To read through <i>A Barthes Reader</i> is finally to be left with the image of Barthes as one of the great public teachers of our time, someone who thought out, argued for, and made available several steps in a penetrating reflection on language, sign systems, texts - and what they have to tell us about the concept of the human
New Republic
Susan Sontag contributes an informative introduction to this collection and arranges his greatest hits chronologically... This is an excellent entree to a thinker whose precepts have often filtered down into mass culture
Glasgow Herald
Barthes's work, along with that of Wilde and Valéry, gives being an aesthete a good name... Defending the senses, he never betrayed the mind
Susan Sontag