Can't remember if I said this to you already, but Jonathan Culler's book on Barthes in the Oxford Very Short Introduction series is great. V helpful in tracking the shifts in RB's thinking. He was sort of a Dylan/Miles Davis type in that regard. At the point of WRITING DEGREE ZERO, IIRC, he is in thrall to structuralism, and hating the influence of Sartre.
Funnily enough I've been going through the same process of realizing my true passion. It's just a shame, as you said, I didn't discover it 10 or 15 years ago. In retrospect it was blindingly obvious. There wasn't a time, except perhaps a year or two of burnout during college and university, where I didn't have a book close to hand. Having said that, the younger me would probably not believe I would be buying essay collections, or books about readers and books etc. I do wonder how different my life would be had I done something like English Literature at university level. As it is, like you, I'm trying to build towards that in my own way.
Can't remember if I said this to you already, but Jonathan Culler's book on Barthes in the Oxford Very Short Introduction series is great. V helpful in tracking the shifts in RB's thinking. He was sort of a Dylan/Miles Davis type in that regard. At the point of WRITING DEGREE ZERO, IIRC, he is in thrall to structuralism, and hating the influence of Sartre.
You probably did but thank you for the reminder! Planning to read MYTHOLOGIES next but unsure about after that so that will probably be good guidance.
I think you will enjoy MYTHOLOGIES. A breeze compared to WRITING DEGREE and genuinely entertaining.
Funnily enough I've been going through the same process of realizing my true passion. It's just a shame, as you said, I didn't discover it 10 or 15 years ago. In retrospect it was blindingly obvious. There wasn't a time, except perhaps a year or two of burnout during college and university, where I didn't have a book close to hand. Having said that, the younger me would probably not believe I would be buying essay collections, or books about readers and books etc. I do wonder how different my life would be had I done something like English Literature at university level. As it is, like you, I'm trying to build towards that in my own way.