STATE OF CRITICISM
19
ing significations. Like Richards he eschews belletristic continuity,
preferring the appearance of scientific analysis, and even constructs his
title out of a symbolic paradigm rather than a piece of prose.
Hut out of this very attempt
to
write an
open
book, rather than a
closed and seamless critical discourse, Barthes decomposes the Balzac
story more thoroughly than any conventional exegete. A "reading" at
least is a point of view, which we approach as argument, aware of its
partiality; but Barthes's interlinear commentary, like a page of the
Interpreter's Bible,
looks both exhaustive and official, for all its
insistence on the text's inexhaustibility. Barthes even expresses annoy–
ance that his readers are likely to want to read the whole Balzac story
first, before turning to what he calls his "manhandling" of it. "Those
who like a good story may certainly turn to the end of the book and
read the tutor text first; it is given as an appendix in its purity and
continuity, as it came from the printer, in short, as we habitually read
it." That is
to
say, Barthes's book, like some specially formed creatures
in nature, must be entered from the rear. But when we turn to the
appendix, already ashamed of our perverse reading habits, our un–
seemly appetite for the original, far from finding the text "in its purity
and continuity," we find it interrupted by 561 numerical superscrip–
tions, denoting Barthes's lexical divisions (as in some kind of unread–
ably overannotated scholarly edition). The critic's blows have landed
even in the despised appendix; even the "original" text has been
typographicalIy deconstructed.
We need
to
inquire into the origin of the deconstructive critic's
rage at what Barthes calls the classical or the "readerly" text-the
realistic narrative accessible to naive consumption-which shows itself
both in his critical procedure and the never explained fury of his
slashing style. As a literary journalist Barthes had come to prominence
as a modernist, an exponent of Brecht, Robbe-Grillet, and the
nouveau
Toman.
Barthes had ingeniously developed the critique of illusionism
and verisimilitude of both of these writers. But in
S IZ
he sets himself
the task of commenting on a traditional narrative, while still holding
to the view that its "realism" is a mystification and a deception. The
alien character of the text and its remoteness from what he officially
likes-yet also his fascination with its themes of castration and sexual
ambiguity-bring out the best and worst in Barthes as a critic.
Barthes's very distance from realistic storytelling, his profound suspi–
cion of its unreflective enchantments, enables him to describe the sheer
mechanics of its construction more intricately than anyone since Henry
James.
If
James aimed to make readers more conscious and respectful
of the
art
of fiction, Barthes is eager to alert them to its mesh of
