The significance of this bookthe first English-language publication of Barthes's correspondencecannot be overestimated. Starting with Barthes's adolescence and the years in his late twenties spent in a sanatorium, these selected letters represent exchanges with longtime personal friends as well as many of the key figures of twentieth-century French intellectual history. -- Diana Knight, University of Nottingham [ Album] offers charming insights into the famous literary critics development as a writer and thinker. . . . This new glimpse into a celebrated career will be rewarding to Barthes scholars. * Publishers Weekly * This wonderful book locates the elusive Roland Barthesthe very notion hints at its impossibilityin his various worlds: in the sanatorium, in literary and academic Paris, in the long escapade of structuralism and after. It succeeds in this attempt not by trying to define him but by allowing him to place himself among his friends and his books, among his colleagues and his projects. One of his dreams, he said, was to disappear and still be close by. Here we begin to see how he managed to do just that. -- Michael Wood, Princeton University Roland Barthes was my friend since 1957, though Ive never had a friend whose offering exacted so little from anyone and so richly fulfilled the rewards of our intimacyexcept for the pleasure of Rolands texts, that are now beyond mourning. Roland arranged to take his mother and me from Paris to New York in the mid 1960sher first visit since 1904 and her first air travel to the newly named Kennedy Airport, landing on top of a city Madame Barthes could never have imagined from her first encounter with it, and from then on everything was all pleasure. Moreover my discovery that his mother did not read his texts, and that Roland did not expect her to, eased some family tensions of my own. Roland was faithful to what Walter Pater, whom he had never heard of, calls the administration of the visible, for Roland adored the physical world: Desire still irritates the non-will-to-possess by this perilous movement. I love you in my head, but imprison you behind my lips. I do not divulge. I speak silently to who is not yet or is no longer the other: I keep myself from loving you. (A Lovers Discourse.) The accents are those of Socrates, the firstas Roland was the latestDocent of Desire. In his last letter, before he was run down by that laundry-truck: Since Mamans death there has been a scission in my life, in my psyche, and I have less courage to undertake things. Dont hold it against me. Ne men veuille pas. -- Richard Howard, Columbia University Album is an enriching milestone. -- Neil Badmington * Times Literary Supplement * Album offers valuable insight, not only into the particulars of Barthess life, but also into the themes that haunted his writing, making it a worthwhile resource for Barthes scholars and ordinary readers alike. -- Ayten Tartici * Los Angeles Review of Books * The letters and manuscripts in this volume help the reader to understand not only the kinds of relationships that Barthes had, but also their nature. -- Nicholas P. Greco * ASAP/J * This publication underscores his contribution to 21st century French intellectual culture and his impact on literary studies. * Choice * The paradigmatic French intellectual, up close and intimate. -- Michael Dirda * The Washington Post * It does not propose to tell a story, but picks out moments, connections, elements of a life, and this is its contribution, methodological as much as it is informational, to Barthes studies. -- Callie Gardner * H-France * Rich in insights into Barthes's career, especially that of its ultimate phase. * American Book Review * The book can be read by everyone without any kind of difficulty. . . Highly recommended. -- Anna Maria Polidori * Articles and more.... *
