we instantly think cheap. 00:01:51.189 --> 00:01:53.969 We think formulaic pulp. But when you actually 00:01:53.969 --> 00:01:56.230 read Simenon, and I'm not just talking about 00:01:56.230 --> 00:01:58.950 the famous Magritte detective stories, but his 00:01:58.950 --> 00:02:01.230 other works, you don't find a robot at all. You 00:02:01.230 --> 00:02:04.569 find something incredibly dark, sweaty, and deeply 00:02:04.569 --> 00:02:07.569 human. And that right there is the central paradox 00:02:07.569 --> 00:02:10.389 of George's Simenon. If you produce that much 00:02:10.389 --> 00:02:13.969 work, That fast logic dictates it should be shallow. 00:02:14.629 --> 00:02:17.150 But Simonon's work is entirely obsessed with 00:02:17.150 --> 00:02:19.569 depth. He was fixated on what he called the naked 00:02:19.569 --> 00:02:22.069 man. Let's unpack that term immediately, because 00:02:22.069 --> 00:02:23.909 as we go through our sources today, this concept 00:02:23.909 --> 00:02:25.870 seems to be the thesis statement for his entire 00:02:25.870 --> 00:02:28.569 life, the naked man. What exactly are we looking 00:02:28.569 --> 00:02:30.870 at here? It's his term for humanity stripped 00:02:30.870 --> 00:02:33.620 of its pretenses. Simonin believed that we all 00:02:33.620 --> 00:02:35.740 walk around wearing masks in our daily lives. 00:02:35.960 --> 00:02:37.900 These are our clothes, metaphorically speaking. 00:02:38.180 --> 00:02:40.060 You know, we have our job titles, our social 00:02:40.060 --> 00:02:42.039 status, our polite manners, our little everyday 00:02:42.039 --> 00:02:46.099 lives. That is the clothed man. But Simonin believed 00:02:46.099 --> 00:02:47.979 that if you apply enough pressure, whether that's 00:02:47.979 --> 00:02:50.680 fear, exhaustion, jealousy, or just a sudden 00:02:50.680 --> 00:02:53.520 crisis, the mask dissolves. And what you are 00:02:53.520 --> 00:02:57.319 left with is the naked man, the raw, instinctual 00:02:57.319 --> 00:03:00.310 human animal. So his novels were basically laboratory 00:03:00.310 --> 00:03:02.569 experiments. He'd take a character, drop them 00:03:02.569 --> 00:03:04.610 into a psychological pressure cooker, and just 00:03:04.610 --> 00:03:07.069 wait to see the naked man emerge. Precisely. 00:03:07.310 --> 00:03:09.389 He wanted to push characters to their absolute 00:03:09.389 --> 00:03:11.830 limits to see that naked truth. And frankly, 00:03:11.870 --> 00:03:13.310 we have to understand that this wasn't just a 00:03:13.310 --> 00:03:15.150 literary technique for him. That was his lifestyle. 00:03:15.729 --> 00:03:18.289 His own life was just as chaotic, stripped of 00:03:18.289 --> 00:03:20.750 pretense, and morally ambiguous as any fiction 00:03:20.750 --> 00:03:22.969 he ever wrote. And that is our mission for this 00:03:22.969 --> 00:03:25.639 deep dive. We want to understand the man behind 00:03:25.639 --> 00:03:28.060 this impossible output, because as we go through 00:03:28.060 --> 00:03:30.340 his history, we aren't just looking at a famous 00:03:30.340 --> 00:03:33.020 mystery writer. We're looking at a life filled 00:03:33.020 --> 00:03:36.039 with controversy, obsession, these gritty, hard 00:03:36.039 --> 00:03:38.800 novels, and a domestic situation that genuinely 00:03:38.800 --> 00:03:41.639 rivaled anything he put on the page. It is a 00:03:41.639 --> 00:03:44.620 wild ride. And to truly understand that chaos, 00:03:44.879 --> 00:03:47.400 we have to start right where the pressure cooker 00:03:47.400 --> 00:03:51.759 began, Liege, Belgium, in 1903. Right. A gloomy 00:03:51.759 --> 00:03:53.879 industrial city at the turn of the century. And 00:03:53.879 --> 00:03:55.800 right off the bat, we hit a snag with the truth. 00:03:56.139 --> 00:03:58.180 Because even his birthday is a lie, isn't it? 00:03:58.319 --> 00:04:00.120 It is. And it tells you absolutely everything 00:04:00.120 --> 00:04:02.460 you need to know about his mother. So Simonin 00:04:02.460 --> 00:04:05.520 was born in February 1903. The official records 00:04:05.520 --> 00:04:08.139 and his actual bliss certificate say he was born 00:04:08.139 --> 00:04:11.060 at 1130 p .m. on Thursday the 12th. But that 00:04:11.060 --> 00:04:12.800 is a complete fabrication. He was actually born 00:04:12.800 --> 00:04:14.780 just after midnight, which would make it Friday 00:04:14.780 --> 00:04:16.939 the 13th. Friday the 13th. I mean, the ultimate 00:04:16.939 --> 00:04:20.199 bad omen. Exactly. And his mother, Henriette. 00:04:20.600 --> 00:04:23.100 was incredibly superstitious. She was just this 00:04:23.100 --> 00:04:25.839 bundle of nerves and anxiety. The idea of her 00:04:25.839 --> 00:04:28.160 firstborn son coming into the world on Friday 00:04:28.160 --> 00:04:31.379 the 13th was totally unacceptable to her. So 00:04:31.379 --> 00:04:35.199 the story goes that his father, Desiree, falsified 00:04:35.199 --> 00:04:38.279 the certificate to say the 12th. Simenon's life 00:04:38.279 --> 00:04:40.939 literally began with a deception just to appease 00:04:40.939 --> 00:04:43.379 his mother's anxiety. Talk about starting life 00:04:43.379 --> 00:04:45.600 on a complicated note. You mentioned the parents 00:04:45.600 --> 00:04:48.079 there, Desiree and Henriette. From all the research 00:04:48.079 --> 00:04:50.060 we've gathered, it seems like they were polar 00:04:50.060 --> 00:04:52.699 opposites. It wasn't just a mild difference in 00:04:52.699 --> 00:04:54.459 personality. It was a fundamental difference 00:04:54.459 --> 00:04:56.560 in how they viewed the world. Completely. And 00:04:56.560 --> 00:04:59.279 that specific tension defines Simonin. He absolutely 00:04:59.279 --> 00:05:01.920 idolized his father, Desiree. He saw him as this 00:05:01.920 --> 00:05:04.680 gentle, noble figure. Desiree was an insurance 00:05:04.680 --> 00:05:07.600 clerk, a man of routine. He was very tall, very 00:05:07.600 --> 00:05:09.800 calm, and he just accepted his lot in life without 00:05:09.800 --> 00:05:12.100 complaint. In fact, Simonin... later claimed 00:05:12.100 --> 00:05:14.199 that he modeled Inspector Maygray's temperament. 00:05:14.220 --> 00:05:16.500 You know, that calmness, that patience, that 00:05:16.500 --> 00:05:19.319 incredible ability to just sit and listen, partly 00:05:19.319 --> 00:05:21.740 on his father. And Henriette. She was the opposite 00:05:21.740 --> 00:05:24.220 of calm, I take it. Henriette was the storm. 00:05:24.720 --> 00:05:28.759 She was difficult, devoutly religious, and constantly 00:05:28.759 --> 00:05:31.139 obsessively terrified of falling into poverty. 00:05:31.689 --> 00:05:34.009 She had a very strained relationship with Georges. 00:05:34.089 --> 00:05:36.490 She actually favored his younger brother, Christian, 00:05:36.649 --> 00:05:38.889 quite openly, which Georges resented deeply. 00:05:39.529 --> 00:05:41.610 They lived in a neighborhood called Autremuse, 00:05:41.750 --> 00:05:45.709 and the family dynamic there was tight, claustrophobic 00:05:45.709 --> 00:05:48.209 even. But they didn't live alone, right? I read 00:05:48.209 --> 00:05:50.670 in our sources that this household was basically 00:05:50.670 --> 00:05:54.189 a revolving door of strangers, which seems like 00:05:54.189 --> 00:05:56.589 a crucial detail for a writer who specializes 00:05:56.589 --> 00:05:59.209 in intense human observation. This is arguably 00:05:59.209 --> 00:06:01.310 the most important formative experience for him. 00:06:01.569 --> 00:06:04.250 In 1911, to help alleviate Henriette's financial 00:06:04.250 --> 00:06:07.089 panics, they moved to a larger house on the Rue 00:06:07.089 --> 00:06:10.069 de la Loire and started taking in lodgers. And 00:06:10.069 --> 00:06:12.050 these weren't just random local travelers. These 00:06:12.050 --> 00:06:14.189 were students from Eastern Europe, Russians, 00:06:14.449 --> 00:06:17.569 Jews, political refugees fleeing various crises. 