Book of the Week: The Man Who Watched Trains Go By by Georges Simenon

He was a quiet man. That's what they always say about the guy who one day picks up an axe and wipes out the whole family. Kees Popinga, the central character of Georges Simenon's The Man Who Watched Trains Go By, is just such a fellow. He's got everything dialed nice and tight. He's obsessed with having constructed a first rate life: a wife, a daughter, a stove, and a house all of the "highest quality." And then in the course of one evening, as Popinga discovers that the company that helped provide this postcard-perfect life is now bankrupt, it all goes to pot. Kees Popinga snaps, kisses his whole life goodbye in one bold stroke, and embarks on a violent spree that leads him across three countries and makes him the killer du jour of the European press.

Thus, Simenon rendered one of his best roman durs, or hard novels, so named because they involve uncomfortable situations. The pacing of the novel is impeccable; Simenon allows the reader no breathing room. Perhaps it was due to the fact that The Man Who Watched Trains Go By was Simenon's eleventh novel published in 1938. That's right, eleventh. Simenon's reputation for cranking out the prose is almost unparalleled. His record was 40 novels published in 1929 (all written under various pseudonyms according to Luc Sante's introduction). Once Popinga has made up his mind to leave his old life, we are dragged by the shirt collars along with this once simple man, as he drifts further and further into madness. The bodies start to pile up and in no time, Popinga has changed from an accidental madman to a cold-calculating psychopath.

Popinga's psyche is at the heart of The Man Who Watched Trains Go By. While not told in first person, we are stuck in Popinga's brain throughout the novel. We see the reaction of Popinga's wife, as he suddenly starts to behave in un-husbandly ways, or the mocking laughter of the prostitute, Pamela, that drives Kees over the edge. As Popinga gets to the point of no return, choosing to engage in a game of cat and mouse with the French police, we are there in his skull, seeing Popinga's deranged motives and actions laid out before us. We see how we reacts to lies printed about him in the press (an especially sore sticking point that causes him to start addressing the French papers directly). We feel his mistrust of the underworld characters who cross his path (and him). We feel his rage at the lack of respect he feels from the police, especially Commissioner Lucas. All the while, we are feeling what Popinga feels, a credit to Simenon's ability to give the madman all-too-familiar psychological shortcomings.

It is with wonderful irony that Popinga's rampage, deemed a product of madness by the press, becomes a game of chess between him, the authorities, and the underworld. An avid chess player, with a noted streak for being a sore loser, Popinga considers himself a superb tactician. We see him calculate scenarios, possible reactions, and end-game maneuvers, all the while convinced of his assured victory. And in the end, you become addicted to Popinga's madness, caught up in his scheme, greatly anticipating every turn of the page.

Chalk it up to a highly skilled writer who knew his craft, and more importantly, his characters. As Sante, details in his introduction, Simenon had a somewhat unorthodox approach to concocting his stories:

"On a large yellow envelope he would, over the course of a week or two, write the names of his characters and whatever else he knew about their lives and backgrounds: their ages, where they had gone to school, their parents' professions. The envelope might additionally contain street maps of the novel's setting, although it would never say a word about the book's eventual plot. Once he was satisfied with these notes, he would enter the hermitage of his study and knock off the book at the rate of a chapter every morning."

One can see how Simenon's writing routine infuses Popinga with so much life. We know this man. Most of us have worked with him at one time or another. The fellow who is perfectly content and sedentary in his quiet suburban existence. Simenon, having laid out his pedigree prior to the novel, wastes no time stripping him of the illusion of his worth as an adult and father, turning him into a cold-calculating human animal that bears no resemblance to the content, puffed-up Popinga we are introduced to at the beginning of the novel.

Over the course of this short and punchy tale, Simenon leaves us with a very dark and disturbing exploration of a former sheep who attempts to change his entire existence, remaking himself as a the wolf. In the end, Popinga never turns out to be as smart or as ingenious as he hopes. He wants to love women, but can only kill them. He wants recognition as a criminal mastermind, but is only considered a psychotic madman. The punchline that Simenon delivers so superbly is that no matter how much Popinga's megalomania convinces him that he is up to the task, he's not the man he wishes to be.

Book of the Week: I Spit On Your Graves by Boris Vian

When Jean d’ Halluin first published I Spit On Your Graves in 1946, he was looking for a bestseller to kickstart his new imprint, Editions du Scorpion. Written by an African-American writer named Vernon Sullivan, the book was a visceral, often misogynistic, and (once it gets rolling) violent pulp novel offering a gritty commentary on racial injustice in the United States.

The plot centered on Lee Anderson, a light skinned black man seeking revenge for the murder of his brother at the hands of whites. Anderson, takes his revenge by infiltrating southern society as a white man (he has light skin and blond hair), bedding every white woman he can, and ultimately selecting two of those women to murder as payback for his brother’s death. Despite being considered too controversial and subversive for U.S. publishers, the French public devoured the novel. By 1947, it outsold work by Sartre and Camus, giving d’ Halluin the bestseller he craved.

