The subtitle of Dirty Snow should have been, Take That Camus! While not a specific counter-punch to Camus’ L’Étranger, Simenon’s dark story of a murderer with no regrets shares a similar bent, neither pulling any punches with the reader. Maybe that is why the book, along with Simenon’s The Widow, which was published in the 40s as well, is so often compared to Camus first masterwork. While L’Étranger is infused with Camus’ humanistic worldview and the influences of his Algerian upbringing, Dirty Snow one-ups the score with Simenon’s cold remove and stripping of existential underpinnings. There is no philosophy to be had here — the world is an ugly place and that’s the short of it.To call Dirty Snow bleak would be an understatement. It makes Simenon’s own The Man Who Watched Trains Go By read like a Sophie Kinsella novel. You leave this book covered in a disgusting film of human degradation (and yet somehow, all credit to Simenon, eagerly along for the ride). This is a testament to Simenon’s skill at trapping us in the head of man we detest, unable to look away as he drags us through one vile act to the next. There is no letup. We are never given leave of his gaze, never allowed a moment to gasp for clean air. And when the tables are finally turned on this horrible creature, we see the downfall through the antagonist’s eyes, causing our perception of him to change.Set in an unnamed country occupied by an unnamed aggressor post an unspecific war, the book introduces us to one Frank Friedmaier, a young man who would like nothing more than to make his mark by murdering one of his fellow human beings. And down the toilet of human emotions we go. Frank is in some ways the definitive Simenon antagonist and we’re stuck with him, because there is no protagonist for readers to cheer on. A thug and a petty thief, he is cold, self-centered, childish, and hell-bent on being the black hole in the lives of anyone he comes into contact with. From the moment in the opening chapter where he jams a blade into an officer from the occupying forces, there is no turning back. Having lost his “virginity,” Frank is unleashed. His ego inflates, leading to more emotionless acts of cruelty that he inflicts on anyone in his path.Simenon’ genius — and what ultimately sets Dirty Snow above L’Étranger in my eyes — comes in the final third of the novel. It was only a matter of time before Frank butted heads with the occupying forces. And here we discover who the true bad guys are. That scumbag Frank, who we’ve grown to hate in the first 2/3 of the book, now seems small compared to these oppressors and what they do to their captives on a daily basis. Simenon is almost responding directly to Camus: sure, anyone can be a murderer, but there is always a bigger thug with a larger stick waiting in the wings. Having been written in the time of Gulags and Nazi camps, Simenon reminds us that there is murder and then there is Murder.A slight spoiler warning here: At the end of the book, there is a weird note, which William T. Vollman points out in his afterword (and somewhat defends). While some may take this as a poor attempt at a silver lining, I think one could see another reading of it: Frank is out of his head. What he sees is not there, having been pushed to the limits by his aggressors, and knowing full well what fate awaits him. In those final moments, he is dreaming of the only positive future he can conjure. Whereas Meursault found happiness in the indifference of the world, Herr Friedmaier finds no such solace.Pair with: Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 2 by Earth – The perfect bleak soundtrack to Simenon’s stark, snow-bound nowhere Eastern-bloc country in occupied territory.
Simenon's ecstatically bleak Dirty Snow teeters on the fulcrum between four and five starness and only just barely comes to rest on the four star side. A lot of hand wringing and soul searching went into this rating (or at least two minutes' worth), but in the end I concluded that the only quality Dirty Snow lacks is that ineffable something-or-other that makes a novel grab you by the balls and shout, 'I'm a five star book, damn it! Hearken to my greatness!' The first thing I want to say about Dirty Snow is actually something about two other books—namely Sartre's Nausea and Camus' The Stranger, both of which you can safely chuck on the book burning pyre because Dirty Snow is the definitive fictional rendering of existentialism. Unlike its more celebrated forebears, Simenon's work is actually alive—not just some nakedly abstract concept onto which character and plot are clumsily affixed. The protagonist Frank is a nineteen-year-old asshole in a presumably German-occupied country during World War II. (The location is appropriately indistinct. Like everything else, it's pointless.) Frank has no real friends and doesn't give a shit about anybody—not his fretful mother Lotte who runs a brothel out of their apartment, not Sissy the girl next door who's infatuated with him, and not Kromer his partner in crime. Not even himself. Entirely lacking in purpose, Frank thieves and murders without moral compunction; but his crimes are less profit-motivated or purely sadistic than they are strange, floundering assertions of self in an arbitrary and morally convoluted world. The last fifty to seventy-five pages of the book are a total downer, to the extent that the whole fucked-up punitive system of the occupation forces is basically a stand-in for life in general. We try to make sense of it all or to feel important or relevant in some small, stupid way, but hey... guess what? [Spoiler!] We're all a big ol' steamin' pile of nothin'. Good night. You've been a lovely audience!
