Georges Simenon

Simenon said that Colette taught him to write, rejecting stories he submitted as too literary. As a young writer newly moved to Paris, Simenon mixed with Vlaminck, Jacob and Picasso. He had a two-year affair with the then-unknown Baker, and boasted to his friend Miller about his sexual strength. Gide thought him a novelist of genius, maintained a longstanding dialogue, and questioned him extensively whenever he visited. Among other friends, Auric wrote an opera with him, while Pagnol and Cocteau waited for news of what Pagnol called “Simenon’s heart condition, of which Cocteau almost died.”