LITERATURE: The Pleasure of The Text – Finale

I’m not convinced that there’s not the slightest possibility that Barthes is not simply full of ..it.

I have finally finished this.  What surprises me is that for a book about finding the pleasure–nay, not mere pleasure, but bliss–of reading, these words were the dryest, least inspiring I’ve read; a few steps short of  a psychology textbook.  Nor have I ever read a book so sexually-oriented with such big words.

I did manage to glean some ideas from it, but it will have to be picked up another time when I’m a bit more experienced, more open and Barthes is more accessible to me.  These closing words are ones that I do understand, and I consider them foreplay:

(…)to succeed in shifting the signified a great distance and in throwing, so to speak, the anonymous body of the actor into my ear: it granulates, it crackles, it caresses, it grates, it cuts, it comes; that is bliss.

So back on the shelf Roland goes, to be pulled out and read again with a serious approach and intent to fully comprehend and absorb and attain bliss.