Scope and Contents Barthes distinguishes erotica from pornographic photographs as follows. "The Photograph is unary when it emphatically transforms "reality" without doubling it, without making it vacillate (emphasis is a power of cohesion) : no duality, no indirection, no disturbance. The unary Photograph has every reason to be banal, "unity" of composition being the first rule of vulgar (and notably, of academic) rhetoric: "The subject," says one handbook for amateur photographers, "must be simple, free of useless accessories; this is called the Search for Unity." News photographs are very often unary (the unary photograph is not necessarily tranquil). In these images, no punctum: a certain shock-the literal can traumatize -but no disturbance; the photograph can "shout," not wound. These journalistic photographs are received (all at once) , perceived. I glance through them, I don't recall them; no detail (in some corner) ever interrupts my reading: I am interested in them (as I am interested in the...

Scope and Contents

This is the first edition and first printing of the book in English that originally was written in French. The reader is requested to shuffle the pages like a deck of cards. the order of the pages will then assume the fate of the protagonist. B.S. Johnson also published a novel, "The Unfortunates," (1969) translated from the French in the same format as this book, unbound pages meant to be read in any order. Johnson's book is also held by the Sackner Archive. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents This is the first American edition of this book.eNotes internet summary: "Mobile: Study for the Representation of the United States has fifty chapters, and each chapter is more or less devoted to a different state, in alphabetical order, of the United States. The novel does not tell a story or relate a sequence of events. Instead, the disjointed details, mostly about small-town America, consist of information usually found in history books, atlases, encyclopedias, tourist brochures, and Howard Johnson menus. Some continuity is provided by a series of repetitions which are designed to illustrate the scope and diversity of the United States. For example, the first chapter is entitled "pitch dark in CORDOVA, ALABAMA, the Deep South" and that is all. The first word is not capitalized, nor is there a period at the end. The second chapter reads "pitch dark in CORDOVA, ALASKA, the Far North" and continues with a brief, nightmarish description of the land around Cordova. With no apparent...