00:06:17.769 --> 00:06:19.610 So you have to picture this. As a kid, he's living 00:06:19.610 --> 00:06:21.209 in a house that smells like foreign cooking. 00:06:21.350 --> 00:06:23.250 He's hearing all these languages he doesn't understand. 00:06:23.410 --> 00:06:25.430 And he's seeing people from completely different, 00:06:25.569 --> 00:06:28.110 often desperate walks of life right in his own 00:06:28.110 --> 00:06:31.050 hallway. Exactly. It was his window into the 00:06:31.050 --> 00:06:34.069 wider world. But much more importantly, it made 00:06:34.069 --> 00:06:36.500 him a voyeur. He wasn't just hearing stories 00:06:36.500 --> 00:06:38.459 about these people. He was seeing their secret 00:06:38.459 --> 00:06:41.199 lives up close. He saw their peculiar habits, 00:06:41.379 --> 00:06:44.040 their deep fears, their poverty. He saw them 00:06:44.040 --> 00:06:45.899 when they thought no one else was looking. He 00:06:45.899 --> 00:06:48.139 learned really early on that everyone has a secret 00:06:48.139 --> 00:06:51.060 life behind their closed door. He actually later 00:06:51.060 --> 00:06:53.000 wrote a book called The Lodger and another one 00:06:53.000 --> 00:06:56.079 called Pedigree that draw directly on this specific 00:06:56.079 --> 00:06:59.350 childhood experience. So he's essentially seeing 00:06:59.350 --> 00:07:02.430 the naked man before he even has a name for it. 00:07:02.490 --> 00:07:04.470 He's seeing people when they aren't performing 00:07:04.470 --> 00:07:06.889 for society. Right. He's seeing the late night 00:07:06.889 --> 00:07:09.790 struggles, the illicit affairs, the heavy drinking. 00:07:09.850 --> 00:07:13.209 It gave him a very unvarnished, unsentimental 00:07:13.209 --> 00:07:15.589 view of humanity from a very young age. Then, 00:07:15.689 --> 00:07:17.810 of course, global history crashes into his living 00:07:17.810 --> 00:07:21.389 room. 1914. World War I breaks out and the Germans 00:07:21.389 --> 00:07:24.300 occupy Liege. For a boy of 11, this must have 00:07:24.300 --> 00:07:26.959 been a massive shift in reality. And here is 00:07:26.959 --> 00:07:29.339 where we really see that trademark cynicism starting 00:07:29.339 --> 00:07:32.519 to harden into concrete. Because while his father 00:07:32.519 --> 00:07:34.819 strongly disapproved of the occupation on moral 00:07:34.819 --> 00:07:37.560 grounds, his mother actually saw it as a business 00:07:37.560 --> 00:07:40.279 opportunity. She started taking in German officers 00:07:40.279 --> 00:07:42.680 as lodgers because they paid in stable currency. 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:45.860 So the literal enemy is sleeping down the hall. 00:07:46.120 --> 00:07:49.339 Yes. And young Simonin watched this extreme moral 00:07:49.339 --> 00:07:52.389 flexibility unfold in real time. He later made 00:07:52.389 --> 00:07:54.430 a really striking observation about that period. 00:07:54.610 --> 00:07:57.449 He said, my father cheated, my mother cheated, 00:07:57.649 --> 00:08:00.569 everyone cheated. That is a very dark thing for 00:08:00.569 --> 00:08:02.610 a kid to internalize, the idea that everyone 00:08:02.610 --> 00:08:06.009 cheated. It is. But he also freely admitted that 00:08:06.009 --> 00:08:08.149 the war years were some of his, quote unquote, 00:08:08.350 --> 00:08:11.800 happiest times. Because it was chaotic. The old 00:08:11.800 --> 00:08:13.439 rules were broken. The traditional authority 00:08:13.439 --> 00:08:15.839 figures had collapsed. He suddenly had a certain 00:08:15.839 --> 00:08:18.199 kind of dangerous freedom. He played truant from 00:08:18.199 --> 00:08:20.720 school. He read heavy Russian classics. And he 00:08:20.720 --> 00:08:22.959 even turned to petty theft just to buy pastries. 00:08:23.480 --> 00:08:25.980 He was seeing the world in a state of total anarchy, 00:08:26.060 --> 00:08:28.139 and he realized he was actually quite good at 00:08:28.139 --> 00:08:30.680 navigating it. He was feral, essentially, just 00:08:30.680 --> 00:08:32.740 figuring out how to survive. He was surviving. 00:08:33.200 --> 00:08:35.879 And he was learning that morality is often just 00:08:35.879 --> 00:08:39.100 a luxury that disappears completely when basic 00:08:39.100 --> 00:08:41.779 survival is at stake. Now, he didn't stay in 00:08:41.779 --> 00:08:43.919 school very long after that, did he? No, not 00:08:43.919 --> 00:08:47.320 at all. In 1918, his father was diagnosed with 00:08:47.320 --> 00:08:50.539 a severe heart condition. Simenon used this family 00:08:50.539 --> 00:08:53.000 crisis as an excuse to drop out of school entirely 00:08:53.000 --> 00:08:55.899 without taking his final exams. He was barely 00:08:55.899 --> 00:08:59.019 16 years old. And almost immediately, he dives 00:08:59.019 --> 00:09:01.820 headfirst into the world of journalism. He manages 00:09:01.820 --> 00:09:04.960 to get a job. at the Gazette de Liège. A 16 -year 00:09:04.960 --> 00:09:07.019 -old crime reporter. I mean, that really explains 00:09:07.019 --> 00:09:09.460 the blinding speed he developed later in life. 00:09:09.639 --> 00:09:11.539 You have to write fast in a busy newsroom, especially 00:09:11.539 --> 00:09:14.000 back in those days. Precisely. He wasn't just 00:09:14.000 --> 00:09:16.360 doing light reporting. He was churning out copy 00:09:16.360 --> 00:09:19.159 daily to fill empty space. He wrote a gossip 00:09:19.159 --> 00:09:21.799 column under the fantastic name Monsieur Lecoq. 00:09:22.080 --> 00:09:24.779 He covered gruesome local crimes. He interviewed 00:09:24.779 --> 00:09:27.120 international figures who passed through. He 00:09:27.120 --> 00:09:28.940 even took a forensic science course at the local 00:09:28.940 --> 00:09:31.559 university just to understand police methods 00:09:31.559 --> 00:09:34.700 better. He was actively building the exact toolkit 00:09:34.700 --> 00:09:37.200 he would use for the next 50 years of his career. 00:09:37.379 --> 00:09:39.759 So he's learning to write fast, and he's learning 00:09:39.759 --> 00:09:42.659 how cops actually think and operate. But it wasn't 00:09:42.659 --> 00:09:44.919 all just work and study. We have to talk about 00:09:44.919 --> 00:09:48.100 Lecoq. When I was reviewing the notes, this sounded 00:09:48.100 --> 00:09:49.779 like something straight out of a gothic novel. 00:09:50.279 --> 00:09:53.679 The Herring Barrel. Yes, Lecoq. It was this tight 00:09:53.679 --> 00:09:56.279 -knit group of young bohemians, aspiring artists, 00:09:56.539 --> 00:09:59.480 and general rebels he fell in with around 1919. 00:10:00.220 --> 00:10:02.779 They would meet late at night in this dingy, 00:10:02.799 --> 00:10:06.399 atmospheric place, drink heavily, discuss dark 00:10:06.399 --> 00:10:08.960 philosophy, and experiment with drugs, mainly 00:10:08.960 --> 00:10:11.970 morphine and cocaine. It was very much that post 00:10:11.970 --> 00:10:14.370 -war nihilism. They desperately wanted to shock 00:10:14.370 --> 00:10:16.909 the bourgeoisie and reject the society that had 00:10:16.909 --> 00:10:18.929 just led them through a world war. And it took 00:10:18.929 --> 00:10:21.230 a really tragic turn, didn't it? Because it wasn't 00:10:21.230 --> 00:10:23.629 just kids playing at being edgy. A very dark 00:10:23.629 --> 00:10:27.210 turn, yes. In 1922, one of the core members of 00:10:27.210 --> 00:10:30.029 the group, a young man named Joseph Klein, was 00:10:30.029 --> 00:10:32.129 found hanged at the doors of the St. Fulian Church. 00:10:32.629 --> 00:10:34.830 He had spent the entire previous night partying 00:10:34.830 --> 00:10:37.139 with the group. Simenon was actually one of the 00:10:37.139 --> 00:10:39.679 very last people to see him alive. That's terrifying 00:10:39.679 --> 00:10:42.159 to be 19 years old and have your close friend 00:10:42.159 --> 00:10:43.840 hanging from a church door the next morning. 