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Why I Love Barthes

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( 46 ratings, 10 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
This intimate collection traces the 25-year literary friendship between Alain Robbe-Grillet and Roland Barthes through conversations, correspondence and short texts. It reveals their mutual intellectual esteem and offers fresh insight into their creative developments. A unique testimony to one of the most important literary friendships of our time, it captures Robbe-Grillet's affectionate reflections on Barthes alongside their engaging dialogues.
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Format: Paperback / softback
$2399
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

Ideal for readers interested in literary friendships, French theory, and 20th-century arts and culture. Those who appreciate intellectual biography, correspondence, and studies of influential literary figures will find this work particularly compelling.

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* This is a unique testimony to one of the most important literary friendships of our time. Robbe-Grillet, the master of the nouveau roman, considered Barthes, France s greatest postwar literary theorist and critic, as one of his very few true friends.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

The literary friendship between Alain Robbe-Grillet and Roland Barthes lasted 25 years. Everything attests to their deep and mutual intellectual esteem: their private correspondence, their published texts, their conversations— notably in the famous dialogue which gives its name to this work. Robbe-Grillet freely said he had very few true friends but, next to the publisher Jérôme Lindon, he always cited the name of Roland Barthes. In 1980, he wrote his own I love, I don't love, published here for the first time, thinking about his friend. In 1985, he predicted: It is his work as a writer which will remain. Ten years later, in 1995, he imagined him as an impatient, blithe novelist, merrily rewriting— euphorically, with inexhaustible happinessThe Sorrows of Young Werther.

This small collection of conversations and short texts by Robbe-Grillet is like the deferred echo of those that Roland Barthes dedicated to him in his Critical Essays in 1964. It offers fresh insight into the development of Robbe-Grillet's own work as well as that of Barthes, and is a unique testimony to one of the most important literary friendships of our time.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Critics praise the book’s warmth and wit, highlighting the palpable friendship and intellectual exchange between Robbe-Grillet and Barthes. Steven Poole of The Guardian notes the comic teasing and affectionate tone, while the Times Literary Supplement welcomes it as a challenge to reductive views of French theory. Jonathan Culler of Cornell University finds it extremely engaging, praising the friendly fencing in their dialogue. Overall, the volume is celebrated as a revealing and electric portrayal of two towering literary figures.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780745650791

Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 02 September 2011

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Polity Press

Audience: Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 8.0mm

Width: 127.0mm

Height: 191.0mm

Weight: 109g

Pages: 80

About the Author

Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-2008) was a French writer and film-maker.

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