The man who watched the trains go by

By Georges Simenon

Book Overview

"A writer as comfortable with reality as with fiction, with passion as with reason." --John Le Carr In this Georges Simenon classic, a Dutch clerk flees to Paris with his crooked boss's money and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0141025875
• ISBN13: 9780141025872
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Penguin
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.1" x 0.6" x 4.4"

Customer Reviews

How precarious is identity!

Kees Popinga is manager of the largest ship outfitter in Dutch Frisia. His house and furnishings are of the highest quality. His wife and two children are just what they should be. Then one evening he sees his boss, Julius de Coster, getting drunk in a bar. De Coster informs him that the company will be bankrupt the next day, and Popinga and family will be on the street. De Coster confesses to being a fraud and a libertine. He intends to fake his own suicide and disappear, and he gives Popinga 500 florins to flee as well. Popinga had always dreamed of being someone other than other than Kees Popinga. He takes the train to Paris. The conventional person he once was is gone with his position. He's now quite free to do whatever he pleases - and he accidentally commits a murder. Life on the run becomes a kind of chess game, and there's something rather appealing about the smug enthusiasm Popinga brings to his new occupation. Simenon, master of the quick character sketch, peoples the madman's world with a fascinating mix of small-time crooks, prostitutes and bourgeois types. You'll want to share this book with a friend, because it invites discussion. Is Popinga mad - or are the rest of us mad who imagine that we have solid ground beneath our feet? Was the liberated Popinga really free, or did he just assume a new character role with new rules? Are any of us ever free from our self-inventions?

"There isn't any truth, you know?"

Kees Popinga, Dutch factotum in Julius de Coster the Younger's shipping firm for 17 years, lives proudly in the nicest and cleanest development in Groningen with his wife he doesn't love and his two children he doesn't understand. One winter night, utterly bored as usual, he decides to take a walk to the dock to check out one of the ships his firm was to outfit to sail the next day. From that little walk, his carefully regulated life receives a massive shock. He discovers not only that his company has done nothing for the ship and so it will not sail, but his respectable boss is happily getting drunk in a disreputable little bar. Popinga then enters the bar and is on the receiving end of a long and incredible monologue from de Coster. The firm is bankrupt, Popinga, who has invested everything in the company, is now broke, de Coster is fleeing the country, and the Mr Popinga of the past 17 years is no more. In this romans durs (hard novel), his second in his amazing writing career, Simenon exhibits extraordinary insight into the stresses and strains of his character's psychological demons. Popinga sees the collapse of his outward life as a great opportunity to live out the urges and impulses of his repressed inner life at last. In no time at all, he is gone, walking away from his fake proper self, letting all of it go: family, home, responsibilities, inhibitions--or is he? In this time of failing businesses and psychological stress, one wonders how many Popingas are waiting to disappear from their current lives. What makes Simenon so interesting is how well he has captured the nihilism and repression that are intimately woven into our social networks. The pacing of this story also is exceptional, as we see Popinga slowly come undone even as, outwardly, he seems utterly in control. The blurbs on the cover of this important New York Review Books new translation (2005) actually are true, for a change: John Banville's comments: "...tough, bleak, offhandedly violent...redolent of place," New York Times: "breath-taking, fast-paced, will hold you enthralled...." And the excellent introduction by Luc Sante (which MUST be read afterward, and not before) finely describes our discomfort and repulsion toward Popinga. Yet, even as we cringe, we recognize the truth of this creation. Perhaps it is our doorway into the inner workings of human beings such as David Berkowitz or Ted Bundy or (could it be?) even ourselves.

Go on a little trip with Mr. Poppinga

Firstly, I must complain about this book cover!!!! Do these people actually read the books they are trying to sell? Anyway, no use getting academic about this wonferful book by the beloved Inspector Maigret author. This novel makes you forget everything around you, and you simply become part of the protagonist's luggage on his way from Holland to Paris one cold evening. I am sure many of us wish we could just get up and leave everything behind like this family man and correct employee did. Only we hope it doesn't end like his spontaneous little outing. Oh it is a lovely WINTER book. ENDULGE under a cozy quilt.

Nihilism is not only despair and negation

but above all the desire to despair and to negate. Camus. Despair and negation predominate in Georges Simenon's "The Man Who Watched Trains Go By", a book that I considered to be darker than noir. Simenon was nothing if not prolific in both his literary and public life. Born in Belgium in 1903, Simenon turned out hundreds of novels. Simenon's obsession with writing caused him to break off an affair (he was prolific in this area of his life as well) with the celebrated Josephine Baker in Paris when he could only write twelve novels in the twelve month period in which they were involved. Although perhaps best known for his Inspector Maigret detective novels, Simenon also wrote over a hundred novels that he referred to as `romans durs' (literally "hard novels"). As with many of his contemporaries such as Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books were marketed and sold as popular, pulp fiction. Also like Chandler and Hammett, Simenon's books have stood up well over time. The New York Review of Books publishing division has reissued much of Simenon's books. They are well worth reading and "The Man Who Watch Trains Go By" is an excellent place to start. The story's protagonist and narrator is Kees Poppinga. As the book opens Kees is seen and sees himself as a stolidly middle-class Dutch citizen living a life of relative comfort in the coastal town of Groningen. He is secure in his job as the manager of a ship's supply company. His sense of security is reflected in an attitude best described as smug and more than a bit conceited. On the surface, Kees' life seems well insulated from the harsher side of life. But Simenon shows us quickly that this appearance of security was really a thin veneer that could be washed away at a moment's notice. One night, Kees discovers that his company's owner has driven the company into bankruptcy. Kees will soon be out of the job and will likely lose everything he holds dear. The rest of the book focuses on Kees' decent from smug satisfaction to nihilism and despair. Stripped of his middle-class sense of security Kees finds that he is also stripped of all those societal restraints that most civilized members of society have. Kees embarks on a journey of death, deceit, and madness. The only character trait that remains is one of conceit and superiority as he travel to Paris and falls in with the Parisian underworld. The reader experience this journey through the narration of Kees and Simenon does an excellent job of allowing the reader to look out at the world through the eyes of a madman. It is something of an uncomfortable feeling but it made for compelling reason. I have already compared Simenon to Chandler and Hammett because they wrote in a similar genre and were contemporaries. As far as contemporary writers are concerned, the French-writer Michel Houellebecq (Elementary Particles) seems remarkably similar in both tone and style. I have now read two of Simenon's romans durs and three of his

Captured by the author

Simenon in a slow but progressive manner has the ability to draw the reader into the life of the protaganist no matter how heinous the situation. This is well manifest in this typical Simenon psychological thriller. If you like this type of ouevre The Man Who Watched Trains will fit the bill.