| 1. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography | 
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By: Roland Barthes
Publisher: Hill and Wang
May 01, 1982
It's so refreshing to read about photography from a non-photographers point of view. Barthes is witty, funny, pessimistic, but also genuine. This is not his judgment of photography and its place in art and society, but a mere observation. ... 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. A Lover's Discourse: Fragments |
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By: Roland Barthes
Publisher: Hill and Wang
June 01, 1979
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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| 4. Story of the Eye: By Lord Auch (Penguin Modern Classics) |
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By: Georges Bataille
Publisher: Penguin Classics
April 26, 2001
I couldn't finish this book because I was bored, emphatically not because I was shocked.
The book is little more than a series of quick sexual encounters, one straight after another. There's nothing wrong with this in principle, but the author Bataille isn't a very creative writer, and you get very little in actual erotic description.
Which brings me to my next point. I... more
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| 5. Image-Music-Text |
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By: Roland Barthes
Publisher: Hill and Wang
July 01, 1978
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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| 6. The Pleasure of the Text |
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By: Roland Barthes
Publisher: Hill and Wang
January 01, 1975
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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| 7. 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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| 8. Elements of Semiology |
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By: Roland Barthes
Publisher: Hill and Wang
April 01, 1977
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
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| 9. Empire of Signs |
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By: Roland Barthes
Publisher: Hill and Wang
September 01, 1983
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. Two Novels: Jealousy and In the Labyrinth (Robbe-Grillet, Alain) | 
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By: Alain Robbe-Grillet
Publisher: Grove Press
January 14, 1994
I get books partly for their physical feel so that is why the printing quality matters to me. This book has standard average design cover. The inside looks like a bad xerox copy that looks like a make-to-order book. I had ordered another edition of the identical book hoping to regain the lost quality in this edition. I do admit that I had not read the book so my comment should not have any bearing... more
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