 The University of East Anglia made him honorary doctor in 1973.Simon is often identified with the "nouveau roman" movement exemplified in the works of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Michel Butor, and while his fragmented narratives certainly contain some of the formal disruption characteristic of that movement (in particular "Histoire", 1967, and "Triptyque", 1973), he nevertheless retains a strong sense of narrative and character.In fact, Simon arguably has much more in common with his Modernist predecessors than with his contemporaries; in particular, the works of Marcel Proust and William Faulkner are a clear influence.