Triptych: A Novel

by Claude Simon

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

Genres: Fiction, Nobel Prize, France, Literary Fiction, Novels, French Literature, Literature

171 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Awarded 1985 Nobel Prize in Literature, for being an author "who in his novel combines the poet's and the painter's creativeness with a deepened awareness of time in the depiction of the human condition."

Reviews

[Martin Koerner]

Whenever I persist with and, finally, get into a Claude Simon novel, two thoughts occur to me: 1)I will seldom be able to convince anyone else to read this and 2)Claude Simon is in many ways the finest writer I have ever read.
The fact that those two facts exist simultaneously means my enthusiasm can rarely be shared or, if I do attempt to do so, it rarely convinces. Simon writes in such a complex way that to attempt to describe it renders it redundant. Whilst, however, his writing takes an awful lot of concentration, it is, unlike many better known writers of similarly 'difficult' writing, extraordinarily worth the effort. Puzzles within puzzles will be dealt to you and, yes, many will not be solved, but many will and the sheer, unadulterated pleasure at working out what is going on is remarkable. It is also worth stating that whilst his writing is without doubt 'experimental' it is so for a reason; the form is integral to the story. This is true from novel to novel, but also, in the grander scheme; Simon overall is writing about what it is to read, what it is to be told a story, what it is to experience things; what it is to be alive. That he does all this with no authorial narrative whatever- no asides, no allusions to the inner psychologies of his characters- is all the more remarkable. In Triptych, this is more successful than anywhere else in his prose. Beyond these general assertions you probably don't need to know much more as the novel is about itself and writing a review of this is needless. So; take a week off work and devote your time to reading this. It is tough going by absolutely wonderful.

[Jacob]

When you go to a museum and see a still life, do you think:

(a) "This is amazing! Look at the detail on that orange!"
(b) "He's an incredible painter, I just wish he'd turn his attention to detail to something interesting!"
(c) "I hate still lives...nothing happens."

If you are type (a) you will love this book. If you are type (b) you may tolerate this book. If you are type (c) you will hate this book.

It's impossible to say what this book is about, other than it is a still life written by a master.

[F Craig]

The fifth installment in my nouveau roman project. This one has chapters (three!). I think in this book Simon achieves what he is reaching for in 'Conducting Bodies'; this seems to be a more fully-realized and successful effort. Despite its surface difficulties, it is really quite brilliant, if difficult to describe. The visual element is strong, with both layers of images that connect seemingly disparate story lines (are we watching a film, are we looking at a poster, are we at a circus??), and also intersections of those images that connect events in different ways. Not a casual read, but certainly a worthwhile one.

[Omar Abu Samra]

This book is far from the traditional aspects of understanding. It is difficult to understand what is happening or why all this is happening, to be precise. This is a pure work of art, nothing more, and one reading is not enough to evaluate this book. It is different from any work written by Claude Simon.
Simon uses language as a sharp, slow instrument. Sentences are long but their range is short. The verbs and similes are short, despite the single paragraph. This is unusual in his work( short verbs etc) . I don't know if I enjoyed the language (which I usually do when reading Simon), but I enjoyed this mental journey, like looking at a painting and not knowing what is happening.

[Janet]

Read it because it was assigned. Contemporary baroque literature where one sentence did not fit with the next. Unpleasant subject matter. Kind of wondered what kind of awful person would force his students to read and analyze it.

[A]

WHAT.

This book. This book. THIS BOOK.

[Nik]

I read this like four years ago. I remember the first chapter being literally perfect, and the rest was very good as well, if a little cold. Still, it was surprising and singular enough to warrant five stars.

[Zach Tarr]

We’re keepin’ it real with Claude Simon’s Triptych, or rather, we’re radically redefining realism through the continually shifting focus of a novel away from any point in a plot. This book doesn’t present a coherent world that can be rationally understood as cause and effect toward some teleological culmination of clarity for the reader; Simon depicts reality as it first appears to consciousness. So, this book is a fragmented series of things; they are unstable, so they’re in changing states, and composed of fleeting sensations of events. This is a book of images, sounds, textures, and memories. His characters are not traditional protagonists who shape events through decisive action but observers who attempt to understand an opaque world through relentless acts of looking, if you read the book, you're in the same category. There are long and meticulous descriptions of what is happening; these replace conventional narrative progressions because the novel’s true subject is not what happens, but how the world is perceived before it is organized into concepts or explanations. You are that perceiver. You never get inside the minds of the characters; you watch them and give meaning to what they’re doing.

The novel’s painterly and cinematic qualities arise from this emphasis on visual perception. Simon deconstructs the narrative and reconstructs it as a series of richly detailed images that continually transform into one another through similarities of color, movement, texture, and spatial form rather than through logical or chronological connections. He is a master of transitional moments; what is read is merely sequential, but will interpenetrate, and if that sounds kind of sexual, well, sometimes it is. The narration is replaced by description: landscapes, bodies, objects, photographs, posters, and even fragments of film generate new scenes, and these scenes become narrative through visual association. By slowing movement into an almost motionless tableau and treating every detail—from a church steeple to a blade of grass or a cigarette box—with equal attention, Simon dissolves the distinction between background and foreground; subject and background become one, and he makes the world itself the protagonist. You’re not reading a book; you’re looking at a painting, where understanding emerges gradually through relationships among images rather than through plot, and then your reason follows.

Yet this obsessive realism ultimately reveals not clarity but opacity. The closer Simon’s characters examine the world, the less stable and intelligible it becomes. Faces dissolve into folds of flesh, bodies into isolated anatomical fragments; are two people having sex, or is it just light projected onto a screen? Neither; it’s really just some squiggly lines on paper, maybe even less than that, or worse, something more: The language you read is merely visible marks, signs and advertisements, and even the self can become an object of detached observation. Meaning is never simply discovered beneath appearances; instead, reality remains resistant to complete understanding, leaving the characters alienated from both the external world and themselves. Simon’s realism does not imitate order, but faithfully represents the uncertainty, fragmentation, and perceptual richness of modern experience. The deepest truth of reality lies not in explanatory stories but in the continuous movement of perception itself. I count this book as one of the most experimental texts I’ve ever come across, and I surrendered my judgement to the oasis of novelty that composed this novel.