Well, it wouldn't be a dull, conventional memoir, would it? Writing about himself, Barthes limits the hard biographical facts to a few briefly annotated family photos from his childhood in Bayonne and a two-page CV, and in between them he gives us a couple of hundred index-card sized fragments talking about his "real" life, which of course revolves around ideas and writings rather than boring things like dates, places and people. None of the fragments is much more than a paragraph or two long, with the only slightly longer pieces being a catalogue of books he might have written but didn't, and a discussion (you can see where this is going...) of the pleasures of the very short form.

In between times, we get cartoons, photos, sample exam questions, and a couple of examples of Barthes's painting — my favourite was an abstract doodle in the middle of a sheet of Sorbonne notepaper, titled "Gaspillage" (wasting paper). As if that wasn't enough, we also get the sheet music for a song he composed — I haven't tried to play that. He was obviously the Richard Feynman of semiotics.

You probably need at least a little bit of tolerance for French semioticians to enjoy this, and it's obviously more of a bedside book to dip into than a book you should read in one go, but if you like that sort of thing... ( )

didn't expect to zoom through this so fast, but it was such a joy to read.
a few hundred or so small fragments of writing containing musings on barthes' life, his writings, and sundry other things.
barthes doesn't always come off as a terribly rigorous writer, but here, at his loosest and most casual stylistically, he cuts a really impressive figure. ( )

Un livre qui fait date dans l'histoire littéraire du genre autobiographique : juxtaposition de fragments et d'images, alternance du " je" et du "il", considérations sur le langage, l'esthétique, etc...
Roland Barthes n'offre " ni un texte de vanité, ni un texte de lucidité, mais un texte aux guillemets incertains, aux parenthèses flottantes (ne jamais fermer les parenthèses c’est très exactement: dériver)”.

Le livre est précédé d’une prémisse: "Tout ceci doit être considéré comme écrit par un personnage de roman". L’anamnèse est brève, non composée, simplement notée. (L’anamnèse, pour Roland Barthes, est l' "action – mélange de jouissance et d’effort – que mène le sujet pour retrouver, sans l’agrandir ni le faire vibrer, une ténuité du souvenir").

L’anamnèse est brève, non composée, simplement notée. (L’anamnèse, pour Roland Barthes, est l' "action – mélange de jouissance et d’effort – que mène le sujet pour retrouver, sans l’agrandir ni le faire vibrer, une ténuité du souvenir").

Un gioco metaletterario condotto con straordinaria raffinatezza. Barthes sceglie di tracciare un itinerario autobiografico costruendolo non secondo tradizione, preferendo collocare i pezzi di un'esistenza fatti da foto, pillole di memoria, stringhe di testo lapidarie per descrivere un fatto, un frammento, una reminiscenza. Sospeso tra autenticità e immaginario, è un libro che dimostra la possibilità di guardare al passato con un occhio visionario. ( )

The list of books he would like to write are the best part of this book. ( )