The text is pleasurable. The text is bliss. Barthes perforates the being of the text, he pinpoints the ineffability of the greatness of the truly great writers. He writes about Nietzsche, about Sade, about Flaubert, and many others. Unlike the general dynamic of French post-modernity and post-structuralism, Barthe's style and tone are unusually playful and entertaining. This treatise flows with the lucid readability of a good William Carlos Williams poem.Barthes relates reading to orgasm (petite mal=small death in Lacanian terms), reading is related to the act of striping, to seduction."The pleasure of the text is not the pleasure of the corporeal striptease or of narrative suspense" (pg. 10)."I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me" (pg.38)And this text will seduce you too.