Incidents

"In 1979, just after having written skeptically on the question of whether a journal was worth keeping "with a view to publication," Roland Barthes began to keep--apparently with a view to publication--an intimate journal called "Soirées de Paris." The doubts he had entertained about the authenticity of the journal form now gave way to the necessity of, finally, giving direct notation to his gay desire in its various states of excitation, panic, and despair. Together with three other uncollected texts by Barthes, including an earlier journal he kept in Morocco, this remarkable document was…