Roland Barthes: A Biography

Succinct, accessible and witty, this is the first biography of one of the postwar era's most prominent literary theorists (1915-1980). His academic promise initially thwarted by self-doubt and sustained bouts with tuberculosis, Barthes, as much as his contemporaries Foucault and Lacan, has had a formidable influence on the academy. In Writing Degree Zero and S/Z, he drew upon semiotics to revolutionize literary criticism of the novel; his Mythologies, a formative influence on cultural studies, brought scholarly scrutiny to bear on fashion, wrestling and other areas of popular culture. Though Barthes was self-effacing, discreet (a friend of 33 years learned only after Barthes's death that the theorist was gay) and skeptical of biography's ability to lay its subject bare, Sorbonne linguistics professor Calvet deftly sketches a unified portrait of the man and his work. (Feb.)