The story of a prolific author...

And a serious pipe smoker. 

Ten years ago I bought my first Peterson pipe from Don Juan’s Cigar Company in Metairie LA. I’ve been smoking cigars for over a decade before, and now I love both. I subscribe to the Smoking Pipes Daily Reader, covering pipes and other tobacco items. I got this article and it’s very interesting on how much a famous writer also loved pipes. And while I knew of his most famous character, Jules Maigret, I never knew how prolific a writer the man was. 

A True Pipe Smoker: Georges Simenon

The inventor and chronicler of Jules Maigret, one of the most impressive detectives in literature and as inveterate a pipe smoker as his creator, Georges Simenon owned more than 300 pipes and smoked them constantly. He was an impressively productive author. His works have been translated into 50 languages and his novels number almost 500. But his most famous character is the French police detective Maigret, who puzzled through the mysteries presented to him in a fog of pipe tobacco.

I got five pipes, smoke them 3-7 times a week. This man had 300!

Simenon started his writing career in 1919 at age 15 when he became a newspaper reporter. At 17 he had his own column and had published his first book within a year. By the time he was 29, his enormous productivity had been noted. He said that he hadn't written very much: only 277 books by that time. He could write novels at a pace of two or three a month. It's said that the famous film director Alfred Hitchcock telephoned him one day and was told that Simenon was unavailable because he had just started a new novel. Well aware of the author's speed, Hitchcock said, "That's all right. I'll wait."

He could write novels at a pace of two or three a month.

I remember writing a thesis for my master’s degree. Sixty pages (Plus a bibliography at the end) took me months, and he wrote that every day. It looks like Mr. Simenon was a “method writer,” if you will. 

Learning About his Characters 

It was while working at the newspaper, Gazette de Liège in Belgium that Simenon became familiar with many of the types of people he would write about. He frequented bars in the run-down parts of the city and became familiar with politics, crime, police investigations, and prostitutes. .. 

 …When his father died in 1922, Simenon and his future wife, Régine Renchon, known as "Tigy," moved from Belgium to Paris.  

In Paris he became intimately familiar with the seedier side of the culture, hanging out in run-down hotels, bars, courthouses, and jails, drinking to excess, carousing with disreputable characters, and he even became acquainted with two individuals who would later become murderers who inspired characters in one of his novels, Les Trois Crimes de Mes Amis. His interests were in the working class rather than the elite.

I  consider myself an accomplished writer. I’ve been writing since I was a teenager (My first letter to the editor was published when I was 14 (?), and I was the editor of my squadron newspaper in Air Force Junior ROTC. And a bucket list item is to publish a book. But  looking at this man’s prolific writing, one can only be impressed. Hell, bedazzled.  

The linked article has more details on how Simenon managed to produce, even while living in Paris during the occupation. Enjoy.