Roland Barthes was a French essayist, social and literary critic specialized in semiotics. He smoked. He was born in Cherbourg, famous for historic disembarkations and umbrellas. Died at 64, as a result of a car accident.
My friend the artist Mirtha Dermisache (1940-2012) created unique books and periodicals filled with asemic writing starting in the 1970s. One of her Diarios is currently displayed at MoMA in room 205. In Variations sur l’écriture (Variations in Writing, 1973), Barthes says: “There are writings that we cannot understand, and yet, we cannot say they are indecipherable, because they simply are beyond decipherment: those are the fictitious writings that certain painters or certain subjects imagine.” As examples of this, he mentions the work of artists like André Masson, Henri Michaux—and Mirtha Dermisache.
Our friend Norman, who is pursuing a Master in Food Studies, just e-mailed me his most recent paper: Fish on Friday: A Barthian Approach. In a succinct and engaging five-page essay, he travels through early Christianity, symbolism, metaphorical cannibalism, and a pinch of Tennessee Williams. In the concept that “to eat is a behavior that develops beyond its own ends […] and it’s a sign,” Barthes provides Norman with the arc to tie all those ends and beginnings. I ask myself: what “signs” were in my mother’s brain when she chose which fish to cook in our Catholic stove any given Friday?
— New York City, 7/13/2021