Text as Pleasure

A quote that struck me when reading The Pleasure of the Text, by Roland Barthes was the following: “The text is never a ‘dialogue’: no risk of feint, of aggression, of blackmail, no rivalry of ideolects; the text establishes a sort of islet within the human- the common- relation, manifests the asocial nature of pleasure (only leisure is social), grants a glimpse of the scandalous truth about bliss: that it may well be, once the image-reservoir of speech is abolished, neuter” (110). When I read this, I immediately agreed with it. Personally I love to read. Perhaps I should be more specific about loving to read; I love to read in my free time books that I did not buy from the Rollins College bookstore. It is my favorite way of escaping from the real world and all of the ridiculous expectations that is has. Reading a good book is being able to judge without fear of being judged yourself. It is being able to have an opinion without someone playing devil’s advocate against that opinion. You could not like something or anything about the book you are reading and the person who wrote it could not be hurt because they can’t hear your dislikes about it. Most importantly, there is no one to tell you that your thoughts and reactions about the reading are incorrect or not in tune with what the ideologies are in the public eye. It seems that authority figures in the U.S today are keen on having everybody get along and agreeing with things that are deemed important by the government and/or public figures. There was a time years ago when there was a list that banned certain books from schools because they were labeled inappropriate to read due to their honesty, however I do not believe honesty was the term they used because that would not be a good enough reason to keep them out of the school systems. Books are a way of expressing free speech and thoughts about anything one wants to write about. This is scary for the public figures and their ideas because one person could write a great book/novel about their disagreement with one of these people and/or their ideas and get millions of people on board with him or her. Books are a breath of fresh air. There are no limits to what can be written in them and as I said before they are a way to jump into another world.