That alone would’ve made for interesting literary history. But there was more to the story…

Vernon Sullivan never tried to have the book published in the United States.

Vernon Sullivan did not exist. I Spit On Your Graves was in fact written by a Frenchman. A white Frenchman. Said Frenchman had never actually visited the United States.

Then there was the law suit filed against the author by Cartel d’action sociale et morale, the same right wing organization that tried to censor the work of Henry Miller.

Last but not least, there was the grisly murder committed by a Parisian man who strangled his mistress. The authorities discovered a copy of I Spit On Your Graves at the scene of the crime with a part where Lee Anderson dispatches one of his victims circled.

Hence its bestseller status. Who didn’t want to read the “murder book,” as the introduction Marc Lapprand calls it?

And then of course, there was the bigger question: what if the book was not about racial injustice at all?

On the surface, I Spit On Your Graves is a pulpy, not expertly written tale of murder and sex. And upon first reading, I Spit On Your Graves comes across as that – a cheap pulp mystery, lacking only the cover illustration of a woman screaming, hands raised against her face, as an unseen stalker comes at her with a knife.

It is overflowing with graphic sex (for it’s time) where Lee takes the female characters in every scenario imaginable (barring midgets and donkeys). At first one would take it as a sub-par Tropic of Cancer, except that the reader’s knowledge of Lee’s racial identity gives the book a taboo that is non-existent in Miller’s novels. Lee gets his hands on every white woman he possibly can, and they are all to willing to be taken, even if they don’t admit it at first (as is the case with Lou Asquith). As Lee relates early on in the story, “I had all the girls, one after the other, but it was a bit too easy, it turned my stomach.” It comes off like a line from a 70s Blaxploitation film. And in many ways, I Spit On Your Graves reads like a Blaxploitation script. However, as the book goes on Lee flips from bragging of his conquests to being disgusted at how far he has sunk to achieve his revenge. He becomes increasingly sickened by his seduction of the Asquith girls and this drives him further towards the violent outcome.

And that is where the book starts to turn from pure pulp sadism and gratuitous sex into a more layered, psychological exploration. We know Lee is seeking revenge. We know he is going to kill. It is only a matter of time and the reader is forced to travel down the road, dragged further and further into Lee’s madness, strapped in, unable to change the course.

Keep in mind, Vian was no pulp writer. He was a contemporary of Sartre and Camus, who wrote the incredibly well received Froth on the Daydream (also translated as Foam of the Daze). He was also a translator, poet, music, critic, and jazz musician who was close with Duke Ellington and Miles Davis.

In many ways, it is similar to Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, forcing you to see the world of the book through the eyes of a very twisted and violent narrator. We immediately find ourselves repulsed by the narrator’s narcissism, their ruthlessness, and most importantly their penchant for extremely grisly acts. And yet, it is this grotesque, amped, psychotic, bloodthirsty humanity that captivates us.

I’m not the first person to make such a comparison between these two books. However, there is a major difference between them. Whereas Ellis was satirizing society, specifically the Reagan-worshipping stockbrokers of the 80s, Vian was going deeper – he was satirizing publishing and ultimately, the reader.

After all, sex and murder were rampant in novels published circa 1946. Both are still widely used as devices and plot points today. In fact, one could argue that both are necessary lynchpins of all modern literature. Sex and death is what it’s all about.

The book is so overly violent and misogynist because Vian is parodying pulp writing, a form very prevalent in post-war France when he wrote I Spit On Your Graves. Like Swift’s A Modest Proposal, it takes the argument to its fullest extreme, giving readers the ultimate in literary-noir: a story so extremely violent and disgusting to modern thinking that the reader can’t put it down.

Much has been said about the social commentary perceived within I Spit On Your Graves. Of this one can look literally. Lee, a black man who’s brother was murdered by whites, seeks revenge by wreaking havoc on white society. In the end however, without giving anything away, there is no justice for Lee. So it is easy to see I Spit On Your Graves as a biting commentary on racial injustice in America during the 20th Century.

But in many ways, Vian is still having his fun with us. After all, he’s not trying to convince us that Lee is an unfortunate character of racial injustice that we should pity. He’s getting us to hate Lee Anderson in spite of his quest for justice. After all, Vian’s audience was white, educated, French society. And it is Lee’s racial identity, his status as ‘black’ that made (and still makes the book) so controversial. If Lee was a white man bedding a bunch of women and then murdering two of them, it would be a Harry Crews novel. Vian however spins the tables, serving up a tale of a violent, lustful black man out for revenge, one that horrifies and yet draws us in, convincing a repulsed and outraged public to keep on reading. Ultimately the joke is on us. We are thinking of racial injustice, clinging to the social message seemingly contained within the book, and yet it is the titillating bits – the sex and death – that keep us reading. Swift would’ve been proud.

If you use any of the book sharing sites, here a links to the novel for each:
Good Reads | Library Thing | Shelfari