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L'Homme Qui Regardait Passer Les Trains
This 1938 novel is an easy story to recommend but elusive to review. It's about a man who suddenly loses the whole foundation, mental and material, of an unfulfilling bourgeois life - and responds with a bourgeois rampage (individually, of course, being bourgeois). The central character may in some sense be insane even before his loss; or he may succumb to insanity in the course of his uprooting; or indeed he may be transcending an insane world for a higher clarity and existential truth (which is probably his own opinion and would make his psychiatric confinement an irony). The railroad trains of the title hold the key, no doubt, to his apparent derailment: but does he watch them wistfully, or obsessively? Do they signify orderly rational activity? - ideal liberty? - grinding, inexorable force?
Kees Popinga, as he's called, generally seems polite and intelligent, sensitive though systematic, Dutch but fluent in French, a chess player. He has reasons for what he does and his grievances are real. He keeps a journal and pays his way with almost eerie decency. And for as long as he has money, Inspector Lucas and the Paris police can't catch him - though they believe he is not just a murderer but a serial killer. He isn't exactly that, judging by the narrative which is given strictly from his viewpoint. A reader hardly knows which side to root for.
At two of the three most critical points in his story, Popinga is deceived by plausible rogues. One of these is a capitalist, the other a con man. So it seems not impossible that Kees Popinga stands for the whole European middle class of the Great Depression era, from the Wall Street crash (capitalist) through the rise of Hitler (con man) to World War II (madness). In that light, the poignant quality of this novel would extend beyond our natural sympathy for a displaced and angry human being. The three main women of the story are carefully chosen types and would fit this analysis - most obviously in the case of the abandoned mistress Kees crudely and fatally misreads as up for grabs. Granted, Simenon is not known for allegory - but however you take it, this is a fascinating, powerful study of the ambiguities of character and experience.
Simenon, Georges - Personal Name
843 Sim l
9782070408368
843
Text
French
Gallimard Education
1999
279p
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