HARD IS THE GOOD (THE ART OF FICTION, NO. 9)

GEORGES SIMENON

Just one piece of general advice from a writer has been very useful to me. It was from Colette. I was writing short stories for Le Matin, and Colette  was literary editor at that time. I remember I gave her two short stories and she returned them and I tried again and tried again. Finally she said, “Look, it is too literary, always too literary.” So I followed her advice. It’s what I do when I write, the main job when I rewrite.

INTERVIEWER

What do you mean by “too literary”? What do you cut out, certain kinds of words?

SIMENON

Adjectives, adverbs, and every word which is there just to make an effect. Every sentence which is there just for the sentence. You know, you have a beautiful sentence—cut it. Every time I find such a thing in one of my novels it is to be cut.

INTERVIEWER

Is that the nature of most of your revision?

SIMENON

Almost all of it.

INTERVIEWER

It’s not revising the plot pattern?

SIMENON

Oh, I never touch anything of that kind. Sometimes I’ve changed the names while writing: a woman will be Helen in the first chapter and Charlotte in the second, you know; so in revising I straighten this out. And then, cut, cut, cut.

INTERVIEWER

Is there anything else you can say to beginning writers?

SIMENON

Writing is considered a profession, and I don’t think it is a profession. I think that everyone who does not need to be a writer, who thinks he can do something else, ought to do something else. Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don’t think an artist can ever be happy.

 

Note:  Yesterday evening I was reading in an online literary magazine the poem written by the daughter of an old acquaintance.  The subject was sex and the poem contained the line: "Her calves say/mid and west, which is where we are, her body/ as smooth and forgiving as the land outside."  We talked about it over dinner -- we hadn't seen our mutual friend for a long time and we're naturally curious about her life -- and we agreed that the poem was terrible (the description of the girl's calves is forced and absurd; the land simile is forced and phony), which made me recall my own bad and abandoned poetry and how certain fields require very rare and specific talents, i.e., diligence isn't enough.  This isn't intended, by the way, as commentary on the dam-building beavers above, photographed last year in a part of England where they were thought to be extinct for centuries.  Beavers are industrious and diligent, of course, but are also enormously talented.  Another friend of mine, a world expert on dams, once showed me a couple of slides he was planning to use in an exam-essay question.  Previewing the assignment for me, he queried:  "Beaver dams:  Monumental or bucolic?"  I answered "Both" and received a verbal "A."  "Paris Express" was the U.S. title of the 1952 British film adaptation of Georges Simenon's 1938 novel "L'Homme qui regardait passer les Trains," which was originally released in the U.S. under its English translation title "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By."  It's supposed to be a terrific movie version of Simenon's "roman dur" and features an early performance by the 20-year old Anouk Aimée.

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