Seven Notes on A Lover’s Discourse While Halfway Through the Book
One Habitual marking of quotes is one of those weird habits you pick up when you hang around universities for too long. I still do it, despite being out of the game for the better part of six years now, which means I frequently end up with shelves full of dog-eared books, notebooks filled with hastily scribbled details, and the occasional stray post-it with a quote scrawled across it with the bibliographic details on the back. Since I don’t really teach classes or write essays anymore, the vast majority of the quotes I mark tend to be because I truly adore the phrasing. There’s a great deal of beauty in theory and criticism, if you look for it. Exquisitely phrased ideas that sucker-punch you the same way a perfectly formed poetic line does, or well-turned phrase in a piece of prose. I’ve been reading Roland Barthes A Lover’s Discourse for the last two weeks. It started as a bit of