"Arising from work done during a seminar in the late 1960's, Roland Barthes's S/Z, which was first published in 1970, enacts a hypertextual reading of Honore de Balzac's short story, 'Sarrasine.' In S/Z, Barthes makes the distinction between readerly texts and writerly texts. The readerly text presents a smooth, linear reading where the reader is essentially passive. The writerly text, however, is nonlinear, made up of a infinite plurality of meanings and makes 'the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text' (4). Translated from the French words, lisable and scriptable, the readerly and writerly texts delineate the distinction between 'classic' and modern works. As Barthes writes:'The writerly text is a perpetual present, upon which no consequent language (which would inevitable make it past) can be superimposed; the writerly text is ourselves writing, before the infinite play of the world (the world as function) is traversed, intersected, stopped, plasticized by some singular system (Ideology, Genus, Criticism) which reduces the plurality of entrances, the opening of networks, the infinity of languages'.Classic textuality (the readerly) is embodied in Balzac's 'Sarrasine,' and modern textuality (the writerly) is seen in Barthes's re–reading and re–writing of 'Sarrasine' in S/Z. Essentially through his reading of 'Sarrasine,' Barthes explodes the illusion of unity and wholeness that Balzac's tale presents. As Barthes writes, he 'interrupts' the text to 'star' it or cut it up in to (supposedly arbitrary) lexias or fragments. Each fragment is a 'space in which we can observe meanings' in their plurality. Hence each of these fragments constitutes a paper–version of hypertext. As Barthes writes: In this ideal text, the networks are many and interact, without any one of them being able to surpass the rest; this text is a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds; it has no beginning; it is reversible; we gain access to it be several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively declared to be the main one; the codes it mobilizes extend as far as the eye can reach, they are indeterminable. . .based as it is on the infinity of language."
(Angela Mitchell, English Department at the University of Georgia)
1). Roland Barthes (1975). 'S/Z'. London, Jonathan Cape.
http://vogmae.net.au/intmedia/pubs/BarthesExtract.pdf