Friendship of Roland Barthes

In Roland Barthes's eyes, Philippe Sollers embodied the figure of the contemporary writer forever seeking something new. Almost four decades after Barthes produced his study -- Sollers Writer -- Sollers has written a book on the man who was his friend and who shared with hima total faith in literature as a force of invention and discovery, as a resource and an encyclopedia. They met regularly, exchanged many letters and fought many battles together, against every kind of academicism, every political and ideological regression. Barthes shed light on Sollers's work in a series of articles that are still of great relevance today. Sollers, in turn, assumed the role of Barthes's publisher at Le Seuil and was left deeply shocked and saddened by his friend's death in 1980. In short, they were very close, despite their differencs, and Sollers expresses here what this meant at the time and what it continues to represent, highlighting the themes that sustained their friendship. This book also contains some thirty letters from Barthes to Sollers, completing our image in one of the most extraordinary partnerships in French literary life. --Cover.