Why wait so long to tackle the work of a talented novelist? Only now, more than fifty years, I discovered the inspector Maigret. Perhaps the silhouette of Jean Richard, who has haunted television of my youth, kindly dissuaded read on paper adventures that I was too soft on the screen? The actor had so much slipped into the skin of the character that young viewers blended fiction and reality. To prove it I will tell you a true story that will probably make you smile. We are in 1989. A friend of mine, quite far from the literary thing it must be stressed, listen to the radio when suddenly a flash info announces the death of Maigret's father. He turns to me, puzzled, and said: "The father of Jean Richard died.". Let the laughter of ensuing crisis and the explanations he had to give my boyfriend to make him understand that the father of Maigret Georges Simenon was called and he was a writer. A misconception reinforced by the incredible resemblance between the author and his character, the other still dressed as lun dun raincoat and smoking a pipe in the shelter of a soft hat. The head of a man is a short novel, well put together, I am tempted to say well flared so we feel an author can express much in few words, with an art of synthesis consumed. The sentences are short, no frills, a sometimes almost abstract nakedness. The descriptions are accurate, they do have a few choice words. The dialogues are short, terribly realistic, written with a concern for authenticity and the obvious rejection of too literary twist. One feels Simenon's main concern is to stick to the reality in the description of characters and places. The plot is secondary, it exists only to give relief to individuals whose unimportant routine of mundane and sad life suddenly derailed in the crime. The head of a black man is a novel that begins in the neighborhood of death row and ends at the foot of léchafaud, this is not a novel thesis even if the risk derreur judiciary and the horror of the guillotine are denounced bluntly. Simenon, hidden behind his hero, does not flaunt his ideas but leaves reflected with finesse. Along the way he bluntly invented the anti-hero to be reinvented thirty years later by the new wave and the US dauteur cinema. Maigret is intuitive that does not play fists or pistol, it's grumpy sometimes unfriendly but he is determined to conclude his investigation, his strong sense of justice led him to act more Quà discuss. Maigret is an everyman who works 36 quai Goldsmiths, described his daily work without romanticism but with almost documentary accuracy. This is also a man of the people who has more confidence to small quaux rich people reached through his cop look we guess that Simenon denounces the bourgeoisie and its codes. The head of a man is a work whose apparent simplicity hides hardly the incredible storytelling talent of a great writer of the 20th century.
