470
PARTISAN REVIEW
One might say that Barthes as pires to as toni sh and to be inimitable,
and tha t, being a writer of formidabl e gifts, he often succeeds . H e also
discomforts hi s readers by his implicit chall enge to do the same and
to
riva l him in dandyism, for, in the Engli sh -s peaking world, literary
\
criti cs have been in reac ti on against the cult of personality and " fine
,
writing" for mos t of this century. No t on ly are we told by Barthes that
I
it is our duty to invent new meanings for cl ass ic texts, to "see what
\
could be done with [them] ," but we are as ked to invent and reinvent
our own subj ecti vity too. T he first words of
R oland Barthes
are: "All
this must be considered as if spo ken by a ci1draCler in a novel. " T he
critics of our genera ti on , Barthes implies, have defin ed and charted the
realm of literary moderni sm, where "all tha t is solid melts in the air. "
Now it is time for them to reproduce in their own texts the forms
and sensibilities of the fi ctions that they have made canoni cal as
the authenti c expressions of the age.
PAUL DELANY
FATHERS AND SONS
A BOOK OF DREAMS.
By Peter Reich . Harper
&
Row.
PHOTOGRAPHS OF MY FATHER.
By Paul Spike. Alfred A. Knopf.
KENTUCKY HAM.
By William Burrough s,
Jr.
E. P. Dutton.
Wi lhelm Reich' s career in the United Sta tes h as in it all the
drama tic features of the Frankenstein legend: a remote labora tory in
the forest, strange mechanical devices, suspicious townspeople, puzzled
constables, Reich himself in his smock speaking in heavil y accented
English while fiddling with the dials of his infernal machines, and las t
but not leas t, an avenging hero in the clean-cut person of the FDA who
comes finally
to
burn down and purge the bad business of Promethean
science. This is, of course, a cartoon version of Reich 's las t years , the
FDA's scen ario, and it is credible on ly to those who ignore the
considerable breadth of insight and hypothes is contained in Reich 's
investigation of orgone energy. Yet it is this image of Reich as the mad
scienti st which his son , Peter , mos t powerfull y evokes in his memoir,
A
