2003 is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Georges Simenon
(born on 13th February 1903- his parents inscribed him in the
population register as born on the 12th February because the
13th was a Friday!). In Belgium (his country of origin) there
is presently a "Simenon year" to celebrate this anniversary
and many related events during the year. In France there is a
re-publishing in French of the totality of his fiction works,
and Simenon will " join" this year 'La Pleiade' ( 2 volumes
to start) the prestigious collection devoted to the best of
literature
(French and others- imprint published by Gallimard, as a
compact but luxury edition). On several TV channels many
films based on his works are programmed in February and
later, as well as a lot of (old and recent) filmed
documentaries and interviews. So those of you able to watch
French TV5 via satellite should keep an eye on these programs
for interesting material about this outstanding author.
I think the event is worth to be mentioned on this list: We
probably all know (as previously discussed here) that Maigret
is surely not HB not even noir, but that the best of the more
literary works (approx 120 novels) of Simenon really belongs
to noir. He lived 10 years in the USA (1945-1955) and was
even a Grand Master of the MWA (but ironically, his best
works are not in the pure mystery field, nor in the Maigret
series).
E.Borgers HARD-BOILED MYSTERIES http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6389
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 10 Feb 2003 EST