The watchmaker from Everton

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The Everton Watchmaker (French: L'horloger d'Everton ) is a novel by the Belgian writer Georges Simenon . The novel was written from March 16 to 24, 1954 in Lakeville , Connecticut and was published in June of that year by the Paris publisher Presses de la Cité . The first German translation by Ursula Vogel was published by Diogenes Verlag in 1991 . In 1974 the film adaptation of The Watchmaker of St. Paul by Bertrand Tavernier with Philippe Noiret in the leading role came into the cinemas.

Dave Galloway is a watchmaker in the American town of Everton. Since his wife left him many years ago, he has been raising his now sixteen-year-old son Ben alone. He is abruptly torn from his uneventful life when the son runs away with his girlfriend and leaves a corpse. At all costs, the father wants to protect his son, but he has to see how the fleeing lovers are chased across America by the police.

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Dave Clifford Galloway is a 43-year-old watchmaker who lives in the small town of Everton, New York State . The highlight of his uneventful life are the backgammon games on Saturdays with his friend Frank Musak. He only went overboard once: when he married his wife Ruth, who was decried as a bitch by all colleagues. In fact, it was only 20 months before Ruth left her husband and their son Ben overnight. Since then, Galloway has been raising the meanwhile sixteen-year-old Ben alone, with whom, despite his reticence, he thinks he has a good relationship.

But one Saturday evening, Ben runs away in his father's van. At his side is Lillian Hawkins, the fifteen-and-a-half-year-old daughter who, to Galloway's surprise, has been his son's girlfriend for three months. The next day, the police stood at Galloway's door and found not only the watchmaker's old van, but also a corpse that Ben is said to have shot to continue the escape with his Oldsmobile . Now the police from six states and the FBI are chasing the alleged murderer couple on the assumption that they are heading to a state in which marriage of minors is permitted.

From Everton, Galloway helplessly witnesses the hunt for his son. In the hope of making a good impression on Ben, he cooperates with the press, and fearing that the police might simply shoot the fugitives down, he spreads an appeal in the media to give up, which in retrospect appears to be betrayal of his son . Eventually, the lovers are arrested in Indiana , where they blackmailed a farmer at gunpoint with food and went to a justice of the peace to get married. Galloway flies straight to Indiana, but his son refuses any contact, and only a lawyer enables an encounter in which father and son have nothing to say. The boy shows a proud smile, is full of love for his girlfriend Lillian and does not regret the common deeds.

It takes a while before Galloway learns to understand his son and is able to place him in a family line. All Galloways have led an adapted life in which they have resigned themselves to the circumstances. But they all revolted at one point in their life. Galloway's father died early when he cheated on his mother one day, Galloway himself when he married a woman of bad repute against advice, and now the watchmaker sees his son Ben continue this series of revolts. At the trial before the Supreme Court , Galloway expresses solidarity with his son, which is the first time he has succeeded in forging a bond between father and son. Ben and Lillian are not sentenced to death because of their youth, only to life imprisonment. Galloway visits his son regularly in prison in the hope of growing closer to him over the years. When Lillian's pregnancy became apparent, the watchmaker eagerly awaited the next generation of the Galloways, to whom he would like to share the secret of human existence.

interpretation

The Everton Watchmaker was Simenon's last novel written and acted in America before the author returned to France in 1955. According to Lucille F. Becker, Simenon designed a small American town in the 1950s with just a few strokes, with a main street around which a few shops and a small cinema are lined up, as well as the branching side streets with their uniform residential buildings. With it he draws a picture of peace and order that is in stark contrast to future events. Tim Morris points to some American myths that play a role in the novel, from the role of baseball as a kind of secular religion to the criminal outburst of young lovers in the style of Bonnie and Clyde .

For Sebastian Hammelehle, The Watchmaker from Everton is “a real romance novel - not about the love of men and women, but about the love of a father for his son”. According to Michel Lemoine, the novel completely adopts the father's perspective, who like a modern father Goriot, full of forbearance and love, not only apologizes for the son's deeds, but even stylizes him as a victim of what happened. The watchmaker's view is at the same time a negative view of women, which narrows down so much to the male line of descent in the family that Galloway's grandchild can ultimately only be imagined as a boy. The father-son relationship is a frequent subject in Simenon's oeuvre, with novels such as The Red Donkey , The Fate of the Malous or The Confession taking the son's opposite perspective. A father raising his son alone appears repeatedly in Simenon's works. This also applies to Maigret's father in Maigret's memoir . John Raymond even recognizes a grandfather-father-son relationship in The Watchmaker of Everton , which can also be found in Simenon's life and his autobiographical novel Family Tree .