What do You think about Dirty Snow (2003)?
In his afterword to this novel, William T. Vollmann opines "As technology and corporatism impel us more and more to treat one another like things, loyalty and decency approach irrelevance, except between intimates, and sometimes even then." Dirty Snow is certainly a book that compels a reader to feel much the same as WTV does about what happens to the human soul in the trash compactor crush of Money and Civilization - but there are many books that tell this story. So why read this one?Simenon's particular genius is giving us a protagonist loathsome yet relatable and portrayed with a subtlety that belies his horrific actions. Frank is like the rest of us - his need to count, to be known / recognized isn't anything new. Simenon puts us in the mind of a creature that - by the end of the story - we find real discomfort in just how human a monster can be. The snow falls where it wants, when it wants, whether mankind wishes it or no. In the end all we can do is make it filthy.
—Brian
Dirty Snow is the story of a pestilential punk in an impoverished city occupied by foreign forces. Simenon never tells us what city or if the occupiers are Nazi Germans or American “liberators” because that would take away from the awfulness that is Frank Friedmaier. Frank hates his gangster friends and their thuggish acquaintances even as he strives to impress them. He hates his mother who runs a whorehouse out of their apartment even though it allows Frank to live like a prince while everyone else in the city waits in breadlines and avoids being hauled before the police. He hates the whores he contemptuously beds and whom invariably fall in love with him. The only people Frank doesn’t hate is the streetcar operator who lives across the street (and whose daughter he ruins) and his tormentors when he is eventually, inevitably, captured. The mood is fantastic with an oppressive atmosphere unlike anything I’ve read in ages. I fell asleep while reading this book countless times. “There were endless minutes just before midnight, even longer than those just before five o’clock. Those were already so far away they belonged to another world,” which is exactly how I felt when I woke in the middle of the night, worrying over Frank’s fate and returning to the novel for a few furtive minutes before darkness closed in again. Gripping, relentless, and utterly unpredictable.
—Jim
Sempre neve sporca, tutta quella neve che pare marcita, con tracce nere e incrostazioni di detriti. La polvere bianca che ogni tanto si stacca dalla crosta celeste, a mucchietti, come il calcinaccio da un soffitto, non ce la fa a coprire quel sudiciumeUn grande romanzo di George Simenon, profondo, capace di sondare in profondità l'animo umano nella sua forza e nelle sue debolezze. Personaggi semplici ma dai quali l'autore scava un mondo di pensieri, atteggiamenti, comportamenti tanto da farci sentire di essere lì, di capire e conoscere.Simenon romanziere , oltre Maigret, è un grandissimo scrittore, ho recensito Il piccolo libraio di Archangelsk e confermo quanto dettomi dal mio caro amico Marco, filogo romanzo, sono davvero grandi libri.Tristi, molto cupi, testimonianze crude di quello che è l'animo umano, debolezze, crudeltà, cinismo e qualche piccolo gesto di calda umanità. La storia si svolge in un paese imprecisato, durante una occupazione militare straniera. Simenon non precisa mai né di quale paesi si tratti, né la nazionalità degli occupanti. Non ha molta importanza, ciò che conta è che da una parte ci sono gli occupati, dall' altra gli invasori. I primi s' arrangiano, fanno la fame o il doppio gioco, collaborano o resistono. I secondi incarnano un potere lontano e spietato, gelidamente burocratico. Il protagonista è Frank, ragazzo diciannovenne, figlio di Lotte che in gioventù ha fatto la vita e che adesso, a 38 anni, proprio per riguardo a suo figlio, non si prostituisce più limitandosi a gestire nel suo angusto appartamento un piccolo giro di ragazze che vende agli ufficiali stranieri.Intorno è solo neve sporca. Ascoltiamoci, ad omaggio di questa universalità,Miss Saraievo nella versione di Pavarotti-Bono.Un lungo interrogatorio contraddistingue la seconda parte del libro ed anche qui troverete una profondità che non ha eguali, paura e speranza, passato e un briciolo di futuro a cui aggrapparsi, burocrazia e istinto, verità e menzogna si alternano fino all'epilogo naturale ma che vorremmo rimandare ad una speranza che non è della vita reale.Se, come autore, si sono fatti richiami a Kafka e Dostoevskij, non posso non pensare ad un bel fil del 2006 , Le vite degli altri che vi invito a rivedere dopo aver letto il libro.
—Luca Lesi
