Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38245 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Synopsis
Of Simenon's many novels, certain titles stand out as classics. This terrifying reconstruction of a madman's mind is one of them. Known in the little Dutch town of Groningen as a respectable family man, Kees Popinga is the managing clerk of a reputed shipping firm. But when the company collapses under dubious circumstances just before Christmas, taking all his money with it, something snaps in Popinga's mind. From the shell of this model citizen emerges a calculating paranoiac, capable of random acts of violence - even murder. The fugitive Popinga makes his way to Paris, playing a bizarre game of cat and mouse with the police - determined to force a hostile world to recognize his newfound criminal genius. In "The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By", Simenon created a compelling portrait of a man pushed too far, vividly reconstructing the effect on a mind in the spiralling grip of madness.

Customer Reviews

A masterpiece
I agree fully with the previous two reviewers. This in my view is a masterpiece. Engrossing , terrifying, intriguing, the descent into crime and madness of an apparently solid middle-class citizen is so plausibly chronicled that I think the events have implications for everyone.

The style is economical and matter-of-fact, and not a word is wasted. The events are laid out in front of the reader who makes what he or he can of them, and every interpretation is likely to be a disturbing one. A great thriller, a great horror story and a great examination of the contemporary world.

Thge Maigret stories are very good, in my opinion, but the "hard novels" of Simenon are in a higher category altogether - if you like this one I suggest you try The Blue Room, The Widower, The Stain on the Snow and The Little Man from Archangel. But there are many others, all of an amazingly high standard.

Compelling & Masterfully Written
Not a Maigret title and reads more like literature than a detective novel, this is the engrossing story of a man who loses his comfortable middle class life overnight and decides to take things into his own hands, travelling to Paris, committing crimes, eluding the police and challenging the press. You get drawn into his psyche and are fascinated. Highly recommended.

Nihilism is not only despair and negation
but above all the desire to despair and to negate. Camus.

Despair and negation predominate in Georges Simenon's "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By", a book that I considered to be darker than noir.

Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair (he was prolific in this area of his life as well) with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). As with many of his contemporaries such as Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books were marketed and sold as popular, pulp fiction. Also like Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books have stood up well over time. The New York Review of Books publishing division has reissued much of Simenon's books. They are well worth reading and "The Man Who Watch Trains Go By" is an excellent place to start.

The story's protagonist and narrator is Kees Poppinga. As the book opens Kees is seen and sees himself as a stolidly middle-class Dutch citizen living a life of relative comfort in the coastal town of Groningen. He is secure in his job as the manager of a ship's supply company. His sense of security is reflected in an attitude best described as smug and more than a bit conceited. On the surface, Kees' life seems well insulated from the harsher side of life. But Simenon shows us quickly that this appearance of security was really a thin veneer that could be washed away at a moment's notice. One night, Kees discovers that his company's owner has driven the company into bankruptcy. Kees will soon be out of the job and will likely lose everything he holds dear.

The rest of the book focuses on Kees' decent from smug satisfaction to nihilism and despair. Stripped of his middle-class sense of security Kees finds that he is also stripped of all those societal restraints that most civilized members of society have. Kees embarks on a journey of death, deceit, and madness. The only character trait that remains is one of conceit and superiority as he travel to Paris and falls in with the Parisian underworld.

The reader experience this journey through the narration of Kees and Simenon does an excellent job of allowing the reader to look out at the world through the eyes of a madman. It is something of an uncomfortable feeling but it made for compelling reason. I have already compared Simenon to Chandler and Hammett because they wrote in a similar genre and were contemporaries. As far as contemporary writers are concerned, the French-writer Michel Houellebecq (Elementary Particles) seems remarkably similar in both tone and style.

I have now read two of Simenon's romans durs and three of his Inspector Maigret mysteries. They have all been worth reading and if you are interested in either the detective genre or the type of dark psychological novel described here, Simenon is well worth discovering. L. Fleisig