Status
Available
Call number
Series
Collection
Publication
NYRB Classics (2005), Paperback, 216 pages
Description
A brilliant new translation of one of Simenon's best loved masterpieces. 'A certain furtive, almost shameful emotion ... disturbed him whenever he saw a train go by, a night train especially, its blinds drawn down on the mystery of its passengers' Kees Popinga is a respectable Dutch citizen and family man. Then he discovers that his boss has bankrupted the shipping firm he works for - and something snaps. Kees used to watch the trains go by to exciting destinations. Now, on some dark impulse, he boards one at random, and begins a new life of recklessness and violence. This chilling portrayal of a man who breaks from society and goes on the run asks who we are, and what we are capable of. 'Classic Simenon ... extraordinary in its evocative power' Independent 'What emerges is the bare human animal' John Gray 'Read him at your peril, avoid him at your loss' Sunday Times… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member thorold
A respectable middle-aged office-worker becomes aware of the absurdity of human life and finds himself committing a motiveless violent crime. No, not Albert Camus, but Simenon, in 1938, four years before L'Etranger appeared.
L'Homme qui regardait passer les trains is not so much a conventional roman
This is a book that should resonate with modern readers: the background of the economic collapse of the thirties is becoming relevant to us again, and the picture of someone who faces losing job, home and pension because his boss has been siphoning off money from the company into unwise investments is not as dated as we might have thought ten years ago. What also struck me as very modern is the way the fugitive interacts with the press: reading about himself as "Le satyre d'Amsterdam" both infuriates and validates him, and he can't resist writing letters of complaint to the papers when they get things wrong about him. Eventually we realise that the policeman - who plays a key role throughout the book, even though he never directly appears in it - is manipulating the press for his own reasons as well.
L'Homme qui regardait passer les trains is not so much a conventional roman
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policier as a pursuit thriller coupled with a psychological exploration of what happens when we throw off all the shackles of conventional society. Although the subject is similar to L'Etranger, the technique is very different: instead of Camus's gaunt, spare prose we have a wealth of everyday detail about Kees Popinga's life both before and after the cataclysmic act. The story is, however, told almost exclusively from the POV of Kees, and Simenon (like Camus) effectively forces us to identify with the character. Simenon's approach centres on weaving together the details of Kees's calm and rational approach to avoiding arrest with hints of an increasingly paranoid state of mind. This is a book that should resonate with modern readers: the background of the economic collapse of the thirties is becoming relevant to us again, and the picture of someone who faces losing job, home and pension because his boss has been siphoning off money from the company into unwise investments is not as dated as we might have thought ten years ago. What also struck me as very modern is the way the fugitive interacts with the press: reading about himself as "Le satyre d'Amsterdam" both infuriates and validates him, and he can't resist writing letters of complaint to the papers when they get things wrong about him. Eventually we realise that the policeman - who plays a key role throughout the book, even though he never directly appears in it - is manipulating the press for his own reasons as well.
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LibraryThing member William345
This was diverting, though not my favorite of the six or so Simenons I have read so far, all on the New York Review Books imprint. Kees Popinga, a buttoned down manager of a ships chandlery in Holland, goes on a bit of a rampage after his boss tells him that he has run the business into the ground.
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This is the same business, the watchword for rectitude and probity in the little port town in which it operates, into which Kees has invested every cent of his savings. Kees subsequently (inadvertently?) kills a hooker by the name of Pamela whom he has lusted after for years when, bereft of his illusions, she laughs at him. Then he goes to Paris and becomes a subject for the tabloids ("Sex Fiend") as he remains at large for several weeks. However, once the newspapers lose interest and relegate his story to inner pages, he starts to write letters to the editor in which he pathetically tries to keep the thrill alive; his ostensible motive being to explain himself since they "have him all wrong." The book is troubled early on, in my view, by some hardboiled-sounding dialog, generally something the titles I've read are free of. I felt it was very good but lacking in action, and by contrast, too heavy on the ruminations of its protagonist, mostly rendered as free indirect speech. My favorite NYRB Simenons so far have been Dirty Snow and Strangers In The House. The latter being, in my opinion, dazzling on a sentence by sentence basis. Recommended with reservations. Show Less
LibraryThing member HearTheWindSing
While discussing Black Swan with friends the other day, I realized this novel has a similarity or two with Darren Aronofsky movies. Remember those movies ( Requiem for a Dream, Pi, The Wrestler, Black Swan ) where we have one or more characters going on with their lives when somehow things begin
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spiraling out of control. And how!. The Man Who Watched Trains Go By has a similar premise, except the transition in the protagonist's life is relatively more sudden. He steps around a corner from where there is no turning back.Kees Popinga, the protagonist, has always done what is expected of him by the society, his family and his employer. He has built a stable and seemingly content life for himself. However, while trying too hard to be perfect, he has lost himself somewhere, forgotten who he really was and how he really wishes to live. He is tired and bored of being himself. He is bogged down by the monotony of his life, though he doesn't yet realize as much. One fateful night, his predictable life takes an unexpected turn and Popinga breaks down. He is now no longer the man who always used to watch trains go by while staying put, but hops on a train himself to start afresh and live on his own terms. And the reader accompanies him on his existential journey.
