Word: maigret
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...words a minute, has yielded an astonishing output of approximately 420 volumes during half a century. Some 200 of these were early potboilers under a variety of pseudonyms; the rest are mostly spare, dark psychological thrillers, 84 of them chronicling the cases of that indelible fictional detective, Inspector Maigret...
...from his drab upbringing as the son of an insurance clerk in Liège, Belgium. He took on Paris in the 1920s with a sharp eye for a quick score, promoting himself as a pulp prodigy and becoming one of Josephine Baker's lovers. His invention of Maigret in 1930 soon brought him vast wealth, international celebrity and the freedom to pursue a more complete, often cruel self-absorption. To those close to him he was imperious and burdensome. His relentless couplings, conjugal and otherwise, were by his own account often starkly physical events, devoid of sentiment...
Today, at 80, retired from writing fiction, Simenon lives in a Swiss retreat with one of his former household maids. Popular fancy has tended to see him as the model for the benign, pipe-smoking Maigret, but Bresler maintains that the only connection is wish fulfillment. Maigret, with his equanimity, his intuitive sympathy for others, his fidelity to one woman, is the man that Simenon never could be. Less plausibly, Bresler attributes Simenon's "stunted sexuality" to his rejection by, and rebellion against, the formidably dour widowed mother he left behind in Liège. (When Simenon...
...With such great responsibilities one could easily become very tense," says Witteveen, whose eclectic reading list covers the Bible, the Koran and the Inspector Maigret whodunit novels. But most of all he finds inner peace in meditation, "turning away from all that happened during the day." Witteveen's parents were both members of the Sufi movement. "I grew up with it. I began to study, and was very much touched and convinced. This is a deep and wide philosophy of life. An important part of it is mysticism." Appropriately among the ten articles of faith professed by a Sufi...
Died. Rupert Davies, 59, star of the popular BBC television series based on the adventures of Maigret; of cancer; in London. Davies' career began in a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II, when he acted in troop shows. The BBC signed him in 1960 to play Maigret, the pipe-smoking French detective created by Novelist Georges Simenon. For his portrayal of Maigret, Davies was chosen British Actor of the Year...