00:10:44.059 --> 00:10:46.940 It deeply haunted him. It wasn't just a macabre 00:10:46.940 --> 00:10:49.840 story to him. It was real visceral tragedy happening 00:10:49.840 --> 00:10:53.019 right in his circle. He actually processed it 00:10:53.019 --> 00:10:56.019 the only way he knew how he wrote about it much 00:10:56.019 --> 00:10:58.440 later in a novel called The Hanged Man of St. 00:10:58.519 --> 00:11:02.299 Fillion. That event completely reinforced his 00:11:02.299 --> 00:11:05.519 core theme that chaos, despair and death are 00:11:05.519 --> 00:11:08.559 always just lurking around the corner. So if 00:11:08.559 --> 00:11:10.580 we recap the resume of this guy by the time he's 00:11:10.580 --> 00:11:13.100 20 years old, he's seen a brutal war occupation. 00:11:13.139 --> 00:11:15.659 He's lived with desperate refugees. He's been 00:11:15.659 --> 00:11:18.080 a gritty crime reporter. He's hung out with drug 00:11:18.080 --> 00:11:20.240 addicted nihilists and experienced the suicide 00:11:20.240 --> 00:11:23.139 of a friend. And then the final blow, his father 00:11:23.139 --> 00:11:26.220 dies in 1921. Which was really the final severing 00:11:26.220 --> 00:11:28.820 of his ties to his childhood. He called his father's 00:11:28.820 --> 00:11:31.019 death the most important day in a man's life. 00:11:31.419 --> 00:11:33.279 With Desiree gone, he felt he had absolutely 00:11:33.279 --> 00:11:36.100 no reason to stay in Liège anymore. So he finished 00:11:36.100 --> 00:11:38.700 his mandatory military service, and in 1922, 00:11:38.860 --> 00:11:40.659 he packs up his life and moves to Paris. And 00:11:40.659 --> 00:11:42.419 he's not alone for this move. He's with his new 00:11:42.419 --> 00:11:44.600 wife, Regine. Though, looking at the sources, 00:11:44.860 --> 00:11:47.379 he didn't actually call her that. No, he renamed 00:11:47.379 --> 00:11:51.039 her Taiji. Simenon had this very distinct habit 00:11:51.039 --> 00:11:54.539 of renaming the women in his life. Which, honestly, 00:11:54.700 --> 00:11:56.799 is a whole psychological discussion on its own. 00:11:56.860 --> 00:11:59.360 This deep -seated need to define and control 00:11:59.360 --> 00:12:02.659 his domestic partners. But yes, he and Tyge move 00:12:02.659 --> 00:12:04.940 to Paris. And this is the era where the legendary 00:12:04.940 --> 00:12:07.480 productivity really kicks into high gear. This 00:12:07.480 --> 00:12:09.779 is what we can call the Paris Pulp Factory phase. 00:12:10.320 --> 00:12:12.299 Right, because he didn't just arrive in Paris 00:12:12.299 --> 00:12:15.519 and instantly become a famous, respected author. 00:12:15.740 --> 00:12:18.299 He had to grind. It was an unbelievable grind. 00:12:18.700 --> 00:12:21.019 He initially worked as a secretary for an eccentric 00:12:21.019 --> 00:12:23.639 marquee, which gave him a fascinating glimpse 00:12:23.639 --> 00:12:27.389 into the decaying aristocracy. His real sustaining 00:12:27.389 --> 00:12:30.049 income came from writing pulp fiction. He was 00:12:30.049 --> 00:12:32.289 writing under at least a dozen different pseudonyms. 00:12:32.330 --> 00:12:35.529 He churned out adventure stories, saucy romances, 00:12:35.529 --> 00:12:37.690 westerns, literally anything that a publisher 00:12:37.690 --> 00:12:39.629 would pay for. He was basically a content mill 00:12:39.629 --> 00:12:41.669 of one person. But there's a critical moment 00:12:41.669 --> 00:12:43.870 here that alters his trajectory, and it involves 00:12:43.870 --> 00:12:46.750 the famous French writer Colette. She was working 00:12:46.750 --> 00:12:48.929 as the literary editor at a paper he was submitting 00:12:48.929 --> 00:12:51.429 pieces to, and she gave him a piece of advice 00:12:51.429 --> 00:12:54.029 that changed everything for him. She really did. 00:12:54.600 --> 00:12:56.940 Simenon submitted some short stories to her desk, 00:12:57.039 --> 00:13:00.220 and she rejected them outright. But her feedback 00:13:00.220 --> 00:13:03.460 was simple and completely devastating. She told 00:13:03.460 --> 00:13:06.980 him, make it less literary. Make it less literary, 00:13:07.200 --> 00:13:10.100 which sounds so counterintuitive for a young 00:13:10.100 --> 00:13:13.120 raider trying to make a name for himself. Usually 00:13:13.120 --> 00:13:14.700 you're trying to be more literary, you want to 00:13:14.700 --> 00:13:17.679 show off your vocabulary. Exactly. But she saw 00:13:17.679 --> 00:13:20.379 right through what he was doing. She saw that 00:13:20.379 --> 00:13:23.220 he was trying way too hard. He was using flowery 00:13:23.220 --> 00:13:25.820 adjectives, complex metaphors, just desperately 00:13:25.820 --> 00:13:28.279 trying to sound writerly. She told him to cut 00:13:28.279 --> 00:13:30.580 all of that out immediately. Stop trying to be 00:13:30.580 --> 00:13:33.120 poetic. Just describe exactly what is physically 00:13:33.120 --> 00:13:36.019 there. Use concrete words. If it's raining, say 00:13:36.019 --> 00:13:37.940 it's raining. Don't tell the reader the sky is 00:13:37.940 --> 00:13:40.620 weeping. So strip the language down to the naked 00:13:40.620 --> 00:13:43.580 truth, just like his characters. Precisely. And 00:13:43.580 --> 00:13:45.740 Simonin took this advice totally to heart. He 00:13:45.740 --> 00:13:47.399 stripped his vocabulary down to the absolute 00:13:47.399 --> 00:13:50.220 bare minimum. He estimated later in life that 00:13:50.220 --> 00:13:52.460 he purposefully limited himself to a working 00:13:52.460 --> 00:13:55.799 stock of about 2 ,000 words. 2 ,000 words. That 00:13:55.799 --> 00:13:59.399 is tiny. For context, that's barely above basic 00:13:59.399 --> 00:14:02.159 conversational fluency in a language. It is incredibly 00:14:02.159 --> 00:14:04.320 restrictive. But that's exactly why his books 00:14:04.320 --> 00:14:06.799 are so readable and why they translate so seamlessly 00:14:06.799 --> 00:14:09.419 into dozens of languages. He stopped focusing 00:14:09.419 --> 00:14:12.100 on intellectual wordplay and focused entirely 00:14:12.100 --> 00:14:15.580 on atmosphere. on the sensory details. He wanted 00:14:15.580 --> 00:14:18.580 you to smell the wet Parisian pavement, to taste 00:14:18.580 --> 00:14:21.220 the cheap sour wine in a bistro, to feel the 00:14:21.220 --> 00:14:24.360 cold fog on your face. It made his writing intensely 00:14:24.360 --> 00:14:27.679 visceral. It completely bypasses the intellectual 00:14:27.679 --> 00:14:29.840 part of your brain and just hits you right in 00:14:29.840 --> 00:14:32.490 the gut. Speaking of visceral, his personal life 00:14:32.490 --> 00:14:34.789 in Paris wasn't exactly boring during this period 00:14:34.789 --> 00:14:37.730 either. I saw the name Josephine Baker pop up 00:14:37.730 --> 00:14:39.669 prominently in the source material. Oh, yes. 00:14:39.750 --> 00:14:42.049 Yeah. You really can't talk about 1920s Paris 00:14:42.049 --> 00:14:44.529 without talking about Josephine Baker. She was 00:14:44.529 --> 00:14:47.720 the absolute icon of the jazz age. In the mid 00:14:47.720 --> 00:14:50.580 -20s, Simenon started a wildly passionate affair 00:14:50.580 --> 00:14:52.700 with her. It was a complete whirlwind. He was 00:14:52.700 --> 00:14:54.759 absolutely infatuated with her star power and 00:14:54.759 --> 00:14:56.940 her energy. He was even acting as her part -time 00:14:56.940 --> 00:14:59.480 secretary for a bit, handling her massive correspondence 00:14:59.480 --> 00:15:01.539 while they were together. It seems like he was 00:15:01.539 --> 00:15:03.600 getting completely sucked into the celebrity 00:15:03.600 --> 00:15:06.220 lifestyle, which is dangerous for a guy who needs 00:15:06.220 --> 00:15:08.539 to sit alone in a room and write a book a week. 00:15:08.720 --> 00:15:11.799 He was entirely distracted. And to his credit, 00:15:11.960 --> 00:15:14.639 he realized it was dangerous for his work. The 00:15:14.639 --> 00:15:17.120 parties, the aggressive press, the constant social 00:15:17.120 --> 00:15:19.799 chaos. He just couldn't write the way he wanted 00:15:19.799 --> 00:15:23.279 to. So, in true Simonin fashion, when the pressure 00:15:23.279 --> 00:15:26.080 got too high, He ran away. And he ran away to 00:15:26.080 --> 00:15:28.460 a boat. He felt he desperately needed to escape 00:15:28.460 --> 00:15:30.980 the distractions of Paris to find his focus again. 