Nobody can make a writer look as attractive as Barthes does with Michelet. On reading what Barthes writes on Michelet, you would want to run immediately to the library and check out a Michelet that is nowhere to be found. Here is an example:
[H]e describes WHAT HE DOES NOT SEE, not AS IF HE WERE SEEING IT (this would be a banal instance of poetic clairvoyance), but as if the storm’s reality were an unheard-of substance, coming from another world, perceptible to all our organs except that of sight. This is a veritably drugged perception, the economy of our five senses being disordered within it. (200)
What kind of drugged writing is this! I’m dazzled. Move away, Burroughs. Barthes is rough, and he's got 'art' in his name.
