Claude Simon's Pléiade Volume II: Rewriting Memory Against Chaos

Gallimard has released the second volume of Claude Simon's works in the Pléiade collection, with editing by Alastair B. Duncan, Bérénice Bonhomme, and David Zemmour. This volume features L'Herbe, Histoire, Les Géorgiques, L'Acacia, and Le Tramway, which were omitted from the first volume published in 2006 due to their autobiographical elements. Simon, who won the Nobel Prize and passed away in 2005, eschewed traditional narrative structures, instead weaving his novels from memories and feelings. His last work, Le Tramway, reflects on childhood tram journeys in Perpignan. Simon's writing seeks to "make the real more true than nature," portraying it as a moral battle against forgetting, utilizing language to impose order on the chaos of memory.