00:15:31.259 --> 00:15:33.860 So he bought a boat called the Ostrogoth. He 00:15:33.860 --> 00:15:35.779 and Taiji, along with their housekeeper, Boule, 00:15:35.980 --> 00:15:37.799 who we will definitely need to discuss later 00:15:37.799 --> 00:15:40.299 because she becomes a central tragic figure in 00:15:40.299 --> 00:15:43.179 his bizarre domestic life. They all went on a 00:15:43.179 --> 00:15:46.179 long tour of the canals of France and the Netherlands. 00:15:46.460 --> 00:15:48.720 And this boat trip is where the magic happens, 00:15:48.840 --> 00:15:51.620 right? This is the birth of his most famous creation. 00:15:51.820 --> 00:15:54.679 The legend. Which Simenon loved to tell, says 00:15:54.679 --> 00:15:56.879 it happened in Delft Seal, which is a port town 00:15:56.879 --> 00:15:58.940 in the Netherlands, while the boat was docked 00:15:58.940 --> 00:16:01.179 and being repaired. Simenon was sitting on a 00:16:01.179 --> 00:16:03.480 crate by the water, just typing away. And he 00:16:03.480 --> 00:16:05.980 started imagining a new kind of character. He 00:16:05.980 --> 00:16:08.059 didn't want a dashing, action -oriented hero. 00:16:08.159 --> 00:16:10.639 He didn't want a super genius. He envisioned 00:16:10.639 --> 00:16:13.980 a large, heavy man. A man with a pipe. A man 00:16:13.980 --> 00:16:16.700 who felt incredibly solid and grounded. Inspector 00:16:16.700 --> 00:16:19.990 Jules Magret. Exactly. And this is where we really 00:16:19.990 --> 00:16:21.750 need to make that sharp distinction you hinted 00:16:21.750 --> 00:16:24.509 at earlier. Magritte is absolutely not Sherlock 00:16:24.509 --> 00:16:27.269 Holmes. Holmes is all about deduction, logic, 00:16:27.409 --> 00:16:30.529 finding the hidden clue, puzzle solving. He stands 00:16:30.529 --> 00:16:32.649 above the crime, looking down at the messy humans 00:16:32.649 --> 00:16:35.009 like a scientist looking at a petri dish. Right. 00:16:35.169 --> 00:16:37.649 Holmes is a human computer. So what is Magritte? 00:16:37.690 --> 00:16:39.610 Is he more like a sponge? That's a great way 00:16:39.610 --> 00:16:41.490 to put it, actually. Magritte immerses himself. 00:16:42.070 --> 00:16:44.269 When murder happens, Magritte goes to the scene. 00:16:44.809 --> 00:16:47.230 But he doesn't just look for footprints. He sits 00:16:47.230 --> 00:16:50.389 in the cafes where the victims sat. He drinks 00:16:50.389 --> 00:16:53.129 the same cheat alcohol they drank. He literally 00:16:53.129 --> 00:16:56.389 soaks up the local atmosphere. He talks to the 00:16:56.389 --> 00:16:59.350 suspects not to aggressively trap them in a logical 00:16:59.350 --> 00:17:01.970 lie, but to understand the emotional pressure 00:17:01.970 --> 00:17:03.889 that pushed them to the breaking point. He wants 00:17:03.889 --> 00:17:06.250 to know the why much more than the how. He wants 00:17:06.250 --> 00:17:08.890 to know the human cost of the crime. He rarely 00:17:08.890 --> 00:17:11.650 judges the people he arrests. There's a profound, 00:17:11.809 --> 00:17:14.660 heavy empathy in Magritte. He fundamentally understands 00:17:14.660 --> 00:17:16.720 that the criminal is usually just a naked man 00:17:16.720 --> 00:17:19.759 who cracked under an unbearable burden. So he 00:17:19.759 --> 00:17:22.819 writes this first official Magritte novel, Petrololitan, 00:17:22.940 --> 00:17:26.059 and he launches it in the most spectacular, over 00:17:26.059 --> 00:17:28.599 -the -top way possible. This wasn't a quiet wine 00:17:28.599 --> 00:17:31.059 and cheese book release in a dusty shop. No, 00:17:31.099 --> 00:17:33.980 it was the ball anthropometric. It was a massive, 00:17:34.019 --> 00:17:36.859 incredibly lavish, fancy dress party in 1931 00:17:36.859 --> 00:17:40.640 with a strict criminal underworld theme. Guests 00:17:40.640 --> 00:17:42.880 showed up dressed as gangsters, corrupt cops, 00:17:43.019 --> 00:17:45.900 and streetwalkers. They literally took people's 00:17:45.900 --> 00:17:48.559 fingerprints at the door as they entered. It 00:17:48.559 --> 00:17:51.279 was a huge, expensive publicity stunt, and it 00:17:51.279 --> 00:17:54.460 worked flawlessly. The books absolutely took 00:17:54.460 --> 00:17:57.380 off. By 1933, just a couple years later, he had 00:17:57.380 --> 00:18:00.960 written 19 full Magritte novels. 19 novels in 00:18:00.960 --> 00:18:03.140 roughly three years. That is insane productivity. 00:18:03.480 --> 00:18:05.000 I mean, he found the golden ticket. He had a 00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:07.579 beloved character, massive sales, fame. It was 00:18:07.579 --> 00:18:09.619 everything a pulp writer dreams of. But here 00:18:09.619 --> 00:18:12.470 is the massive twist in his career. Just as Magritte 00:18:12.470 --> 00:18:14.690 becomes a legitimate global phenomenon, Simmon 00:18:14.690 --> 00:18:17.349 shocks his publishers and his fans. In 1933, 00:18:17.670 --> 00:18:19.809 he simply decides to retire the character. He 00:18:19.809 --> 00:18:21.569 stops writing Magritte. Why on earth would he 00:18:21.569 --> 00:18:23.730 do that? He was making money hand over fist. 00:18:24.190 --> 00:18:29.089 Ambition. Pure, unadulterated ego. Simmon didn't 00:18:29.089 --> 00:18:31.450 want to just be remembered as a popular writer 00:18:31.450 --> 00:18:34.049 or a highly paid genre writer. He wanted to be 00:18:34.049 --> 00:18:37.619 recognized as a great literary writer. He explicitly 00:18:37.619 --> 00:18:40.400 wanted the Nobel Prize in literature. He actually 00:18:40.400 --> 00:18:42.920 famously set a personal goal to win the Nobel 00:18:42.920 --> 00:18:46.039 Prize by the year 1947. That is an extremely 00:18:46.039 --> 00:18:48.519 specific timeline for winning the Nobel Prize. 00:18:48.740 --> 00:18:51.440 He was a man of schedules, but he felt that detective 00:18:51.440 --> 00:18:54.099 fiction, no matter how good it was, was too limiting 00:18:54.099 --> 00:18:57.119 for his legacy. In a detective story, you always 00:18:57.119 --> 00:18:59.720 have established rules. There's a crime, the 00:18:59.720 --> 00:19:01.839 detective investigates, the culprit is caught, 00:19:02.039 --> 00:19:05.480 and the moral order of society is restored. Simonin 00:19:05.480 --> 00:19:07.779 wanted to break those rules. He wanted to write 00:19:07.779 --> 00:19:10.220 what he called romance doors. Which translates 00:19:10.220 --> 00:19:13.299 to hard novels. Yes. And we should clarify, he 00:19:13.299 --> 00:19:15.880 didn't mean hard as in difficult to read or intellectually 00:19:15.880 --> 00:19:19.460 dense. He meant hard as in tough, uncompromising, 00:19:19.460 --> 00:19:21.819 and deeply bleak. These were pure psychological 00:19:21.819 --> 00:19:24.339 thrillers about the naked man, where there is 00:19:24.339 --> 00:19:26.440 absolutely no reassuring detective coming to 00:19:26.440 --> 00:19:28.480 save the day or explain it all at the end. So 00:19:28.480 --> 00:19:30.619 how do these differ functionally from the Magritte 00:19:30.619 --> 00:19:32.440 books? Can you walk us through an example from 00:19:32.440 --> 00:19:34.720 the sources? Sure. Take a prominent book from 00:19:34.720 --> 00:19:37.119 this era, like The Man Who Watched the Trains 00:19:37.119 --> 00:19:39.779 Go By. It starts with this very respectable, 