Incidents [Paperback]

Roland Barthes (Author), Richard Howard (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 4, 1992

In 1979, just after having written skeptically on the question of whether a journal was worth keeping "with a view to publication," Roland Barthes began to keep an intimate journal called "Soirées de Paris" in which he gave direct notation to his gay desire in its various states of excitation, panic, and despair. Together with three other uncollected texts by Barthes, including an earlier journal he kept in Morocco, this remarkable document was published in France after its author's death under the title of Incidents. Richard Howard's translation now makes the volume available to readers of English.
"I gave him some money, he promised to be at the rendezvous an hour later, and of course never showed up. I asked myself if I was really so mistaken (the received wisdom about giving money to a hustler in advance!) and concluded that since I really didn't want him all that much (nor even to make love), the result was the same: sex or no sex, at eight o'clock I would find myself back at the same point in my life."--from Incidents

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Barthes (1915-80) was one of France's most influential literary theorists, whose works, such as S/Z ( LJ 8/74), The Pleasure of the Text ( LJ 6/1/75), and Writing Degree Zero (Farrar, 1977), had a profound impact on generations of Anglo-American critics. This recent volume, first published in France after the author's death, includes notes on a trip to Morocco in 1969, a brief essay on the Parisian disco Le Palace, and a lengthier "intimate" journal, Soirees de Paris , begun in 1979. The theme as such is desire, specifically gay male desire. In these texts we don't have the renowned writer whom we discreetly know to be gay, as Leo Bersani notes on the book's cover, "but the gay man who happens to be a writer." It is enough to send one back for a rereading of A Lover's Discourse: Fragments ( LJ 8/78). In his essay, critic Miller uses his intellectual/erotic crush on Barthes, whom he never met; his imaginings of Barthes; fragments of Barthes's texts; and incidents from his own life to explore the theoretical and sometimes not so theoretical issues of contemporary gay male life. In the process we get a wonderful, humorous reading of Barthes that sends the mind leaping in hundreds of directions while repeatedly resting on the relationship between gay male identity and the literary text. Both of these books are recommended for all academic collections and for public libraries with strong literary or gay studies collections.
-Brian Kenney, Pace Univ. Lib., Manhattan Campus, New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Incidents is replete with prowling boys, and Barthes is completely frank in describing his desires. (The book is, after all, a journal.) Even if Incidents fails to get you in a thoughtful mood, it should get you in a cruisy one. And there''s always the something in between, which is the place that Barthes seems most often to be: the boys supply him a spark of provocation that spurs him to thought, but thought is something more successfully pursued alone. Samaddar''s photos, though only a handful of them are overtly erotic, are a perfect accompaniment to the text on that front, stolen glances that capture the sensuality of fleeting encounters."--Bookslut.com (Bookslut )

"Its strange disconnectedness bears witness . . . to the author''s grappling with the tension between the need to remain as true as possible to the moments he portrays and his desire to embroider on them."—Times Literary Supplement

(TLS ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (September 4, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520071042
• ISBN-13: 978-0520071049
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,683,688 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fragments of Incidental Sensations, September 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Incidents (Paperback)

Published posthumously in 1987 as a series of uncollected texts seven years after Barthes' death, "Incidents" unfolds an intriguing bricolage of observations, memories and homoerotic desires in a journal-like fashion.With "The Light of the Sud Ouest" Barthes traces back his childhood years to the rustic french countryside anchored between the Pyrenees and the "Silver Coast" of the Atlantic Ocean. Writing the country as a literary body, Barthes portrays his marking adolescent years in sensuous details. His "royal road" of childhood is paved with memorable fragrances, meteorological peculiarities of the Southwest, the charming splendors of the little villages in the Bearn region, and the natural and rich Basque countryside. The powerful images and oberservations evoked in "Incidents," the second text in this compilation, unmasks stunningly Barthes' most inner and profound desires. The random fragments of the text from various cities and regions of Morocco exhibit Barthes' homoerotic lust in an affectionate and passionate manner. The overt, sometimes emotionally charged segments reveal his love for the Moroccan people, the richness of its language diversity, and for young men. The reader turns into critc when strolling through the text and is incited to assemble the various fragments of perceptions that unveil not only Barthes' love for men, but also his sensitive insight into the "Maghreb" region. The reader will be seduced by descriptions of the terrace cafes overlooking the "Djemmaa el Fna" square in Marrakech or the oriental "savoir-vivre" in the souks. "Soirees de Paris," a chronological journal kept in Paris, depicts Barthes' emotionally charged evenings in Paris during the August and September of 1979. From his attraction to young hustlers to intellectual writers like Jean Genet, "Soirees de Paris" comprises the language of a sometimes sad, desperate, but motivated author/critic during the last stages of his life. Since his publication of the "Death of the Author" in 1968, Barthes performs with "Incidents" a framgentary, open-spaced text requiring the reader's participation to be fully appreciated. The performance of a discontinuous text invites the reader to actively engage in one of the most ardent and passionate journals and descriptions of one of the most influential critics of this century. "Incidents" offers compelling individual histories and insights into Barthes' intriguing life.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous Prose and Beautiful Thoughts, April 6, 2009

By 

Steven Bilow "stevebil" (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Incidents (Paperback)

Recently, I was reading "Incidents" and the beauty of one particular statement blew me away. In the essay called "The Light of the Sud-Ouest" Barthes says: "For to read a country is first of all to percieve it in terms of the body and of memory, in terms of the the body's memory"... "That is why childhood is the royal road by which we know a country best. Ultimately, there is no Country but childhood's". That struck me as unbelievably beautiful. Each of the 4 essays in this tiny volume has at least one or 2 such beautiful tidbits. Unlike much of the convolution in Barthes other works, This book is easy to read, easy to understand, and simply lovely prose.