Simenon writes well. He never goes too deep into Popinga's psychology, but lets us understand his psyche by telling a lot of the story from Popinga's point-of-view. Popinga gets himself into a cat-and-mouse game with the police. He goes about playing this game objectively, thinking and planning out every move he makes. While Popinga takes pride in being so clear-headed and smart, the reader can only feel sorry for the poor fellow's foolishness. Whatever you feel about his actions, you can't help feeling pity for him. You want to grab him by the shoulders and shake some sense into his head. Like those times when you find yourself yelling at someone on your TV screen.
Simenon also sprinkles the plot with suspense which adds another interesting dimension to the story.
There are sure to be many Popingas in the world around us who are wearied of their stressful lives and wish to breathe free.
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LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
Simenon was one of a long tradition of Francograph writers who churn out good books with relative ease - Balzac, Zola, Dumas(but he cheated and used ghostwriters). Simenon was used to the speed of some 10-40 per year! Makes Vollmann look like a obsessive haiku poet who only releases one volume
This book follows a perfectly respectable man from a perfectly respectable background who throttles people and goes on the run, and his misadventures. A murder mystery from the criminal's side. It's fascinating to see the guy crack. A cool irony throughout, and one which hits very close.
Now with Simenon, where do I go from here?
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every 20 years by comparison (No offense, Bill).This book follows a perfectly respectable man from a perfectly respectable background who throttles people and goes on the run, and his misadventures. A murder mystery from the criminal's side. It's fascinating to see the guy crack. A cool irony throughout, and one which hits very close.
Now with Simenon, where do I go from here?
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LibraryThing member smik
THE MAN WHO WATCHED THE TRAINS GO BY is one of Simenon's "psychological novels". At first Kees Popinga seems absolutely normal but something snaps when he finds out that his boss is going to fake suicide and that the company he works for is going under, taking his life savings with it. It now seems
Now the inhibitions have gone and he deserts his family and takes himself to Amsterdam to visit a woman of ill-repute, Pamela, who dies as a result of his visit. From there Popinga goes to Paris where he becomes involved in a car heist and is constantly preoccupied with reports about himself in the newspapers.
This is not a Maigret novel although the policeman in charge of looking for Popinga is Superintendent Lucas who of course in the Maigret novels is Maigret's lieutenant. Popinga wants newspaper readers to have an accurate version of his achievements and so he writes to newspaper editors and then to Lucas himself to correct details that he thinks have been inaccurately reported. He is insulted when a French professor of psychiatry says he is paranoic, although he is not quite sure what that means.
As the plot progresses Popinga becomes increasingly detached from normality, not really understanding the hole he is digging for himself.
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that he has worked all his life for nothing and he feels released to explore his "other self". There have been signs of mental inbalance that have emerged before, but they have been kept tightly reined in by other people's expectations, and Popinga's own concepts of right and wrong.Now the inhibitions have gone and he deserts his family and takes himself to Amsterdam to visit a woman of ill-repute, Pamela, who dies as a result of his visit. From there Popinga goes to Paris where he becomes involved in a car heist and is constantly preoccupied with reports about himself in the newspapers.
This is not a Maigret novel although the policeman in charge of looking for Popinga is Superintendent Lucas who of course in the Maigret novels is Maigret's lieutenant. Popinga wants newspaper readers to have an accurate version of his achievements and so he writes to newspaper editors and then to Lucas himself to correct details that he thinks have been inaccurately reported. He is insulted when a French professor of psychiatry says he is paranoic, although he is not quite sure what that means.
As the plot progresses Popinga becomes increasingly detached from normality, not really understanding the hole he is digging for himself.
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LibraryThing member soylentgreen23
I've read one or two of the Maigret stories, but never expected Simenon to have produced something like this. A very modern psychological story, with a narrator you can never quite trust or quite believe, who is clearly deceiving himself - and maybe us? I would say more, but I don't want to spoil
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the discovery of how a book written in the 1930s could be so ahead of its time. Show Less
LibraryThing member FPdC
This book is the portuguese translation of the french original L'homme qui regardait passer les trains. A lovely story by the creator of the famous inspector Maigret. A fraudulent bankrupcy in a Groningen firm turns the respectable middle class Kees Popinga into an outcast in Paris, where his inner
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ghosts slowly overtake his logical mind and turn him into a paranoic personality. Show Less
LibraryThing member MyopicBookworm
A novel about criminal psychology rather than a detective story. I enjoyed this, which has been lurking unread among my classic Pan collection for nearly three decades. A Dutch businessman, secretly resenting his stuffy, conventional life, is suddenly confronted with ruin, snaps, kills someone, and
I was reminded of John Wain's "The Smaller Sky" (1967), in which a respectable businessman drops out and takes up residence in a large London railway station.
MB 27-viii-2021
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then tries to go to ground in central Paris, aiming to maintain a respectable anonymity while evading the police and with a diminishing stock of money. Simenon's protagonist (I won't call him "hero") is helped by some members of the Parisian criminal underclass, but is eventually undone by a random encounter with another, and by his own unravelling mental state. Despite the title, the watching of trains is rather peripheral to the action, though for Popinga they symbolize "the life beyond", and in the end he is inexorably drawn to the railway.I was reminded of John Wain's "The Smaller Sky" (1967), in which a respectable businessman drops out and takes up residence in a large London railway station.
MB 27-viii-2021
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Language
Original language
French
Original publication date
1938
Physical description
224 p.; 8.02 inches
ISBN
1590171497 / 9781590171493
Local notes
French: L'homme qui regardait passer les trains