Claude Simon

in full
Claude Eugène Henri Simon
born
October 10, 1913, Tananarive [now
Antananarivo], Madagascar
died July 6, 2005, Paris, France
writer
whose works are among the most authentic
representatives of the French nouveau roman
(“new novel”) that emerged in the 1950s. He
was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
in 1985.
The son of
a cavalry officer who was killed in World
War I, Simon was raised by his mother in
Perpignan, France. After studies at Paris,
Oxford, and Cambridge, he traveled widely
and then fought in World War II. He was
captured by the Germans in May 1940,
escaped, and joined the French Resistance,
managing to complete his first novel, Le
Tricheur (1945; “The Trickster”), during the
war years. Later he settled in his hometown
in southern France, where he bought a
vineyard and produced wine.
In Le Vent
(1957; The Wind) Simon defined his goals: to
challenge the fragmentation of his time and
to rediscover the permanence of objects and
people, evidenced by their survival through
the upheavals of contemporary history. He
treated the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War
in La Corde raide (1947; “The Taut Rope”)
and Le Sacre du printemps (1954; “The Rite
of Spring”) and the 1940 collapse of France
in Le Tricheur. Four novels—L’Herbe (1958;
The Grass), La Route des Flandres (1960; The
Flanders Road), La Palace (1962; The
Palace), and Histoire (1967)—constitute a
cycle containing recurring characters and
events. Many critics consider these novels,
especially La Route des Flandres, to be his
most important work. Later novels include La
Bataille de Pharsale (1969; The Battle of
Pharsalus), Triptyque (1973; Triptych), Les
Géorgiques (1981; The Georgics), and Le
Tramway (2001; The Trolley).
Simon’s
style is a mixture of narration and stream
of consciousness, lacking all punctuation
and heavy with 1,000-word sentences. Through
such masses of words, Simon attempted to
capture the very progression of life. His
novels remain readable despite their seeming
chaos.