Although the late Roland Barthes says at one point here that he does not like giving interviews, this volume contains 39 of them—and still others, according to an editorial note, may also have taken place. Many of them date from the middle 1970s, when Barthes and his theories attracted popular notice in France; and these tend to be stilted vehicles for the promulgation of Barthes-ian ideas—with interviewer-as-acolyte and Barthes-as-priest. One interviewer asks, for example, "How can this oblique and 'repressive' return of the signified be avoided? How can this emptiness be written without being 'expressed'?" And Barthes answers: "Our present task is twofold. On the one hand, we must somehow conceive. . . how the depth and lightness of the signifier may be expressed contradictorily together. . . ." Elsewhere, too, Barthes feels comfortable enough with his adoring interviewers to make some of his more dubious, oddly naive pronouncements. ("It should be suggested to readers that there are several possible ways of reading, one isn't obliged to read a book in a linear and continuous development. . . . It's amazing: they find nothing wrong with dipping here and there into the Bible, but then they insist that there's no other way to read Guyotat except straight through!") In the later interviews, however, especially in those conducted by the skeptical, bracing, and supple Bernard-Henri Levy, Barthes is shown at his best—leaving behind the doxology of deconstructionism, engaging more in the personal and the human. And, even if much of the material here is near-comically ingrown and jargoned, with interviewers struggling to duplicate Barthes' vocabulary, some readers will find useful, relatively unforbidding introductions to Barthes' ideas—many of which have not worn well—while devout Barthesians will pore over every word.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1984
ISBN: 0810126400
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1984
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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Noted jazz and pop record producer Thiele offers a chatty autobiography. Aided by record-business colleague Golden, Thiele traces his career from his start as a ``pubescent, novice jazz record producer'' in the 1940s through the '50s, when he headed Coral, Dot, and Roulette Records, and the '60s, when he worked for ABC and ran the famous Impulse! jazz label. At Coral, Thiele championed the work of ``hillbilly'' singer Buddy Holly, although the only sessions he produced with Holly were marred by saccharine strings. The producer specialized in more mainstream popsters like the irrepressibly perky Teresa Brewer (who later became his fourth wife) and the bubble-machine muzak-meister Lawrence Welk. At Dot, Thiele was instrumental in recording Jack Kerouac's famous beat- generation ramblings to jazz accompaniment (recordings that Dot's president found ``pornographic''), while also overseeing a steady stream of pop hits. He then moved to the Mafia-controlled Roulette label, where he observed the ``silk-suited, pinky-ringed'' entourage who frequented the label's offices. Incredibly, however, Thiele remembers the famously hard-nosed Morris Levy, who ran the label and was eventually convicted of extortion, as ``one of the kindest, most warm-hearted, and classiest music men I have ever known.'' At ABC/Impulse!, Thiele oversaw the classic recordings of John Coltrane, although he is the first to admit that Coltrane essentially produced his own sessions. Like many producers of the day, Thiele participated in the ownership of publishing rights to some of the songs he recorded; he makes no apology for this practice, which he calls ``entirely appropriate and without any ethical conflicts.'' A pleasant, if not exactly riveting, memoir that will be of most interest to those with a thirst for cocktail-hour stories of the record biz. (25 halftones, not seen)
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-508629-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
Categories: GENERAL NONFICTION
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