Triptych (Calderbooks S.) - Softcover

Simon, Claude

Softcover

ISBN 10: 071453787X ISBN 13: 9780714537870

Publisher: Calder Publications Ltd, 1981

Synopsis

Three separate stories, about a failed marriage, a child's death, and a summer holiday, are told currently in a structure designed to resemble a three-sided painting.

About this title

From the Publisher

The first member of the nouveau roman to win the Nobel Prize
in 1985 for the fiction work 'The Georgics'. Claude Simon has for many
years been a favourite writer among literary academics. He has one of the
most individual prose styles, comparable in similar ways to Proust's,
careful consideration has gone into catching his flows and rhythms in
English. As with Robbe-Grillet, it is the focus upon the mind as subject
and the stream of consciousness that distinguishes Simon's writing, which
often goes off at a tangent as an association triggers another thought or
memory. But however long the discursion, Simon always returns to his main
narrative, which often moralises on the deeper meaning of events or the
motivations of those who manoeuvre the world for their own ends. A cavalry
officer from a military family, he had horrific war experiences and perhaps
is at his best in describing war from the inside, how it effects officers
and men, and those who make the wars and profit from them. As with Beckett,
a deep vein of pessimism runs through Simon's work. Laurent LeSage (French
writer and critic) writes: `Life is tragic for Simon because human
existence counts for so little in the universal order of things.' The
individual, with all his sufferings and aspirations, is usually depicted as
of little importance in the great tide of history; a tragic sense of
history, of the self and of human tenderness.

Edition details

• Publisher: Calder Publications Ltd
• Publication date: 1981
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 071453787X
• ISBN 13: 9780714537870
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 171