"What strikes one first is the range of Barthes's analytical curiosity. Within the first hundred pages he explains photography ('The Photographic Message'), dissects the secrets of Sergei Eisenstein's films ('The Third Meaning'), presents a brilliant reevaluation of the Greek Theater. . . and reviews Massin's encyclopedic 'Letter and Image' ('The Spirit of the Letter') during the course of which he links writing and painting (a theme he later expands on in a series of essays on the American artist Cy Twombly). Always interesting and often provocative, Barthes displays a talent for quick, shocking observations."—Mary Mackey, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review

"The essays included in The Responsibility of Forms, written mainly during the 1970s, swoop repetitively on those stray material fragments which elude the embrace of the sign, those gestures or nuances which even the most elaborate semiology must fail to formalize. It is a move from text to texture—from 'gloss' as annotation to 'gloss' as material sheen. Like Freud before him, the later Barthes seeks to install himself at the very juncture of sign and body, semiotic and somatic, meaning and materiality."—Terry Eagleton, Times Literary Supplement