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A review by charmeieon
A Lover's Discourse: Fragments by Roland Barthes
3.5
Read this as preparation for my Eros the Bittersweet re-read, and it pairs very nicely as an effort with similar methods of analysis and pessimistic conclusions, but a contrasting male perspective. Of course, since men are orcs, this perspective is less interesting.
Barthes frequently writes of phallic imagery in a way that comes across as forced and awkward to me. This might just be me being inappropriately demure, but every time i read one of these passages i simply rolled my eyes. Similarly, Barthes very obviously has mommy issues; this pervades the book and is oh so typical in a way i found grating.
However, this book contains quite a lot of subtlety and genuine insight, though much of the rest of it was hard to parse—particularly the introductory chapter. I definitely would have gotten more out of this if i had more familiarity with the cited works—particularly Werther, which acts as the central text being analyzed here. However, I really don't think this was the only issue at play, as a lot of the chapters are just straight-up half-baked and didn't seem at all insightful to me. In contrast, Eros the Bittersweet presents a clear vision of a specific idea in each of its chapters, even those that run very short.
Barthes frequently writes of phallic imagery in a way that comes across as forced and awkward to me. This might just be me being inappropriately demure, but every time i read one of these passages i simply rolled my eyes. Similarly, Barthes very obviously has mommy issues; this pervades the book and is oh so typical in a way i found grating.
However, this book contains quite a lot of subtlety and genuine insight, though much of the rest of it was hard to parse—particularly the introductory chapter. I definitely would have gotten more out of this if i had more familiarity with the cited works—particularly Werther, which acts as the central text being analyzed here. However, I really don't think this was the only issue at play, as a lot of the chapters are just straight-up half-baked and didn't seem at all insightful to me. In contrast, Eros the Bittersweet presents a clear vision of a specific idea in each of its chapters, even those that run very short.