00:19:40.140 --> 00:19:43.910 boring... dutch businessman he is the ultimate 00:19:43.910 --> 00:19:47.309 closed man he has a nice family a steady job 00:19:47.309 --> 00:19:50.910 a solid reputation in his town but then quite 00:19:50.910 --> 00:19:53.190 suddenly he discovers his boss has completely 00:19:53.190 --> 00:19:55.869 bankrupted their company through fraud his entire 00:19:55.869 --> 00:19:58.130 financial and social safety net vanishes overnight 00:19:58.130 --> 00:20:01.049 and he just snaps he completely abandons his 00:20:01.049 --> 00:20:03.529 family flees to paris and descends into this 00:20:03.529 --> 00:20:06.650 chaotic spiral of madness lust and violent crime 00:20:07.019 --> 00:20:08.740 And Maeglet doesn't show up in Chapter 10 to 00:20:08.740 --> 00:20:10.980 track him down and restore order. No, nobody 00:20:10.980 --> 00:20:13.900 stops him. We just watch him fall. As a reader, 00:20:13.980 --> 00:20:16.039 you are trapped inside his deteriorating mind 00:20:16.039 --> 00:20:19.119 as he unravels. In the Maeglet novels, order 00:20:19.119 --> 00:20:21.920 is always restored, which is comforting. In the 00:20:21.920 --> 00:20:24.140 Romansters, the characters face absolute ruin 00:20:24.140 --> 00:20:27.279 or a crushing existential despair. The horror 00:20:27.279 --> 00:20:29.380 comes from the terrifying realization that any 00:20:29.380 --> 00:20:31.839 of us, you, me, anyone listening could become 00:20:31.839 --> 00:20:34.059 a monster if the circumstances pushed us just 00:20:34.059 --> 00:20:36.690 right. And the fascinating thing is the literary 00:20:36.690 --> 00:20:39.670 establishment actually stood up and took notice 00:20:39.670 --> 00:20:41.529 of these hard novels, didn't they? This wasn't 00:20:41.529 --> 00:20:43.470 just him being pretentious and failing. They 00:20:43.470 --> 00:20:46.369 absolutely did. André Gide, who is a towering 00:20:46.369 --> 00:20:48.509 figure in literature and a Nobel laureate himself, 00:20:48.750 --> 00:20:51.509 publicly called Simenon perhaps the greatest 00:20:51.509 --> 00:20:54.910 novelist in contemporary French literature. That 00:20:54.910 --> 00:20:57.529 was exactly the high culture validation Simenon 00:20:57.529 --> 00:21:00.509 so desperately craved. He proved he could write 00:21:00.509 --> 00:21:03.880 devastating high art. using his strict 2 ,000 00:21:03.880 --> 00:21:06.279 -word vocabulary. He was also traveling extensively 00:21:06.279 --> 00:21:07.839 during this period, wasn't he? He wasn't just 00:21:07.839 --> 00:21:09.859 locked in a room in Paris. He was a relentless 00:21:09.859 --> 00:21:12.779 globetrotter in the 1930s. He traveled through 00:21:12.779 --> 00:21:15.180 Africa, which actually led to him writing some 00:21:15.180 --> 00:21:18.039 fiercely anti -colonial articles and novels like 00:21:18.039 --> 00:21:20.819 Tropic Moon, which exposed the brutal realities 00:21:20.819 --> 00:21:23.460 of the colonial system. He went to Turkey and 00:21:23.460 --> 00:21:25.640 managed to secure an interview with Leon Trotsky. 00:21:25.819 --> 00:21:28.160 He was constantly feeding that observational 00:21:28.160 --> 00:21:30.839 engine of his, looking for new, intense atmospheres 00:21:30.839 --> 00:21:33.960 to soak up and pour into his books. So he's essentially 00:21:33.960 --> 00:21:36.099 at the very top of his game. He has the critical 00:21:36.099 --> 00:21:38.859 literary acclaim. He has massive wealth from 00:21:38.859 --> 00:21:41.789 his pulp days. But then... History intervenes 00:21:41.789 --> 00:21:45.829 again. We hit 1939. World War II begins. And 00:21:45.829 --> 00:21:47.769 looking at the materials, this seems to be a 00:21:47.769 --> 00:21:50.170 period where his life gets very, very murky. 00:21:50.269 --> 00:21:52.650 It is undoubtedly the most complex and debated 00:21:52.650 --> 00:21:56.009 part of his entire biography. When the war starts, 00:21:56.190 --> 00:21:58.630 he is living in France, and he actually steps 00:21:58.630 --> 00:22:01.859 up initially. In 1940, he takes on the role of 00:22:01.859 --> 00:22:04.259 commissioner for refugees in the city of La Rochelle. 00:22:04.480 --> 00:22:07.359 He spent exhausting months organizing aid and 00:22:07.359 --> 00:22:09.759 shelter for thousands of desperate Belgian refugees 00:22:09.759 --> 00:22:12.420 who were fleeing the rapid German advance. Which 00:22:12.420 --> 00:22:15.079 sounds incredibly heroic, a very noble use of 00:22:15.079 --> 00:22:17.259 his organizational skills. It was a very noble 00:22:17.259 --> 00:22:20.119 effort. But then his personal life throws him 00:22:20.119 --> 00:22:22.940 a massive curveball that fundamentally alters 00:22:22.940 --> 00:22:25.359 his approach to writing. He goes to a doctor 00:22:25.359 --> 00:22:27.019 in the region for a checkup, and this doctor 00:22:27.019 --> 00:22:29.960 examines him and misdiagnoses him with a severe 00:22:29.960 --> 00:22:32.140 terminal heart condition. The exact same type 00:22:32.140 --> 00:22:34.400 of heart condition his father died from. Very 00:22:34.400 --> 00:22:36.539 similar, yes. The doctor looks Simmon in the 00:22:36.539 --> 00:22:39.019 eye and tells him he has a major coronary blockage 00:22:39.019 --> 00:22:41.079 and only has a very short time left to live, 00:22:41.200 --> 00:22:44.099 maybe two years at most. He explicitly tells 00:22:44.099 --> 00:22:46.279 him to stop working immediately, stop having 00:22:46.279 --> 00:22:49.039 sex, sit in a chair, and basically just wait 00:22:49.039 --> 00:22:52.430 to die. Whoa. Talk about a forced naked man moment. 00:22:52.529 --> 00:22:54.750 The great observer of human breaking points is 00:22:54.750 --> 00:22:57.250 suddenly facing his own terrifying expiration 00:22:57.250 --> 00:22:59.950 date. Exactly. And he believed the doctor completely. 00:23:00.349 --> 00:23:03.150 Facing his own imminent mortality, his priorities 00:23:03.150 --> 00:23:05.690 shifted instantly. He stops writing commercial 00:23:05.690 --> 00:23:08.089 fiction and starts writing a deeply personal 00:23:08.089 --> 00:23:11.569 memoir called Je Me Souviens, which translates 00:23:11.569 --> 00:23:14.730 to... I remember. It was initially meant as a 00:23:14.730 --> 00:23:17.789 long private letter to his young son, Mark, so 00:23:17.789 --> 00:23:19.509 the boy would know who his father really was 00:23:19.509 --> 00:23:22.730 after he died. This medical misdiagnosis actually 00:23:22.730 --> 00:23:25.230 sparked a massive period of intense introspection 00:23:25.230 --> 00:23:28.509 that eventually evolved into his sprawling autobiographical 00:23:28.509 --> 00:23:31.630 masterpiece, Pedigree. So if that specific provincial 00:23:31.630 --> 00:23:33.950 doctor hadn't made that colossal medical mistake, 00:23:34.089 --> 00:23:35.390 we probably wouldn't have gotten those deeply 00:23:35.390 --> 00:23:37.930 personal revealing books. It's highly likely 00:23:37.930 --> 00:23:40.970 we wouldn't have. The sheer terror of death. 00:23:41.420 --> 00:23:44.180 unblock something very raw and personal in him 00:23:44.180 --> 00:23:47.579 that ambition alone couldn't reach. But while 00:23:47.579 --> 00:23:49.619 he is quietly writing his memoirs and waiting 00:23:49.619 --> 00:23:51.920 for his heart to give out, the Nazis are fully 00:23:51.920 --> 00:23:54.920 occupying France. And this is where we have to 00:23:54.920 --> 00:23:57.019 address the difficult question of collaboration. 