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Conducting Bodies
English, French (translation)
191 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1971
2 people are currently reading
182 people want to read
About the author
Claude Simon
65 books134 followersAwarded 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."
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
October 3, 2025
i was under the impression that simon had downplayed his being grouped with the 'nouveau roman' writers, so it was a surprise to me that this one is almost comically nouveau roman, it feels like it could even be a response to critics pigeonholing him. it's a 191 page paragraph that mostly consists of very detailed descriptions of: inanimate objects that the protagonist(if there is only one, it's not totally clear) sees, conversations that he witnesses at the communist literary conference he seems to be attending, anatomical diagrams and models at the doctor's office, people on a plane, a ragged band of people trudging through a south american jungle who periodically come under attack by indigenous people(possibly these guys are the subject of a painting) and a few other things. sometimes the subject of a sentence is not the same as the subject of the previous sentence, so occasionally you will be brought back to some object or person that was mentioned a few pages back, or there will be a strange juxtaposition caused by two sentences seeming to have the same subject at first but actually being different upon closer examination, eventually you start to get into a strange kind of rhythm. if you kind of squint there is even a hint of a plot, involving a woman rejecting a man, some dissidence at the aforementioned literary conference, and a few other things, but really if you're reading this kind of stuff you should be well beyond the need for plot.
February 14, 2010
One of the most maddening, difficult, non-sensical books I've read in a long time -- and I loved every minute of it.
February 11, 2008
Claude Simon, Conducting Bodies (Grove, 1971)
Have you ever read a 191-page paragraph?
Okay, if that doesn't put you off, how about a 191-page paragraph that switches back and forth from scene to scene with no warning? Okay, with a little warning.
Claude Simon's Conducting Bodies is an experiment in memory, I think. Simon uses a number of catchphrases (the "conducting bodies" of the title) to alert the reader to upcoming scene changes. Often, a scene changes in the middle of the action and will be picked up again later; sometimes a hundred pages or so later. There are no divisions of any sort; no chapters, no paragraphs, no nothing. If there weren't sentence breaks I'd have had to try and read the whole thing at one sitting.
It's possible that this is actually a work of genius. After all, Simon did win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1985, and I assume the committee had a reason for giving it to him. And maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention. And, to be fair, as things weaved in and out, I found I was able to keep track of the threads without actually expending time on doing do; Simon would pick up a thread again he'd left off ten or fifteen pages before and I had no problem remembering what had been going on at the time. But this is a very tiring book, not only because of the attention it commands but also because of the simple visual conceit of having no breaks anywhere on the page, line after line after full line of unbroken text. And it's headache-inducing after a while. I kept going to see if anything would tie all these different threads in in the end, and I guess that's something, too. But without anything to seize upon, the ever-falling rain of images gets to be too much. Things CAN be too sweet. *
Have you ever read a 191-page paragraph?
Okay, if that doesn't put you off, how about a 191-page paragraph that switches back and forth from scene to scene with no warning? Okay, with a little warning.
Claude Simon's Conducting Bodies is an experiment in memory, I think. Simon uses a number of catchphrases (the "conducting bodies" of the title) to alert the reader to upcoming scene changes. Often, a scene changes in the middle of the action and will be picked up again later; sometimes a hundred pages or so later. There are no divisions of any sort; no chapters, no paragraphs, no nothing. If there weren't sentence breaks I'd have had to try and read the whole thing at one sitting.
It's possible that this is actually a work of genius. After all, Simon did win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1985, and I assume the committee had a reason for giving it to him. And maybe I just wasn't paying close enough attention. And, to be fair, as things weaved in and out, I found I was able to keep track of the threads without actually expending time on doing do; Simon would pick up a thread again he'd left off ten or fifteen pages before and I had no problem remembering what had been going on at the time. But this is a very tiring book, not only because of the attention it commands but also because of the simple visual conceit of having no breaks anywhere on the page, line after line after full line of unbroken text. And it's headache-inducing after a while. I kept going to see if anything would tie all these different threads in in the end, and I guess that's something, too. But without anything to seize upon, the ever-falling rain of images gets to be too much. Things CAN be too sweet. *
August 2, 2025
Chaos, Flesh, and Memory: My Disorientation Inside Claude Simon’s Conducting Bodies
Reading Conducting Bodies by Claude Simon felt less like reading a novel and more like being thrown into a stream of consciousness I couldn’t fully control. There are no chapters, barely any punctuation, and no traditional plot to hold onto. And yet, I was hooked—overwhelmed, yes—but gripped by a kind of raw intensity I rarely experience in fiction.
The book moves through fragments: scenes from hospitals, war, trains, lovers’ bodies, the inner workings of memory and decay. I wasn’t just reading about bodies—I was inside them. Simon’s language made me hyper-aware of the human condition: blood, skin, pain, touch, aging, movement. It was strangely intimate. Sometimes too intimate.
