A Lover's Discourse: Fragments (1977)

Barthes, Roland. A Lover's Discourse: Fragments. Hill and Wang, 2010.

Roland Barthes is a name most familiar to students of literary theory, but his books certainly can be enjoyed beyond the pale of an English degree. As with Mythologies (1957), Barthes's central concern is to examine cultural phenomena for the purpose of exposing the underlying and (to Barthes) troubling strata below. In this text he takes on the concept and experience of love, starting from the common utterances of a lover and then searching far and wide for material (from his own experiences, his friends' experiences, and other great literature) to supplement and expose the sentiments. The book is composed of a series of fragments that Barthes calls figures ("The figure is the lover at work"), and the figures, collectively, constitute not a description of the lover's discourse but rather a simulation of it. There is no deliberate order, as Barthes explains, but there is a sort of progression that lends merit to the effort of reading it not as Burroughsesque cut-ups but from cover to cover. I wouldn't recommend reading the book without (1) at least a basic understanding of structuralism, or (2) reading the "How This Book Is Constructed" preface. To dive right in could yield a sense of bewilderment. The reward of taking the time to understand A Lover's Discourse is in gaining a new perspective on our contemporary treatment of love and breaking out of the "extreme solitude" of the lover.