00:23:57.740 --> 00:23:59.640 Right, because this is something that heavily 00:23:59.640 --> 00:24:02.319 shadows his legacy today. What actually happened 00:24:02.319 --> 00:24:04.619 during the occupation? Did he collaborate with 00:24:04.619 --> 00:24:07.400 the Nazis? It's a situation that requires a lot 00:24:07.400 --> 00:24:09.940 of nuance, and our sources try to present it 00:24:09.940 --> 00:24:12.740 as impartially as possible. He was certainly 00:24:12.740 --> 00:24:15.039 not a Nazi ideologue. He didn't write political 00:24:15.039 --> 00:24:17.299 propaganda for them or join fascist rallies, 00:24:17.539 --> 00:24:20.000 but he was a pragmatist to a deeply uncomfortable 00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:23.279 fault. He wanted to keep his career going, and 00:24:23.279 --> 00:24:26.190 he wanted to maintain his lavish lifestyle. So 00:24:26.190 --> 00:24:28.230 he sold the lucrative film rights to five of 00:24:28.230 --> 00:24:30.470 his novels to a production company called Continental 00:24:30.470 --> 00:24:32.609 Films. And for context, Continental Films was 00:24:32.609 --> 00:24:35.250 what exactly? It was a German -funded, German 00:24:35.250 --> 00:24:37.849 -controlled film company operating out of occupied 00:24:37.849 --> 00:24:41.460 Paris. And crucially, by direct order. It strictly 00:24:41.460 --> 00:24:44.339 banned Jewish actors, Jewish directors, and Jewish 00:24:44.339 --> 00:24:46.759 staff from working there. By choosing to do business 00:24:46.759 --> 00:24:48.960 with them, Simonin was willingly taking German 00:24:48.960 --> 00:24:51.579 money and functionally legitimizing a cultural 00:24:51.579 --> 00:24:54.279 system that actively excluded and persecuted 00:24:54.279 --> 00:24:56.619 Jews. That is the really damning part. He didn't 00:24:56.619 --> 00:24:58.680 have to sell those rights. He didn't. And there 00:24:58.680 --> 00:25:01.240 was a very specific ugly scandal involving a 00:25:01.240 --> 00:25:03.400 movie adaptation of his book, Strangers in the 00:25:03.400 --> 00:25:06.859 House. The film was released in 1942 by this 00:25:06.859 --> 00:25:09.430 company. The screenplay was heavily adapted by 00:25:09.430 --> 00:25:11.730 others in a way that injected and exaggerated 00:25:11.730 --> 00:25:14.609 blatant anti -Semitic themes that weren't really 00:25:14.609 --> 00:25:16.869 present in Simonin's original novel. It effectively 00:25:16.869 --> 00:25:19.289 became a piece of harmful propaganda. Did he 00:25:19.289 --> 00:25:21.329 try to stop the release or protest the changes? 00:25:21.690 --> 00:25:24.750 The historical consensus is that he didn't do 00:25:24.750 --> 00:25:27.349 nearly enough. He was largely focused on cashing 00:25:27.349 --> 00:25:29.470 the check and keeping his head down. And yet, 00:25:29.569 --> 00:25:31.390 and this is where the history gets incredibly 00:25:31.390 --> 00:25:34.009 ironic and bizarre, at the exact same time his 00:25:34.009 --> 00:25:36.349 work is being twisted into anti -Semitic propaganda, 00:25:37.319 --> 00:25:40.200 the Vichy government actually suspected Simenon 00:25:40.200 --> 00:25:43.299 himself of being Jewish. Wait, really? Because 00:25:43.299 --> 00:25:46.619 the name Simenon sounds vaguely like Simon. Exactly 00:25:46.619 --> 00:25:49.970 that. Just phonetic suspicion. So in 1942, the 00:25:49.970 --> 00:25:52.369 Commissariat for Jewish Affairs officially demanded 00:25:52.369 --> 00:25:54.950 he prove he wasn't Jewish. So while taking money 00:25:54.950 --> 00:25:57.029 from a German company, he had to frantically 00:25:57.029 --> 00:25:59.369 scramble to get birth certificates and baptismal 00:25:59.369 --> 00:26:01.569 records from his family back in Liege to prove 00:26:01.569 --> 00:26:04.210 his quote -unquote Aryan lineage just to avoid 00:26:04.210 --> 00:26:07.089 persecution or deportation himself. So he's taking 00:26:07.089 --> 00:26:09.329 their money with one hand and desperately showing 00:26:09.329 --> 00:26:11.670 them his Catholic baptismal papers with the other 00:26:11.670 --> 00:26:14.910 to avoid being arrested. It's an incredibly tight, 00:26:15.069 --> 00:26:17.710 morally bankrupt rope he was walking to survive. 00:26:18.319 --> 00:26:21.279 It was, and there were consequences. After the 00:26:21.279 --> 00:26:23.859 war ended and France was liberated, he was immediately 00:26:23.859 --> 00:26:26.000 placed under house arrest by the new authorities 00:26:26.000 --> 00:26:29.140 on suspicion of collaboration. He was intensely 00:26:29.140 --> 00:26:31.940 investigated for three months. In the end, he 00:26:31.940 --> 00:26:33.720 was officially cleared of all criminal charges. 00:26:34.000 --> 00:26:36.380 He hadn't denounced anyone to the Gestapo. He 00:26:36.380 --> 00:26:38.279 hadn't written explicit political propaganda. 00:26:38.799 --> 00:26:41.579 But the moral stain of conducting business as 00:26:41.579 --> 00:26:44.380 usual with the occupiers definitely lingered 00:26:44.380 --> 00:26:46.950 over him in France. And it seems like probably 00:26:46.950 --> 00:26:49.369 because of that oppressive atmosphere and perhaps 00:26:49.369 --> 00:26:51.930 a growing fear of the communists gaining power 00:26:51.930 --> 00:26:55.190 in post -war France, he decides to just leave 00:26:55.190 --> 00:26:58.549 Europe altogether. Yes. In 1945, he packs up 00:26:58.549 --> 00:27:01.170 and moves to the New World. He goes first to 00:27:01.170 --> 00:27:03.250 Canada and then settles in the United States. 00:27:03.529 --> 00:27:05.710 And this kicks off what we can call his American 00:27:05.710 --> 00:27:08.210 exile phase. And if you thought his life was 00:27:08.210 --> 00:27:10.690 chaotic before the war, wait until you hear about 00:27:10.690 --> 00:27:12.609 the domestic arrangements he sets up in America. 00:27:12.750 --> 00:27:14.369 Yeah, this is the three -way household section 00:27:14.369 --> 00:27:17.150 I saw on the outline. I have to say, this part 00:27:17.150 --> 00:27:19.869 reads entirely like a daytime soap opera. It 00:27:19.869 --> 00:27:22.670 is endlessly fascinating and also quite disturbing 00:27:22.670 --> 00:27:25.710 when you look at the power dynamics. So, do you 00:27:25.710 --> 00:27:27.880 remember Boulay? The young housekeeper they took 00:27:27.880 --> 00:27:30.440 on the boat trip back in the 1920s. Right, the 00:27:30.440 --> 00:27:32.599 one who lived with him and his wife, Tigey. Well, 00:27:32.640 --> 00:27:35.039 she had just been cleaning the house. She had 00:27:35.039 --> 00:27:38.380 been Simenon's secret lover for years. His wife, 00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:41.200 Tigey, eventually found out about it and surprisingly 00:27:41.200 --> 00:27:44.549 chose to tolerate it, provided that she... Taigi, 00:27:44.730 --> 00:27:47.529 remained the respected madame of the house in 00:27:47.529 --> 00:27:50.049 public. It was a very strange, silent, pragmatic 00:27:50.049 --> 00:27:52.450 contract between the three of them. But then 00:27:52.450 --> 00:27:54.809 when they arrive in Canada, Simonon meets a young 00:27:54.809 --> 00:27:57.190 French -Canadian woman named Denise Hume. Enter 00:27:57.190 --> 00:27:59.309 the third wheel, or I guess in this house, the 00:27:59.309 --> 00:28:02.329 fourth wheel. Exactly. Denise was much younger, 00:28:02.410 --> 00:28:05.069 she was fiery, and she was very sexually liberated. 00:28:05.930 --> 00:28:08.390 Simonon fell incredibly hard for her. He later 00:28:08.390 --> 00:28:10.569 called their meeting a thunderbolt. She quickly 00:28:10.569 --> 00:28:12.710 became his personal secretary and inevitably 00:28:12.710 --> 00:28:15.400 his new lover. And eventually, through sheer 00:28:15.400 --> 00:28:17.480 force of his will, they all end up living under 00:28:17.480 --> 00:28:19.940 the same roof. Simona, his legal wife, Taigi, 00:28:20.079 --> 00:28:22.579 his longtime lover and housekeeper, Bull, and 00:28:22.579 --> 00:28:25.319 his brand new lover, Denise. That sounds like 00:28:25.319 --> 00:28:28.839 an absolute recipe for disaster. How on earth 00:28:28.839 --> 00:28:30.640 did that household function on a day -to -day 00:28:30.640 --> 00:28:33.259 basis? It functioned with incredible suffocating 00:28:33.259 --> 00:28:36.180 tension. It really highlights Simonin's overwhelming 00:28:36.180 --> 00:28:38.660 need for total control over his environment. 