At first, I resisted. I kept trying to “make sense,” to organize the story. But eventually, I let go. I followed the rhythm, the repetition, the almost musical structure of the prose. And then something happened: I started to feel what the narrator felt. Disconnected yet alert. Disoriented, but profoundly alive.
There’s a deep physicality to Conducting Bodies, but it’s not just about the body—it’s about time, trauma, and how everything we experience is stored not just in memory, but in flesh. I left the book exhausted but also sharpened. Simon doesn’t hand you clarity—he demands your participation.
This wasn’t entertainment. It was confrontation. And despite—or because of—that, I’m grateful I read it. It's not a novel I'll revisit lightly, but it's one I’ll never forget.
Reading Conducting Bodies by Claude Simon felt less like reading a novel and more like being thrown into a stream of consciousness I couldn’t fully control. There are no chapters, barely any punctuation, and no traditional plot to hold onto. And yet, I was hooked—overwhelmed, yes—but gripped by a kind of raw intensity I rarely experience in fiction.
The book moves through fragments: scenes from hospitals, war, trains, lovers’ bodies, the inner workings of memory and decay. I wasn’t just reading about bodies—I was inside them. Simon’s language made me hyper-aware of the human condition: blood, skin, pain, touch, aging, movement. It was strangely intimate. Sometimes too intimate.
At first, I resisted. I kept trying to “make sense,” to organize the story. But eventually, I let go. I followed the rhythm, the repetition, the almost musical structure of the prose. And then something happened: I started to feel what the narrator felt. Disconnected yet alert. Disoriented, but profoundly alive.
There’s a deep physicality to Conducting Bodies, but it’s not just about the body—it’s about time, trauma, and how everything we experience is stored not just in memory, but in flesh. I left the book exhausted but also sharpened. Simon doesn’t hand you clarity—he demands your participation.
This wasn’t entertainment. It was confrontation. And despite—or because of—that, I’m grateful I read it. It's not a novel I'll revisit lightly, but it's one I’ll never forget.
May 21, 2019
Review here: https://wp.me/p4LPys-mA.
August 22, 2025
An untamed (or covertly tamed) stream of words. A book where the container and the contained are trading seats every now and then.
September 6, 2016
It's a thoroughly modernist novel, meaning it's all about the construction of imagery in the mind that's constantly shifting and evolving. There is no plot in the conventional sense, but there is a story. The scenes move back and forth and connect like a kaleidoscope.
It's definitely not a beginners novel, and there were a few instances of it actually making me mad (such as writing a number of words in Spanish, upside down and backwards, to emphasize someone reading a sheet on the table facing the other way), and in many cases I lost my way. There were no paragraphs, no chapters, just about 200 pages of nearly stream of consciousness. The story, such as it is, will likely change as you read and re-read, so i won't bother trying to explain it.
It's definitely not a beginners novel, and there were a few instances of it actually making me mad (such as writing a number of words in Spanish, upside down and backwards, to emphasize someone reading a sheet on the table facing the other way), and in many cases I lost my way. There were no paragraphs, no chapters, just about 200 pages of nearly stream of consciousness. The story, such as it is, will likely change as you read and re-read, so i won't bother trying to explain it.
February 10, 2017
In 'Postmodernism' (1991), Fredric Jameson asks whether we can still read Simon in our post-feminist, postmodern world ("the seeming gratuitousness of talking about Simon or even reading him"). Since Simon won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1985, presumably the answer is "yes."
Nonetheless, this remains a rather bizarre novel, a single 190-page paragraph in which things happen but without ever being clear as to when or to whom. One of the most interesting and disorienting elements is the detailed description of environments that are stripped of their cultural context, leaving the reader to recognize (or not) the "meaning" of the thing described, and emphasizing the importance of culturally-produced concepts for our understanding of our world and experience (to recognize, for example, that the portrait in a shop window of a man who looks like a movie star, draped with black crepe, is a photo of JFK, and that the frames of film clipped from a magazine showing a woman in a pink dress in an open car are from the Zapruder film).
Nonetheless, this remains a rather bizarre novel, a single 190-page paragraph in which things happen but without ever being clear as to when or to whom. One of the most interesting and disorienting elements is the detailed description of environments that are stripped of their cultural context, leaving the reader to recognize (or not) the "meaning" of the thing described, and emphasizing the importance of culturally-produced concepts for our understanding of our world and experience (to recognize, for example, that the portrait in a shop window of a man who looks like a movie star, draped with black crepe, is a photo of JFK, and that the frames of film clipped from a magazine showing a woman in a pink dress in an open car are from the Zapruder film).
May 4, 2022
perfect novel
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews