Ivry, Benjamin. "The Private Barthes." CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION March 20, 2009.

Nearly three decades after he was hit and fatally injured by a laundry van in a Paris street, the French literary theorist and critic Roland Barthes still enjoys rare prestige in his native land as well as in the English-speaking world. Generally considered the most readable of his generation of theoreticians, which also includes Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida, Barthes has further benefited from being translated into English by the extremely able Richard Howard. Barthes titles that were Englished by Howard, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet as well as prolific translator, include Système de la mode (The Fashion System), L'Empire des signes (Empire of Signs), and Fragments d'un discours amoureux (A Lover's Discourse: Fragments). To this rich legacy may be added two titles that appeared in France last month, amid some controversy: Journal de deuil (Bereavement Diary) and Carnets du voyage en Chine (China Travel Notebook). . . . Read the rest here: http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=q3nn8qtbvfjpcjpf8j2zvzmjphvbssmj.