00:28:38.980 --> 00:28:41.420 He basically wanted to have everything at once. 00:28:41.519 --> 00:28:43.740 He wanted the social stability and shared history 00:28:43.740 --> 00:28:46.039 of his wife. He wanted the domestic comfort and 00:28:46.039 --> 00:28:48.039 loyalty of the housekeeper. And he wanted the 00:28:48.039 --> 00:28:50.559 raw passion of the new mistress. Eventually, 00:28:50.559 --> 00:28:53.519 the pressure cooked over. Tygee agreed to a formal 00:28:53.519 --> 00:28:55.400 divorce, but she actually stayed living nearby 00:28:55.400 --> 00:28:57.299 in a separate house for the sake of their son, 00:28:57.420 --> 00:29:00.819 Mark. Simenon then married Denise in 1950. And 00:29:00.819 --> 00:29:03.140 despite all this swirling domestic drama, he 00:29:03.140 --> 00:29:05.460 somehow lands in Lakeville, Connecticut, and 00:29:05.460 --> 00:29:08.160 sets up what sounds like a literal fiction factory 00:29:08.160 --> 00:29:11.019 in his house. Yes, Lakeville is really the absolute 00:29:11.019 --> 00:29:13.400 peak of his terrifying efficiency. He was living 00:29:13.400 --> 00:29:15.859 in this quiet, idyllic town in Connecticut, and 00:29:15.859 --> 00:29:18.329 his writing routine was strictly military. He 00:29:18.329 --> 00:29:19.990 would wake up every morning at 6 a .m. sharp. 00:29:20.150 --> 00:29:22.809 He would write continuously until 9 -0 a .m. 00:29:22.829 --> 00:29:25.569 And in those three hours, he would reliably produce... 00:29:25.930 --> 00:29:27.890 Four to five thousand publishable words. That 00:29:27.890 --> 00:29:30.809 is a full novel every ten days. Done before most 00:29:30.809 --> 00:29:32.990 people have finished their morning coffee. Exactly. 00:29:33.410 --> 00:29:35.769 But I really want to stress the physical toll 00:29:35.769 --> 00:29:38.710 this took on him. He didn't just sit and casually 00:29:38.710 --> 00:29:41.569 type. He treated the act of writing like a violent 00:29:41.569 --> 00:29:44.329 physical exorcism. He would enter what he described 00:29:44.329 --> 00:29:46.990 as a state of trance. He said he would literally 00:29:46.990 --> 00:29:49.410 become the character he was writing about. He 00:29:49.410 --> 00:29:52.089 would sweat profusely at the typewriter. His 00:29:52.089 --> 00:29:54.829 blood pressure would dangerously spike. He would 00:29:54.829 --> 00:29:56.930 actually lose significant physical weight during 00:29:56.930 --> 00:29:58.890 the 10 days of writing a novel. He was literally 00:29:58.890 --> 00:30:01.569 sweating the story out of his system. He was. 00:30:01.609 --> 00:30:04.789 It was a completely visceral, exhausting process. 00:30:05.130 --> 00:30:07.250 And ironically, he wrote some of his absolute 00:30:07.250 --> 00:30:10.269 darkest material here in America. The Snow Was 00:30:10.269 --> 00:30:13.069 Dirty, for example. It's an incredibly bleak, 00:30:13.069 --> 00:30:15.710 punishing story about a young man in an unnamed, 00:30:15.789 --> 00:30:18.589 occupied European city who commits horrific crimes 00:30:18.589 --> 00:30:21.789 just to feel something, anything at all. He wrote 00:30:21.789 --> 00:30:23.890 that dark masterpiece while looking out his window 00:30:23.890 --> 00:30:25.910 at the peaceful, sunny Connecticut countryside. 00:30:26.210 --> 00:30:28.789 So he was actively channeling the leftover trauma 00:30:28.789 --> 00:30:31.190 and darkness of occupied Europe into his work, 00:30:31.230 --> 00:30:32.970 right from the safety of the American suburbs. 00:30:33.390 --> 00:30:35.609 Exactly. And professionally, he was incredibly 00:30:35.609 --> 00:30:38.309 successful there. He was highly respected. He 00:30:38.309 --> 00:30:40.130 was even elected president of the prestigious 00:30:40.130 --> 00:30:43.329 Mystery Writers of America. He was wealthy beyond 00:30:43.329 --> 00:30:46.420 belief. But on a personal level, he was growing 00:30:46.420 --> 00:30:49.299 deeply disillusioned. He never quite felt at 00:30:49.299 --> 00:30:51.680 home in the U .S. He felt the culture was too 00:30:51.680 --> 00:30:54.519 sanitized and didn't suit his temperament. And 00:30:54.519 --> 00:30:56.740 more importantly, his relationship with Denise 00:30:56.740 --> 00:30:59.539 was becoming highly volatile. She was struggling 00:30:59.539 --> 00:31:01.539 terribly with severe mental health issues and 00:31:01.539 --> 00:31:05.339 growing alcoholism. So in 1955, after a decade 00:31:05.339 --> 00:31:08.240 in North America, he abruptly packs up the entire 00:31:08.240 --> 00:31:10.640 circus and heads back to Europe. And this return 00:31:10.640 --> 00:31:13.200 to Europe leads us into the final major act of 00:31:13.200 --> 00:31:16.619 his life, the Swiss fortress era. Yes. He eventually 00:31:16.619 --> 00:31:18.839 settled in Switzerland, where he built a massive 00:31:18.839 --> 00:31:22.140 custom -designed home in a town called Ipalinges. 00:31:22.599 --> 00:31:25.059 It was huge, incredibly impersonal, and strictly 00:31:25.059 --> 00:31:27.160 organized visitors said it felt almost like a 00:31:27.160 --> 00:31:29.519 sterile hospital or a concrete bunker. It had 00:31:29.519 --> 00:31:32.079 something like 20 rooms. And inside that bunker, 00:31:32.180 --> 00:31:34.400 the domestic drama just continued to spiral out 00:31:34.400 --> 00:31:36.119 of control. What ultimately happened with Denise? 00:31:36.400 --> 00:31:38.539 Their marriage completely fell apart. They were 00:31:38.539 --> 00:31:40.900 both drinking heavily by this point. Simonin, 00:31:40.980 --> 00:31:43.440 in his later memoirs, admitted to being physically 00:31:43.440 --> 00:31:46.299 abusive to her during their fights. Denise's 00:31:46.299 --> 00:31:48.740 mental health severely deteriorated, and she 00:31:48.740 --> 00:31:51.079 spent extensive time in various psychiatric clinics. 00:31:51.630 --> 00:31:53.710 Eventually, the situation was untenable and they 00:31:53.710 --> 00:31:56.230 permanently separated. And what about Bull, the 00:31:56.230 --> 00:31:58.390 faithful housekeeper who had literally been with 00:31:58.390 --> 00:32:01.390 him since the 1920s on the boat? That is a deeply 00:32:01.390 --> 00:32:03.970 sad ending that really highlights a profound 00:32:03.970 --> 00:32:07.230 ruthlessness in Simenon's character. In 1964, 00:32:07.509 --> 00:32:10.349 after nearly 40 years of dedicated service, companionship, 00:32:10.349 --> 00:32:12.710 and intimacy, Simenon simply fired her. Wow, 00:32:12.970 --> 00:32:15.410 that is ice cold. 40 years and he just fires 00:32:15.410 --> 00:32:19.650 her. It was incredibly cold. But there was, predictably, 00:32:19.690 --> 00:32:23.049 a new woman in the picture. therese's beryllin 00:32:23.049 --> 00:32:25.829 she had originally been hired as a maid in the 00:32:25.829 --> 00:32:28.450 swiss house and she gradually became his final 00:32:28.450 --> 00:32:30.890 romantic companion she stayed with him and cared 00:32:30.890 --> 00:32:33.650 for him until the very end of his life but casting 00:32:33.650 --> 00:32:36.839 bullae aside so casually after four decades Our 00:32:36.839 --> 00:32:38.799 sources point out that it shows how, for Simenon, 00:32:38.900 --> 00:32:41.880 people in his life ultimately played roles. And 00:32:41.880 --> 00:32:44.039 when he decided your role was done, you were 00:32:44.039 --> 00:32:46.539 just written out of the script. In 1973, he makes 00:32:46.539 --> 00:32:48.980 another massive public announcement. He decides 00:32:48.980 --> 00:32:51.019 to officially stop writing fiction altogether. 