Already in the second paragraph, according to John Raymond, the reader is drawn into the life of the watchmaker in a downright hypnotized manner. "Who knows whether he would not have experienced these hours more intensely, would have enjoyed them to the full, if he had a suspicion that it would be his last happy evening?" Lucille F. Becker makes such warnings and harbingers of future tragedies at the beginning many Simenon novels. Often the protagonist, an insignificant representative of the "common people", is unable to cope with the destructive fate that awaits him and the tragic role that he has to play in it, and stumbles blindly to the omens of his misfortune. For Becker, the watchmaker initially lives in harmony and peace. The routine of his life, the repetition of mechanical gestures and actions, is a kind of ritual with which he exorcises misfortune. A detail such as the spatial separation of business and apartment in the same building, between which the watchmaker has to walk into the street, demonstrates for Tim Morris his alienation in life.

Not only from the title Sebastian Hammelehle reminds The watchmaker of Everton at The Bookseller of Arkhangelsk . Both protagonists are social outsiders who are abandoned by the same type of promiscuous women. From that moment on, Galloway's whole life revolves around his son, and when the latter commits a murder, according to Scott Phillips, everything he lived for collapses. The watchmaker, who had previously stuck to his idea of ​​an impeccable existence with iron self-control and unbearable self-confidence, must learn, according to Tim Morris, that in truth he did not know his son or father. The connection between her three lives, which he constructed in the end in order to convince himself of her, is outrageous, since the deeds of father and son have nothing in common. After all, Lucille F. Becker draws the comparison that all three men, grandfather, father and son, attempted an act of liberation for which they ended up paying for life.

Stanley G. Eskin sees in The Watchmaker of Everton an "anti-escape novel", in which the protagonist ultimately remains rooted in his surroundings, such as in The Son Cardinaud . What is unusual is the perspective in which it is not the escapist who is pursued, but the one who remains behind, who pursues the escape from a distance. At the same time, it is a typical Simenon “understanding novel” in which “the focus is on finding and understanding the essential truth that is hidden behind a traumatic situation”. In a direct and figurative sense, the watchmaker tries to “find” his son, to understand him and his actions. In the end, Galloway supposedly understood the “secret of human existence” and would like to pass it on to his grandson. What this secret consists of remains open. Lucille F. Becker offers several explanations: it could be the primacy of heredity that forges unbreakable chains between the generations of a family. It could also be man's loneliness in the world, because of which one should not judge him, but understand and love him.

reception

According to Stanley G. Eskin, The Everton Watchmaker is a subsidiary work by the author. However, he praised the “masterly handling of the narrative perspective”. TS Eliot wrote to Simenon in a letter that he was "proud and happy" to have a signed copy. He was particularly impressed by the way Simenon portrayed one of his basic themes, the father-son relationship, from different perspectives. Tim Morris immediately felt reminded of Eliot's poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock . For him it was a "captivating little novel [...] full of psychological tension, albeit a less explicit criminal act". Peter Kaiser judged: "A sensitive, frightening and never sentimental father-son story, which makes Simenon's mastery as a relationship observer and shortage artist clear!"

American writer Scott Phillips called The Everton Watchmaker "the bleakest book" he had ever read. It is the kind of detective novel that is worth writing because a crime is happening without actually being the point. For Thomas Lask of The New York Times , The Everton Watchmaker was not on par with the co-published novel The Rico Brothers , but still offers "a documentary account of the depraved souls that live among us." The Saturday Review saw emphasized the psychological point of view and judged: "effective execution, as always." Kirkus Reviews spoke of "precision work for the fans".

filming

In 1974, the film version came The Clockmaker of St. Paul of Bertrand Tavernier in the cinemas. Jean Rochefort and Philippe Noiret played the leading roles . The film was Tavernier's first own film project. He had previously worked on the press work for two other Simenon films - The Cat and The Widow and the Convict . According to his own statements, he was deeply touched by the novel The Watchmaker from Everton . He asked Simenon for a film option, which Simenon initially refused and only granted after Tavernier had analyzed the novel in detail in a lengthy exchange of letters. Tavernier moved the action from the American Everton to his hometown Lyon in the St. Paul district. In addition, he built a police superintendent to the second main character of the plot and turned the random murder victim of the novel into a brutal security guard.

