Pedigree

Simenon had barely finished the first version in February 1941 when he sent the typescript, as was his habit, to his friend and critic André Gide. Gide proved more reserved than he had been about Les Inconnus dans la maison, which he considered Simenon’s masterpiece. In August 1942, Gide received the final version, which he judged better, though he regretted the sort of “self-indulgence” that pervades Pedigree. The book was not published at the time, the war doing nothing to help matters. Yet Simenon needed an outlet: “When I wrote Pedigree,” he later said, “I had another reason for writing it, and above all I had reason to breathe a sigh of relief when I finished it. I told myself: I’m done with all these people! Now that I’ve given them flesh and blood in a book, they will no longer haunt me and I can write about new characters.”

A precious copy from the library of Sven Nielsen.

Simenon met the young publisher at the Liberation. Won over, he agreed to write the preface for the first book Nielsen published, Traqué, by the Norwegian author Arthur Omre. This marked the beginning of a very long and untroubled collaboration — and friendship — Simenon transferring, in 1947, all literary rights to his work to Presses de la Cité, to the detriment of Gallimard, who, despite Gaston Gallimard’s generous offers, could not retain him. Until 1981, Presses de la Cité would publish 141 previously unpublished books by Simenon, with an average — and colossal — print run of 300,000 copies across all editions.

Grisay, p. 105; Menguy, 142, p. 90.