I am bewitched by the prose of Georges Simenon.
I was startled to read the essay by Julian Barnes in March 1983 issue on Mr. Simenon.
"...Here is a typical sexual encounter from the Twenties, at the time of the writer’s engagement to his first wife:
With Simenon, early one morning, lying awake in the Hotel Berthe, the need was so great that when he heard a chambermaid outside in the hallway cleaning the guests’ shoes, he got up, opened the door, lifted the girl’s skirt and possessed her on the spot – while she was brushing away. She did not even stop what she was doing but merely said: ‘Oh Monsieur!’
Now skip two marriages, 40 years and nine thousand-odd other women, and catch the truth-seeker’s first sexual encounter with Teresa, his present housekeeper-companion:
A month after she started work at Echandens, I unexpectedly walked into a room and found her bending over a table that she was polishing. The sight was too much for me. I advanced upon her, feverishly pulled down her knickers and penetrated her ... Teresa did not play the coquette. She had an orgasm as violent as mine, still bent over the table, with a duster or chamois leather in her hand ... We did not even look at each other. I just walked out of the room and locked myself in my office.
Simenon doesn’t elaborate on which particular truth he was confirming on this latter occasion – perhaps it was that the conscientiousness of domestic staff had not declined over a period of 40 years. But the encounters are typical of Simenon’s vaunted manner: the sudden pounce, the rapid penetration, the unfailing female orgasm, and the retreat into the study (where his technique, of course, was not all that different: literature’s pouncer, he wrote each novel in a swift, uninterruptible burst)...."
I was startled to read the essay by Julian Barnes in March 1983 issue on Mr. Simenon.
"...Here is a typical sexual encounter from the Twenties, at the time of the writer’s engagement to his first wife:
With Simenon, early one morning, lying awake in the Hotel Berthe, the need was so great that when he heard a chambermaid outside in the hallway cleaning the guests’ shoes, he got up, opened the door, lifted the girl’s skirt and possessed her on the spot – while she was brushing away. She did not even stop what she was doing but merely said: ‘Oh Monsieur!’
Now skip two marriages, 40 years and nine thousand-odd other women, and catch the truth-seeker’s first sexual encounter with Teresa, his present housekeeper-companion:
A month after she started work at Echandens, I unexpectedly walked into a room and found her bending over a table that she was polishing. The sight was too much for me. I advanced upon her, feverishly pulled down her knickers and penetrated her ... Teresa did not play the coquette. She had an orgasm as violent as mine, still bent over the table, with a duster or chamois leather in her hand ... We did not even look at each other. I just walked out of the room and locked myself in my office.
Simenon doesn’t elaborate on which particular truth he was confirming on this latter occasion – perhaps it was that the conscientiousness of domestic staff had not declined over a period of 40 years. But the encounters are typical of Simenon’s vaunted manner: the sudden pounce, the rapid penetration, the unfailing female orgasm, and the retreat into the study (where his technique, of course, was not all that different: literature’s pouncer, he wrote each novel in a swift, uninterruptible burst)...."
