| 1. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography | 
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By: Roland Barthes
Publisher: New Library Press.Net
June 01, 2001
Written shortly after his mother's death there is a very dark and mortal tone in this reading. Roland Barthes refers to life and death heavily throughout the book and the ongoing intermingling of those themes comes to a climax towards the end. This particular aspect of the book really grabs the reader in many ways. I found myself torn, often times within minutes, between feeling able to be one with... more
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| 2. Mythologies (in FRench) (French Edition) | 
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By: Roland Barthes
Publisher: French & European Pubns
January 11, 1993
First, this is a very political book, even for Barthes. If your idea of a good read is Ann Coulter or Glenn Beck, do not bother with this one. But if your political leanings are left of center and if you are dismayed at what passes for journalism nowadays, then check it out.
There are so many good lines in this book, like the one I quote in the title of this review. It is one of my favorite... more
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| 3. Image-Music-Text |
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By: Roland Barthes
Publisher: Fontana Press
September 13, 1993
This book is phenomenal. It analyzes aspects of human knowledge that one never thought possible. I recommend reading Foucault's "The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language" first. It will set the basis for what Barthes just dives into. Awesome analysis. ... more
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| 4. Story of the Eye: By Lord Auch (Penguin Modern Classics) |
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By: Georges Bataille
Publisher: Penguin Classics
April 26, 2001
Reminiscent of de Sade, this novel is written in a kind of telling-not-showing style, very unlike modern novels. However, the concepts and imagery within are fascinating, especially some of the more disturbing sexual acts. The novel--more of a novella in terms of size--is a bit ridiculous at times, but overall a curious and interesting read. Good for those bored with current erotica or in need of something... more
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| 5. Lover's Discourse Fragments |
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By: Roland Barthes
Publisher: Hill & Wang
1979-08
Ditto. If you're a nerd, a scholar, or a poet - or maybe just crazy in (preferable non-correspondend) love thinking that your love is so unique - buy this book and see the linguistic mechanics of it all. It's fun!... more
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| 6. S/Z: An Essay |
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By: Roland Barthes
Publisher: Hill and Wang
January 01, 1975
I first read this book decades ago, at a time when I thought that all literary critics were full of hot air. The world of literary criticism is not as bad as it once was--thanks to M. Barthe, but why bother with the rest, when you can read the best?
There is nothing in this book that you can not learn from the poetry of Wallace Stevens or the fiction of Virginia Woolf. However, Barthes... more
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| 7. The Pleasure of the Text |
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By: Barthes, Roland Barthes
Publisher: Blackwell Publishers
1990-01
I returned to Barthes not having read him in a long time. A graduate TA, with shaky french herself,
had us reading Mythologies in the early '80's. As students working hard just to translate the text, I'm afraid we let certain funny jokes, like the fact of a frenchman discussing the meaning of french fries in America,
go directly over our heads.
I happened to read a review... more
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| 8. Two Novels: Jealousy and In the Labyrinth (Robbe-Grillet, Alain) |
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By: Alain Robbe-Grillet
Publisher: Grove Press
January 14, 1994
This book contains two great books by a great author unafraid to do something completely different--a guy who could write a (good) characterless short story about an escalator, or a murder mystery that never uses the letter E, or...or..."Jealousy." Of the two novels contained in this book, "Jealousy" is by far the best.
When I first read "Jealousy," I had never read anything else like it--because... more
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| 9. The Empire of Signs |
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By: Roland Barthes
Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub
1983-11
This strange book is at once fascinating and frustrating. Barthes' view of himself and the world is as if he were someone from another planet. I'm not sure whether I understand Japanese culture more or less from reading it, and I suspect that Barthes would find that irrelevant. Nevertheless it is a good romp and a glimpse at how a denizen of the realm of literary theory (and a gay intellectual) looks... more
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| 10. Elements of Semiology |
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By: Roland Barthes
Publisher: Hill & Wang Pub
1977-05
This text, as with all pure critical theory, is certainly dense--there is no getting around that. Barthes brilliantly strings together a concise and well-defined basis of semiology from its roots in Saussure's dyadic model for a more structuralist, synchronic form of linguistics to Hjelmslev's proposal of a second-order system. Contrary to what another reviewer has asserted, Barthes does rigorously... more
More Comics By: Roland Barthes
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