The Dancer At The Gai-Moulin (2015) - Plot & Excerpts
The host welcomed two guests: Professors Sian Reynolds and Peter France. The Maigret book chosen ("La Danseuse du Gai-Moulin" - published 1931 in France) had been recently translated into English by Sian as "The Dancer at the Gai Moulin". Peter was the editor of the “Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation”. Thus the evening provided an opportunity not just to discuss the Maigret book but also the wider question of translations of literature into English. This had been an issue the Group had grappled with on a number of occasions when non-English books had been discussed.Simenon was born in 1903 and died in 1989. He led a colourful life, details of which you will find online. There were 193 novels written under his own name; 200 others written under 20 or so pseudonyms; 75 Maigret novels; four autobiographies; 21 volumes of memoirs. An average of four to five books a year; 80 pages a day; two weeks to write a book. At his death, world sales stood at more than 500 million copies in 55 languages, written in a vocabulary of no more than 2,000 words. And he claimed to have made love to 10,000 women, but was probably joking.In financial terms, Simenon’s move to Maigret was a great success. In 1925, his earnings were 42,671 francs. In 1929, they were 135,460 francs. By 1931, they were 310,561 francs. By the mid-1930s, he was earning about a million francs a year. The figures matter: Simenon is one of the few serious writers whose achievements can be counted in numbers: a writer with a quantitative career, as well as qualitative achievements.Penguin is now honouring Simenon’s spirit of excess with what seems like a lunatic project. It is publishing all 75 of the Maigret novels, one a month, in order and newly translated, over the next few years. It is the kind of project of which Simenon would heartily have approved.Each Maigret novel is presented as a battle, or a number of battles. There is the battle between characters that has led to the mysterious death with which each story opens; the battle between Maigret and other detectives, magistrates or politicians involved in the case (all obtuse, obstructive or incompetent); and the battle of wits between Maigret and the murderer. While all this is going on the inspector frequently has to struggle against appalling weather conditions, cycling tens of miles along muddy canal paths in pouring rain, fighting wind or snow, or labouring under suffocating heat. He is endlessly tempted by drink. Women seek to seduce him. Men try to buy him off. He is deprived of sleep, punched and shot at. He moves through crowds as though ‘fighting against a strong current’. Often it looks as though everything is ‘joining forces to unsettle him’, but he hangs on, his bull-like physique sustained by beer, sandwiches, pipe tobacco, the warm stove at police headquarters and the knowledge that at home his chaste wife is patiently preparing the kind of dish that won’t spoil however long it’s kept waiting. Then there is his genius.It doesn’t show. On the contrary, Maigret’s greatest stroke of genius is never to reveal his genius. There is no brilliant conversation. For the most part he appears boorish, uninterested, disgruntled, absolutely resistant to theory, suspicious of advanced forensics, ‘devoid of subtlety’. When asked what he’s thinking he invariably replies that he doesn’t think. Asked about ideas, he tells us he has no ideas. Presenting himself as impenetrable – a ‘lifeless bulk’, with eyes ‘dull as a cow’, ‘burly as a market porter’, ‘a pachyderm plodding inexorably toward its goal’ – he becomes more of a mystery than the mystery itself. The only intelligence that’s occasionally allowed to cross his face is a mocking irony. It’s this quality that will be fatal to the murderer, who is drawn into a battle of wills he can only lose.Maigret proceeds by enforced proximity. He goes to the scene of the crime, which usually takes place in a small, well-defined community, at the centre of which there is very likely a seedy hotel where Maigret will book a room. He hangs around bars with the suspects, visits their homes alone and uninvited, eats with them, walks and talks with them. He establishes who’s an insider and who’s an outsider, who’s sexually satisfied and who isn’t, which women are attractive and which plain or plain ugly, whose ambitions are thwarted, who has delusions of grandeur and power. If there’s a pretty maid he may ask her bluntly whose mistress she is. When he thinks he has his man he sticks to him like a limpet, waiting for him to break down. This is a figure who often turns up in a Maigret novel: the suspect who panics, is hysterical, can’t face the truth. The book we were discussing contained many of these themes though Maigret was absent, at least as a participant, for a considerable part of the book.Sian indicated that she had translated three Maigrets for the new Penguin series. All of them had headless women on the cover! Sian had attempted to use the language and slang of the 1930s, though this would have been very difficult for an earlier period, but no doubt she had used modern dialogue unconsciously. There was much detailed discussion of the principles and technique of translations. Several members queried why Sian had used certain words and expressions. Sian said a good translator should neither introduce nor suppress material. Translation required reading the text until you fully got it. You should always translate into your first language, though a few people were genuinely bilingual.Sian made the point that there was a huge difference, greater than in English, between spoken and written French. The French had a strong sense of decorum in written language. English also had more words from which to choose and made extensive use of idiom, slang and ambiguity. Some words used by Simenon were no longer used for the same meaning so old dictionaries were important sources......This is an extract from a review at http://www.monthlybookgroup.com/ Our reviews are also to be found at http://monthlybookgroup.blogspot.co.uk/
