Barthes and Matt's Excellent Adventure

In the selection The Pleasure of the Text (1973), it appears Barthes is able to acknowledge the unhealthy reading habits of the impatient reader and offer the appropriate form of interaction with text. By implementing a metaphor comparing reading text to the beauty of the human body, Barthes is able to assess the  problems with impatiently reading text and offer his opinion of how to interact with the text to create value.

Barthes argues that the common reader is obsessed with functionality and wants the answers immediately. Thus, he asserts that the reader skips over what he or she deems extraneous and attempts to temporarily dive into the text, expecting the meaning of text to reveal itself in only that segment. Comparing the text to a striptease, the metaphor of the text as a beautiful body shows that this type of reader tears away the clothes feverishly to reveal the body instantaneously rather than enjoy the show. In saying this, I think he is criticizing the progressive speed of society and how that progressive attitude will spread to even the most fundamental aspects of modern life. Reading text in this case, has become more about the specifics rather than the entire work. This calamity leads the reader to simply regurgitate information from the text rather than gain genuine knowledge from what the text is saying. Leading to readers who speak as if they know, when in actuality, they are approximating the meaning of texts and consequently, creating a rift between the text and its meaning.

In addition, Barthes explains merely reading a text and agreeing with its principles is a useless interaction with the text. Barthes denotes this reader as a "voyeur" who simply gains pleasure as a witness rather than a participant. Meaning the reader observes the text but creates no true meaning or interaction from it. On the other hand, questioning and challenging the text creates a direct relationship between the reader and writer. In summation, by reading texts perversely, Barthes believes we can infinitely create, while in contrast, observing texts limits creativity to mere conformity.