Name: Claude Simon
Year Won: 1985
Read: The Flanders Road
Original Language: French
Reason: "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"
About: The Flanders Road is a semi-autobiographical retelling of Simon's time in WWII. Semi-autobiographical, because while many of the details are pulled from memory, he also follows the stories of other characters from his life. It's all very weird and trippy.
What I liked: There were a lot of very unconventional, intersting, and vivid images.
What I Disliked: The whole novel is told in long, run on, never ending stories and in stream of consciousness that drones on and on and makes for a near unintelligble reading experience unless, as a reader you like to parse, ah, but reader, do you like to parse: "Ah, the book, it has these themes and meanings" and oh, another battle scene with mud and dogs and horses and gunshots and....
Yeah. It's pretty much all like that. I gave up after about a dozen pages as every page felt like a miserable slog to me.
Should it have won a Nobel: This is the kind of book that the Nobel committee seems to lap up but that no ordinary person would want to read. So...IDK. Maybe? I just can't help but feel that writing things people might want to read is a valuable skill. (I really loathe writing that seems almost designed to flummox and annoy the reader.)
Next Up: "Chroncles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth" by Wole Soyinka
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