According to Tavernier, 80% of the novel was left unchanged. Lucille F. Becker, on the other hand, spoke of 80% scenes specially designed for the film. In particular, Tavernier turned the murder into a politically justified act, a concept that was completely alien to Simenon's oeuvre. The final solidarity of father and son against social injustice and oppression in the film has nothing to do with the unconscious, inexpressible inner workings of Galloway in the novel, which, however, cannot be brought to the big screen. Tavernier's film is therefore a good example of how far one has to move away from the original in a successful Simenon film in order to meet the tastes of moviegoers.

expenditure

  • Georges Simenon: L'horloger d'Everton . Presses de la Cité, Paris 1954 (first edition).
  • Georges Simenon: The Everton Watchmaker . Translation: Ursula Vogel. Diogenes, Zurich 1978, ISBN 3-257-22405-2 .
  • Georges Simenon: The Everton Watchmaker . Selected novels in 50 volumes, volume 34. Translation: Ursula Vogel. Diogenes, Zurich 2012, ISBN 978-3-257-24134-1 .
  • Georges Simenon: The Everton Watchmaker . Translation: Ursula Vogel. With an afterword by Philipp Haibach. Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-455-00472-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biographie de Georges Simenon 1946 à 1967 on Toutesimenon.com, the website of Omnibus Verlag.
  2. ^ L'horloger d'Everton in the Simenon bibliography by Yves Martina.
  3. ↑ Oliver Hahn: Bibliography of German-language editions . Georges-Simenon-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Simenon-Jahrbuch 2003 . Wehrhahn, Laatzen 2004, ISBN 3-86525-101-3 , p. 116.
  4. ^ A b Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography. Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 324.
  5. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon . House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , p. 121.
  6. ↑ a b c Tim Morris: lection: l'horloger d'everton on the website of the University of Texas at Arlington .
  7. ↑ a b Sebastian Hammelehle: Simenon novels: Sex is just another word for despair . On Spiegel Online from February 13, 2013.
  8. ↑ Michel Lemoine: L'horloger d'Everton . In: Robert Frickx, Raymond Trousson (eds.): Lettres françaises de Belgique. Dictionnaire of the oeuvre. I. Le roman . Duclout Paris 1988, ISBN 2-8011-0755-7 , pp. 252-253.
  9. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon . House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , p. 13.
  10. ↑ John Raymond: Simenon in Court . Hamilton, London 1968, ISBN 0-241-01505-7 , p. 79.
  11. ↑ John Raymond: Simenon in Court . Hamilton, London 1968, ISBN 0-241-01505-7 , p. 31.
  12. ^ Georges Simenon: The Everton Clockmaker . Diogenes, Zurich 2012, ISBN 978-3-257-24134-1 , p. 5.
  13. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon . House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , pp. 121-122.
  14. ↑ a b Liam José: CF # 9 Excerpt: An Interview With Scott Phillips . Excerpt from Crime Factory No. 9.
  15. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon . House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , p. 122.
  16. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 267.
  17. ↑ a b Peter Kaiser: Fathers and Sons ( Memento of the original from September 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.litges.at archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on litges.at.
  18. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon . House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , p. 123.
  19. ^ Stanley G. Eskin: Simenon. A biography . Diogenes, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-01830-4 , p. 429.
  20. ↑ Patrick Marnham: The Man Who Wasn't Maigret. The life of Georges Simenon . Knaus, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-8135-2208-3 , p. 362.
  21. ^ Pierre Assouline : Simenon. A biography . Chatto & Windus, London 1997, ISBN 0-7011-3727-4 , p. 293.
  22. ^ TS Eliot : The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock at Wikisource .
  23. ↑ "an absorbing little novel [...] full of psychological suspense if little explicit criminal action." Quoted from: Tim Morris: lection: l'horloger d'everton on the website of the University of Texas at Arlington .
  24. ^ "Each story will provide a documentary account of those twisted souls who live among us". In: Thomas Lask: The Beast Within . In: The New York Times, June 6, 1967.
  25. ^ "Handling effective, as always." In: Saturday Review Volume 39, 1956, p. 35.
  26. ^ "Precision jobs for the fans." Quoted from: The Witnesses and the Watchmaker on Kirkus Reviews .
  27. ↑ The Clockmaker of St. Paul in the Internet Movie Database .
  28. ↑ a b Stephen Lowentstein: Bertrand Tavernier: The Watchmaker of Saint-Paul . In: My First Movie . Pantheon, New York 2000, ISBN 0-375-42081-9 , pp. 156-170. ( Online )
  29. ↑ Andrew Pulver: Watch and learn: Bertrand Tavernier's The Watchmaker of Saint-Paul (1974) . In: The Guardian, April 2, 2005.
  30. ↑ Lucille F. Becker: Georges Simenon . House, London 2006, ISBN 1-904950-34-5 , pp. 119, 121, 123-124.