Back to the Classics #22

I read this book for my second round of the reading challenge Back to the Classics 2020.

Classic in Translation. This 1954 novel is titled Le Grand Bob in the original. Simenon’s romans durs (hard novels) often begin or end with a crime but are not mysteries. They are concise, clinical examinations of human beings who’ve left patience and moderation in the rear view mirror, driven by the shock of aging, altered circumstances or twisted thinking to irrational responses. In the 1980s, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich released a boatload of romans durs in English. But US culture (moonwalking, Magnum PI, neon, Chariots of Fire, big hair, etc.) wasn’t into home truths and the books were quickly remaindered, ending up in discount stores like Edward R. Hamilton. Times change. I daresay thinking people might get a charge out of existential thrillers in our plaguy days, given COVID-19 has even hardcore readers like us contemplating the ends of our tethers.

Big Bob - Georges Simenon

On a typical summer Sunday, in Tilly, on the banks of the Seine, the title character attempted to make his suicide look like an accidental death. But nobody is fooled. His wife Lulu Dandurand, consumed with carking guilt that he did it because action or inaction on her part, asks Dr. Charles Coindreau if he can find anything out that would explain Bob’s taking his own life, out of the blue. Charles searches the past and the present of his buddy Bob, the life of the party always cheerful and bantering, for pieces that can fill in this puzzle.

Coming from an upper middle class family, Bob had attended law school, first in Poitiers, where his father taught law, then in Paris. It was in 1930 that he met Lulu, a good-hearted young woman with no discernible future. Making the rounds of the dizzy array of French drinking establishments, he tells her of his decision to blow off his oral exams to be held the next day, an act tantamount to breaking with his family. Bob and Lulu, after having lived together, get married a few years later and settle in Paris where Lulu, a hatmaker, and Bob, who changes jobs frequently voluntarily and not, live modestly, the center of a boisterous social circle.

During a weekend at the Auberge du Beau-Dimanche in Tilly, Lulu had one of her many miscarriages. Dr. Charles Coindreau looks after her and becomes the couple's confidant. Charles's investigation into the death of his friend Bob yields revelations though one wonders if any explanation will be complete..

Bob didn’t value money, property, prestige, awards, vacations, authority. He flitted from job to job, always loving his wife, always laughing. He found meaning in his life by making one person happy and enjoying himself in an active social life. And when he found out his remaining time would have to be devoted to things that were unbearable to him and things that didn’t contribute to the happiness of Lulu, he chose to go through what the Stoics call the open door.

Bob’s dying well as an expression of living well, however, does not have a beneficial effect on Lulu. With his hard-headed bead on the tendency of people to call going through motions to get past one damn thing after another “living,” Simenon poses hard questions to middle-aged readers.  How relatable is a story about avoiding ruts? How do you the reader recognize yourself in the story? How do you not recognize yourself? How do you recognize value in life?