00:32:51.460 --> 00:32:54.839 Yes. He realized that as he aged, he simply didn't 00:32:54.839 --> 00:32:56.880 have the physical stamina for that trance state 00:32:56.880 --> 00:32:59.339 anymore. It was becoming too physically dangerous 00:32:59.339 --> 00:33:02.119 for his heart to become someone else so intensely 00:33:02.119 --> 00:33:04.950 for ten days straight. So he put the typewriter 00:33:04.950 --> 00:33:07.009 away and switched to dictating. He would sit 00:33:07.009 --> 00:33:08.710 in his chair with a tape recorder and just talk 00:33:08.710 --> 00:33:11.730 about his life. He actually produced 21 volumes 00:33:11.730 --> 00:33:14.630 of sprawling memoirs this way. But the real tragedy 00:33:14.630 --> 00:33:16.690 of his later years, the event that truly broke 00:33:16.690 --> 00:33:18.690 him, wasn't the loss of his ability to write 00:33:18.690 --> 00:33:20.849 fiction. It was his daughter, wasn't it? Marie 00:33:20.849 --> 00:33:23.910 Jo. She was his daughter from his marriage with 00:33:23.910 --> 00:33:26.539 Denise. She was a deeply troubled, sensitive 00:33:26.539 --> 00:33:29.640 soul who absolutely idolized her father. She 00:33:29.640 --> 00:33:31.900 was obsessed with him, arguably to an intensely 00:33:31.900 --> 00:33:34.240 unhealthy degree. She had struggled terribly 00:33:34.240 --> 00:33:37.099 with severe mental illness, depression, and anxiety 00:33:37.099 --> 00:33:39.579 for many years. What exactly happened to her? 00:33:39.740 --> 00:33:42.900 In 1978, at the age of just 25, she committed 00:33:42.900 --> 00:33:45.900 suicide in her apartment in Paris. She shot herself 00:33:45.900 --> 00:33:49.279 with a .22 caliber pistol. That is just devastating. 00:33:49.680 --> 00:33:52.019 It completely destroyed him. The man who seemed 00:33:52.019 --> 00:33:53.920 impervious to everything was finally broken. 00:33:54.430 --> 00:33:56.990 He later wrote, One never recovers from the loss 00:33:56.990 --> 00:33:59.089 of a daughter. It leaves a void that nothing 00:33:59.089 --> 00:34:02.509 can fill. His final massive memoir, which he 00:34:02.509 --> 00:34:04.569 called Intimate Memoirs, was basically written 00:34:04.569 --> 00:34:07.430 as a long, desperate letter to her. He was trying 00:34:07.430 --> 00:34:09.650 to explain his complicated life to her ghost, 00:34:09.889 --> 00:34:12.349 trying to understand why he, the great novelist 00:34:12.349 --> 00:34:14.989 who supposedly understood every dark corner of 00:34:14.989 --> 00:34:17.010 human psychology, couldn't figure out how to 00:34:17.010 --> 00:34:19.679 save his own child. That is the cruelest irony 00:34:19.679 --> 00:34:22.340 of his entire life, isn't it? He could see the 00:34:22.340 --> 00:34:24.880 naked man perfectly in his fictional characters. 00:34:25.039 --> 00:34:27.380 He could manipulate their psychology effortlessly 00:34:27.380 --> 00:34:30.699 on the page. But real life, real mental illness 00:34:30.699 --> 00:34:33.679 in his own home was far harder to control than 00:34:33.679 --> 00:34:35.980 a plot outline. It was the one tragedy he couldn't 00:34:35.980 --> 00:34:38.119 write his way out of. It was a problem that no 00:34:38.119 --> 00:34:40.219 amount of typing could solve. Simonin eventually 00:34:40.219 --> 00:34:43.300 passed away in 1989 in Lausanne after suffering 00:34:43.300 --> 00:34:47.090 a fall. When we look back at this massive, sprawling 00:34:47.090 --> 00:34:50.289 life, the 400 books, the complicated relationships 00:34:50.289 --> 00:34:53.030 with women, the constant travel, the wartime 00:34:53.030 --> 00:34:56.550 scandals, the unbelievable wealth, what is the 00:34:56.550 --> 00:34:58.710 ultimate takeaway? Why does his work still matter 00:34:58.710 --> 00:35:01.389 to us today? I think his profound contribution 00:35:01.389 --> 00:35:03.730 to literature is often underestimated simply 00:35:03.730 --> 00:35:06.570 because of the sheer volume. People tend to assume 00:35:06.570 --> 00:35:09.570 quantity over quality. But Simonin fundamentally 00:35:09.570 --> 00:35:12.409 changed the crime genre forever. Before him, 00:35:12.510 --> 00:35:14.250 detective stories were mostly clever puzzles. 00:35:14.530 --> 00:35:16.769 The questions were always, who did it and how 00:35:16.769 --> 00:35:18.550 did they do it? Right. It was the clue board 00:35:18.550 --> 00:35:20.949 game approach to murder. Professor Plum in the 00:35:20.949 --> 00:35:23.110 library with the candlestick. Exactly. It was 00:35:23.110 --> 00:35:26.030 an intellectual game. Simon shifted the entire 00:35:26.030 --> 00:35:28.809 focus of the genre to why did they do it? He 00:35:28.809 --> 00:35:31.070 taught readers that crime isn't always about 00:35:31.070 --> 00:35:34.050 evil, calculating masterminds. Sometimes it's 00:35:34.050 --> 00:35:36.570 just a regular flawed guy pushed a little too 00:35:36.570 --> 00:35:39.789 far by debt or jealousy who suddenly snaps. He 00:35:39.789 --> 00:35:41.929 essentially democratized the tragedy of crime. 00:35:42.230 --> 00:35:44.449 And that lifelong obsession with the naked man, 00:35:44.670 --> 00:35:48.130 the terrifying idea that under the right social 00:35:48.130 --> 00:35:50.630 pressure, absolutely anyone could crack. That 00:35:50.630 --> 00:35:53.849 feels incredibly modern and relevant even today. 00:35:54.360 --> 00:35:57.099 It really does. He stripped away all the polite 00:35:57.099 --> 00:35:59.719 romance of the 19th century novel and gave us 00:35:59.719 --> 00:36:02.300 the raw, unfiltered anxiety of the 20th century. 00:36:02.840 --> 00:36:05.900 William Faulkner avidly read him. Albert Comus 00:36:05.900 --> 00:36:07.699 was deeply influenced by him when writing The 00:36:07.699 --> 00:36:09.719 Stranger. He wasn't just a fast pulp writer. 00:36:09.800 --> 00:36:11.920 He was a dark existentialist who happened to 00:36:11.920 --> 00:36:14.300 own a very fast printing press. It's just an 00:36:14.300 --> 00:36:16.559 incredible story to write that much, to live 00:36:16.559 --> 00:36:18.639 that intensely, to hurt that many people and 00:36:18.639 --> 00:36:21.869 to observe humanity that closely. Honestly it's 00:36:21.869 --> 00:36:24.030 exhausting just talking about it. It really is. 00:36:24.090 --> 00:36:26.349 It's a life that genuinely feels too large for 00:36:26.349 --> 00:36:28.849 fiction. Before we wrap up today I want to leave 00:36:28.849 --> 00:36:31.570 you the listener with a final thought to mull 00:36:31.570 --> 00:36:34.409 over. We talked extensively about that medical 00:36:34.409 --> 00:36:37.769 misdiagnosis back in 1940. The provincial doctor 00:36:37.769 --> 00:36:40.550 who wrongly told him she was dying of heart failure. 00:36:40.789 --> 00:36:43.150 The great catalyst of his mid -career. Exactly. 00:36:43.329 --> 00:36:45.730 If he hadn't been told he was dying, if that 00:36:45.730 --> 00:36:48.230 doctor had just said he was fine, would Simonin 00:36:48.230 --> 00:36:50.670 have ever looked inward deeply enough to write 00:36:50.670 --> 00:36:53.210 his memoirs? Would he have ever written Pedigree? 00:36:54.480 --> 00:36:57.440 Sometimes the stark, terrifying fear of the end 00:36:57.440 --> 00:36:59.800 is the only thing that strips away our own masks 00:36:59.800 --> 00:37:02.980 and makes us truly honest with ourselves. Maybe 00:37:02.980 --> 00:37:05.019 that's the ultimate lesson we can take from Georgia 00:37:05.019 --> 00:37:07.800 Simenon. You have to write or live like you're 00:37:07.800 --> 00:37:09.780 rapidly running out of time. Because whether 00:37:09.780 --> 00:37:11.920 a doctor tells you or not, eventually you are. 00:37:12.019 --> 00:37:14.699 On that appropriately dark and existential note, 00:37:14.780 --> 00:37:16.900 thank you for joining us on this deep dive into 00:37:16.900 --> 00:37:19.739 the fascinating, chaotic mind of Georgia Simenon. 00:37:19.820 --> 00:37:22.329 It has been... quite a ride it has thank you 00:37:22.329 --> 00:37:24.150 for having me we will catch you next time on 00:37:24.150 --> 00:37:24.650 the deep dive