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Paris...The Maigret Forum This is not a static website. It changes almost daily. The Maigret "Forum," an open bulletin board for notices, opinions, information and discussion related to Maigret and Simenon, has become the most active feature of this site. It's where new books, websites, articles and features are first announced and displayed, and includes an indexed archive of the entire past Forum... back to 1997!
Click here for the current Forum.
Here's a recent sample -
Maigret of the Month: Maigret aux Assises (Maigret in Court)
8/19/08 –
1. Simenon, Maigret and the Law
Ten years after a session in court in America (Maigret at the Coroner's), Maigret again finds himself confronted with the legal world – this time called as a witness and not just as a simple spectator. But while in CHE, the Chief Inspector's investigation resembles more a dilettante's game, where the author amuses himself by plunging his character in the New World, the relationship in ASS, of Maigret and the legal system, will tend much more towards questioning. Questioning in the sense of an interrogation of the reality borne by this Justice of men, as it is ritualized in court. Simenon has written it many times: he questions this Justice, because he does not believe one can judge someone. In the end, for him, there is no "guilty" in the sense understood by the court, because on the one hand Man is never completely responsible for what happens to him, and on the other, because there is no "universal criterion" according to which one can judge someone's guilt. Consider this extract from [The Little Men] (in [My Dictations]):
"We must replace [the word "man"] by the individual word, at least if we can find another, since for each one the cells are different and function differently.
If that's the case... what can we say, for example, about the Civil Code or the Penal Code, laws which are the same for everyone?
I am not the first to be astonished, if not infuriated, by the exchanges we hear in court, the questions asked, the definitive decisions made with a "clear conscience".
With a clear conscience and clear ignorance.
They judge two beings completely different from each other, with the same measures, the same prejudices, the same laws.
What will happen when the savants who are today studying the human brain, discover that certain hehavior, certain tendencies, certain actions, are predetermined?
This is not my affair. I don't know anything about it. I am content to think that the most important science is not nuclear physics, that's it's not how to learn to sell some object or another under the most profitable conditions possible, but to finally understand why one man is not another; why his behavior is truly his own and not that determined by more or less rigid rules."
Depersonalized, the accused finding himself before the court participates – and Maigret along with him – in a ritual as unchangeable as that of the Mass (see the comparisons scattered throughout the novel), as rigid, implacable, as inhumane. And it's certainly this that troubles the Chief Inspector... he tries, alongside his strictly "police work" investigation, to understand the accused, to seek, behind the motives which led to his act, the "man" at his deepest level. The officers of the court act as instruments of the law, Maigret, for himself, is engaged in hand-to-hand combat in search of human truth...
Things go even further... Not only doesn't Maigret trust this Justice, but he substitutes for it, we may say, "mender of destinies". Recognizing during the course of his investigation that the Gaston – Ginette couple were not made to live together, he "allows" (or even provokes?) Meurant's fate by not intervening in his act of vengeance on Millard. Consider, at the end of the novel, "Hadn't he taken, at a certain moment, while the telephone was ringing ceaselessly in his office, from which he held, in a way, the strings of all his characters, a responsibility difficult to explain?" He had gone very far... he was not content to "repair" a destiny, he had, in a way, "provoked" a change in that destiny by revealing to Meurant the truth about himself...
complete article
original FrenchMurielle Wenger
A phenomenal author and his phenomenal character
Georges Simenon was by many standards the most successful author of the 20th century, and the character he created, Inspector Jules Maigret, who made him rich and famous, ranks only after Sherlock Holmes as the world's best known fictional detective. There is nothing commonplace about the life of Georges Simenon, and he and his works have been the subject of innumerable books and articles. The Maigret stories are unlike any other detective stories — the crime and the details of unraveling it are often less central to our interest than Maigret's journey through the discovery of the cast of characters... towards an understanding of man. Simenon said he was obsessed with a search for the "naked man" — man without his cultural protective coloration, and he followed his quest as much in the Maigrets as in his "hard" novels.
Steve TrusselThis site, first opened on August 29, 1996 as "Inspector Maigret," has spread in various directions from its beginning as primarily a bibliography of editions in English. The "new look" reflects various aspects of this development, but the bibliography remains a central feature.
Counting Maigret: statistics etc.For the forty-year period from 1931 through 1972, a new Inspector Maigret investigation appeared at the average rate about 2.5 per year: 75 novels and 28 short stories, 103 episodes of what has been called George Simenon's "Maigret Saga."
Full-length texts - reviews and articles about Maigret and Simenon, as well as new translations of stories, articles, (and even a novel!) which have never appeared in English.
Index to the texts and articles on various pages.
Articles from the Simenon symposiums, journals, program listings, and other not-Maigret-only Simenon material.
Gallery: Maigret covers and photos
Maigret paperback covers, postage stamps, theme music, locations... more.
Plots of all the Maigret novels and stories.
Shopping for Maigret: books on-line
The one-button, quick-links to the main on-line book dealers are still available, for shopping for Maigret titles.
Maigret on Screen: films and videos
Various aspects of Maigret on film and video.
Links to the rest of the on-line world of Maigret on the Internet.
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