I'm going to sneak in under the wire on Simenon month. I read
a non-Maigret novel from 1950 called "The Snow was Black,"
translated by Louise Varese. I think this title was on the E.
Borgers list of recommended Simenon, but I can't remember for
sure. This is a bleak, bleak novel set in occupied France.
Our amoral hero Frank has something of Meursault about him,
and like "The Stranger," the book contains a period of
self-contemplation while in prison. At one point, Frank
vaguely explains himself by saying, "I am not a fanatic, nor
an agitator, nor a patriot. I am a rotter." He also has
something of the motiveless malignity of Iago about him. He
commits a series of crimes (beginning with a first murder,
which he likens to losing his virginity), each more and more
horrible. We not only see a slice of fear and hunger in
wartime France
(unnamed city), but also the workings of a small time brothel
run by Frank's mother. The book is heavily ruminative at
times -- a characteristic that might put some readers off.
The action slows once Frank is arrested, but we get some
great passages. One doesn't see writing like the following in
much (any?) contemporary crime fiction:
"He was lying flat on his stomach, and it hurt. A whole lot
of little bones and muscles hurt him, not all at once, not
all together, but according to a regular order that he was
beginning to recognize, and that he had learned to
orchestrate like a symphony. There were grave, dark pains,
and acute pains, so sharp that they made you see everything a
pale yellow. There were certain ones that only lasted a few
seconds, but that were voluptuous because of their intensity
so that you regretted their disappearance, while others
formed a background, mingling and harmonizing so completely
that in the end you would be incapable of putting your finger
on the sensitive spot."
Doug
How about a month of Highsmith?
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