Georges Simenon - Career's Beginnings

Career's Beginnings

In January 1919, the sixteen-year-old Simenon took a job at the Gazette de Liège, a newspaper edited by Joseph Demarteau. While Simenon's own beat only covered unimportant human interest stories, it afforded him an opportunity to explore the seamier side of the city, including politics, bars, and cheap hotels but also crime, police investigations and lectures on police technique by the criminologist Edmond Locard. Simenon's experience at the Gazette also taught him the art of quick editing. Indeed, he wrote more than 150 articles under the pen name "G. Sim."

Simenon's first novel, Au Pont des Arches, was written in June 1919 and published in 1921 under his "G. Sim" pseudonym. Writing as "Monsieur Le Coq", he also published more than 800 humorous pieces between November 1919 and December 1922.

During this period, Simenon's familiarity with nightlife (read: prostitutes, drunkenness and general carousing) only increased. The people he rubbed elbows with included anarchists, bohemian artists and even two future murderers, the latter appearing in his novel Les Trois crimes de mes amis. He also frequented a group of artists known as "La Caque". While not really involved in the group, he did meet his future wife Régine Renchon through it.