In every writing workshop or writing class I’ve taken, I hear, “Write What You Know”  so much, so often, the phrase, whether I agree with it or not, has become cliché.   I mean, the closer you are to your subject, the more insight you will have to offer.  Who is going to argue with that?   People in your writing circle will tell you it’s all about authenticity. Today I can tell you this: in the 1940s novel I just read, Three Bedrooms in Manhattan, Belgian author Georges Simenon must know more than a little about Sex, Jealousy, Cheating and Misogyny.   He seems to check these boxes on every page. I’m calling this novel a roman à clef because it clearly appears to be about real-life events in the writer’s life, with names and details changed to protect the innocent.  His writing seems confessional; it exudes a reality that makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

Simenon is known worldwide for his crime novels and detective stories.  You may have heard about his famous literary series based on a fictional detective Jules Maigret.  This guy is like the French Sherlock Holmes.  Simenon wrote 75 Maigret books. Everyone knows that Simenon had never worked as a policeman or a detective, but we read his books for the quality of the writing.  Many consider him a master of the genre.  Over the years, he has been compared favorably to literary giants Balzac, Dosteyefski, and Dickens. Both his fans and critics continue to marvel at his understanding for the criminal mind.

But, Three Bedrooms is DIFFERENT.  There is no crime here.  We keep waiting for a mystery to develop, but it’s not that type of book.   In Three  Bedrooms, Simenon has created a narrator that closely resembles himself.  It’s a book about Passion, Love and Hate.  On a one-night stand in New York City, the main character feels love-at-first-sight for a woman he meets in a bar.  He’s a married man;  I’m talking about Georges, and I’m also taking about the main character, Francoise Combe. For the rest of the book,  Francoise’s  own sense of RIGHT and WRONG is swept away in a whirlwind of emotions.  Francois loves this woman so much, he can’t help but hurt her.  It should not take the reader long to figure out, that THIS IS ALL ABOUT SIMENON.  We know that.  Simenon has written about his sexual transgressions in several autobiographies and memoirs.   The woman in the novel who his protagonist comes to LOVE and HATE – her name is Kay – is based on his second wife.  Francoise tries to intimidate her.  He wants to dominate her.  At one point he punches her in the face and then cries in her arms.  Oh Georges! I see you truly write “What You Know,” but if this is true, you are such a SALOPE!   (Asshole!)

To better understand where this novel was going, I dipped into my Simenon biographies that I keep on my shelves here in Mexicali.  Both of these include his life-long obsession with sex.  He once claimed to have slept with 10,000 women.  (I’m thinking when does he have the time to write?) But in re-reading the information, he admits 8,000 of these women were prostitutes.  Simenon became successful with his writing during World War II.   Let’s just say, as a very young man, he walked the war-torn streets with a wad of cash in his pocket.  He often went to prostitutes three times per day.  I have to imagine that the whorehouses he frequented were a source of inspiration for new story ideas. Before he died, he wrote 193 novels under his own name and over 200 more under a pseudonym.   Who is going determine the greater of his obsessions – SEX or WRITING?   For Georges, they go hand in hand.  So to speak.

I read about how Simenon met his second wife. By the time he met Denyse Ouimet, he was both a happily married man and an incredibly successful writer.

At age 42, Simenon came to New York to pursue his own American Dream.  Europe had become too small for him.  His goals were to become a worldwide Literary Giant.  Ten days after his arrival in New York City, his publisher recommended he needed a bilingual secretary to help him with his affairs.  Georges was directed to interview a French Canadien typist in a bar not too far from his hotel.  I don’t know if he asked her how many words she could type per minute, but in just a few hours, he was taking her back to his room.  Not only did Denyse become his secretary this night, but she also became his mistress.  Then, his second wife.  At the time, Georges was twice her age, but that didn’t matter.   He felt a passion for her that wouldn’t let go. 

I suppose you could call Denyse, Simenon’s own personal Femme Fatale. We have adopted this term into English, but from French it translates to “Fatal Woman.”  Apparently Denyse had the look – mysterious, seductive, beautiful – to draw the writer in at first sight.  Later in his memoirs, Simenon said that there was something about the way she lit her cigarettes and/or crossed her legs.  She was so American!  Like right off the film noir movie posters or magazine covers he had seen back home.  In film and literature, the Femme Fatal is always trouble.  She charms men into dangerous and often deadly situations.  Georges must have known this.  I mean,  he knows the characters – he writes of them.  But, one look at her, HE JUST DIDN’T CARE.

Soon thereafter, Georges divorced his wife of 27 years to marry Denyse. The next 14 years for them were filled with jealous rage and violent arguments. After this marriage was over, George wrote Denyse was the most complicated woman he had ever met. He had admitted in writing that he struck her on several occasions. I’m not writing a book report here; nor am I trying explain away Simenon’s behavior.  I’m not sure I even enjoyed reading Three Bedrooms in Manhattan.   I’m just saying in the moment that Francois met his Femme Fatale, Kay, these two were both so desperate, lonely and dejected with their own miserable lives, it was like they FIT each other.  For the entire novel, they spend their days and nights drinking, smoking and fucking; fearing the thought of separation.  If one of them or the other pulled out, they would both fall apart.  I suppose anyone who reads this novel has to believe that Simenon knew a lot about LONELINESS.  He allowed Francois only a few moments of happiness in 158 pages, and those were always a few moments before he would fly into a jealous rage.  Francois knew that he would never be able to trust Kay.  He suspected she lied about everything.  Every time they would sit down in another jazzy, smoke-filled bar, he would wonder how many of the patrons, waiters, bartenders in the room had slept with her.   

In my search for an image of the Three Bedrooms book cover, I found a version based on the Edward Hopper painting Nighthawks. In several of my classes, I I put this very painting up on the Big Screen to help my students understand the requirement for visual analysis in their research papers. If you don’t know already, Nighthawks reflects the anxiety and isolation that pervaded the country in 1942.  Hopper completed this painting just a few weeks after the Pearl Harbour Attack.  It’s from the viewpoint outside-looking-in at a group of very lonely people sitting in a New York City all-night diner. Their faces are hard.  Their gestures are nervous.  I ask my students “What is the message here?”  I think I know these people and what they are feeling inside the painting.  They have nowhere else to go. 

That’s the hard part of reading Three Bedrooms.  Both Francoise and Kay feel so ALONE, and it appeared it would always be ths way. Earlier on, I may have mentioned that Simenon as a writer had a special ability to pentrate the criminal mind. Well, here, his writing skills extend equally to two haunted and desperate lovers. I feel for the deep sadness of Francoise and Kay.

All the LOVE. No PEACE.