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A review by selenajournal
A Lover's Discourse: Fragments by Roland Barthes
5.0
last year, i think, i read important artifacts and personal property from the collection of lenore doolan and harold morris, including books, street fashion and jewelry, by leanne shapton and it stayed with me. using the format of an auction catalogue, the book chronicles a relationship. it turns it into an artifact, something to be studied. it takes items and makes them people, gives them a setting to exist within. it dares to put a price on something forcing you to ask questions about emotional worth and monetary worth and the importance of archiving and reflection.
barthes only brought this book to the forefront in my mind. he dissects love, emotions relating to love and the loved one, forcing us to think about the words we use, the emotions we try to help them portray. the book is indeed written in fragments, arranged in alphabetical order by titles. for this we the reader are told that it is meant to show us that no one part is more important than the other, each weighs in equally, and the author presents it to us as such. essentially, barthes breaks up the book by aspects of love, the loved one and the love relationship. then he uses beautiful conversations, fiction and non-fiction excerpts and his own experiences to expound on a topic.
prior to barthes, every book i’ve tried reading on love focused on the rules established around the definition of romantic love, and they isolated me as a reader. i couldn’t see any love i’d ever known (or god forbid, hoped to know) in those pages. with barthes, i could see loves i’d had and loves i hoped to have reflected in that text. i took notes like a madwoman in margins and flagged passages and added other books on love to my list of books to read. i read passages aloud to my husband, to my friends, to former lovers. i felt like my heart was bursting in a wave of understanding and acknowledgement of being understood.
i made notes: page 14, 24, 39 (perfect), 42, 85, 100 (perfect), 104, 199, 233. i wrote in the margins about former and current lovers. i made notes to re-read rilke. to read blake, to finally read goethe, bataille.
on goodreads, a smart woman wrote that she recommends this book to “those who must analyze as they swoon” – that’s the perfect way to describe it.
barthes only brought this book to the forefront in my mind. he dissects love, emotions relating to love and the loved one, forcing us to think about the words we use, the emotions we try to help them portray. the book is indeed written in fragments, arranged in alphabetical order by titles. for this we the reader are told that it is meant to show us that no one part is more important than the other, each weighs in equally, and the author presents it to us as such. essentially, barthes breaks up the book by aspects of love, the loved one and the love relationship. then he uses beautiful conversations, fiction and non-fiction excerpts and his own experiences to expound on a topic.
prior to barthes, every book i’ve tried reading on love focused on the rules established around the definition of romantic love, and they isolated me as a reader. i couldn’t see any love i’d ever known (or god forbid, hoped to know) in those pages. with barthes, i could see loves i’d had and loves i hoped to have reflected in that text. i took notes like a madwoman in margins and flagged passages and added other books on love to my list of books to read. i read passages aloud to my husband, to my friends, to former lovers. i felt like my heart was bursting in a wave of understanding and acknowledgement of being understood.
i made notes: page 14, 24, 39 (perfect), 42, 85, 100 (perfect), 104, 199, 233. i wrote in the margins about former and current lovers. i made notes to re-read rilke. to read blake, to finally read goethe, bataille.
on goodreads, a smart woman wrote that she recommends this book to “those who must analyze as they swoon” – that’s the perfect way to describe it.