Keep it simple, except in Italian

The Rap Sheet posts a series of retrospectives on The New Black Mask. The posts are full of good reading, as, indeed, the publication seems to have been. Some comments from Inspector Maigret's creator are of special interest.

Georges Simenon told New Black Mask that he used “a minimum of adjectives and adverbs, a minimum of abstract words which have a different resonance for each reader.” He asked as well that his translators “safeguard his simplicity,” but he admitted the task could be difficult, “as for instance in Italian.”

© Peter Rozovsky 2007