(Note: I read this book in Dutch translation, but I will review it in English for the benefit of the international audience here).Every reader of fiction becomes aware of the fact that there are dozens of crime novels starring Inspector Maigret, and that these novels have enjoyed immense popularity ever since they started appearing in 1929. So, I decided to dive into Maigret's world when I saw this beautiful new edition of "La Danseuse du Gai-Moulin" in Dutch translation. At 190 pages, it promised to be a quick read, and it certainly was. The story, which is set in Liège (Belgium) draws you in right from the start and doesn't waste any time getting to the central point of the action - two youngsters have themselves locked into the "Gai-Moulin" ("Happy Windmill") nightclub after closing hours with the plan to rob the money that the club's patron leaves there at the end of each day. When they emerge from the cellar in which they had confined themselves, they see what appears to be a corpse lying on the floor in the bar; they flee the scene, and from that moment on things become very hectic and the boys find themselves in a lot of trouble, involving the bar's resident dancer, Adèle.Interestingly, Maigret doesn't make an appearance in the first 100 pages of this slim volume, although it transpires later that he has in fact played a role in the first part of the book, unbeknownst to the reader. I loved the part before Maigret is introduced - the fast paced action is laced with details of life in the 1930s in Liège, when office workers took two-hour lunch breaks, a lot of people gathered for beers after work, the police are drinking beer during work, and newspaper editions came out two or three times a day. There are several passages that made me laugh out loud, such as this one, with its hilarious enumeration of the possible weapons that might have killed Graphopoulos, the corpse in the nightclub:"De patholoog-anatoom zal pas hedenmiddag de lijkschouwing verrichten, maar vooralsnog meent men dat de dood in de loop van de nacht is ingetreden en werd veroorzaakt door een zwaar instrument, een gummiknuppel bijvoorbeeld, een ijzeren staaf, een zak zand of een ploertendoder."I found the novel losing a bit of its attraction once Maigret starts unraveling the crime, and things become increasingly convoluted and slightly unbelievable. Nevertheless, the plot is captivating until the very end, and I definitely want to read more Maigret novels now. As I will soon have exhausted the new Dutch editions, I will probably turn to the new English editions, as Penguin is releasing them at a rate of one per month and have by the time of writing this review (December 2014) already advanced up to #14, which bears the intriguing title "The Flemish House."
What do You think about The Dancer At The Gai-Moulin (2015)?
Forse perch� uno dei primi e quindi ancora acerbo ma l'ho trovato molto affrettato, buttato l�. Un Maigret un po' sbruffone che non ho riconosciuto!
—Fulvio
Simenon's Inspector Maigret stories, rather like Maigret himself, are never conventional, but this mystery is particularly unusual. Our hero first appears over halfway through the book, just in time to start wrapping things up in his own inimitable way.The focus this time is a seedy bar in Liège, where two young delinquents get out of their depth one night as they plan to rob the till. As with many entries in this addictive series (other favourites so far being The Misty Harbour and The Madman of Bergerac) the strong local atmosphere conjured is at least as important as plot in the overall appeal.
—Simon Reid
Apprendista viveur cercasiCoppia male assortita di apprendisti viveurs inciampa in un cadavere nel corso di un tentato furto al night club di cui sono assidui - e indebitati - clienti. Tutti i particolari in cronaca.Terzo "Maigret" per Simenon e per me, questa volta non ha funzionato.La storia gialla non gira e lo spiegone finale fa giustizia dei colpevoli, ma non dei buchi di sceneggiatura, rattoppati malamente con una trovata poco plausibile.I protagonisti sono un po' troppo ovvii, due ragazzotti che non si sentono a loro agio in nessun posto, a caccia di vita facile, di locali equivoci e ragazze inequivoche. Uno figlio di pap�� con gli agganci giusti, l'altro borghese minuscolo con un solo abito buono. I padri, fotocopia: il DNA sociale per Simenon non mentiva.Alla fine resta giusto la descrizione della ballerina del titolo, la Ad��le che "non era bella, soprattutto in ciabatte e con la vestaglia sgualcita", della sua squallida camera ammobiliata, del suo vestirsi e svestirsi senza troppi pudori, del suo "languore sorridente".detto per inciso, descrizione la cui efficacia deriva evidentemente dalla vastissima esperienza che Simenon aveva della materia Insomma, mi �� parso un episodio del tutto trascurabile della saga del Commissario. Al lettore con maggiore inclinazione per la materia (i gialli o le ballerine un po' sfiorite), potrebbe forse strappare una stella in pi��. Oltre, �� richiesto un pizzico di spirito ultr��.
—Biblioteca
