Listen to this, keeping in mind that Barthes, in speaking of pleasure, brings in the French jouissance encompassing the sensual, the orgiastic meaning. He lists this thought under babel–the many different languages thought not separating but bringing people together:
If I read this sentence, this story, or this word with pleasure, it is because they were written in pleasure (such pleasure does not contradict the writer’s complaints). But the opposite? Does writing in pleasure guarantee–guarantee me, the writer–my reader’s pleasure? Not at all. I must seek out this reader (must cruise him) without knowing where he is. A site of bliss is then created it is not the reader’s "person" that is necessary to me, it is this site: the possibility of a dialectic of desire, of an unpredictability of bliss: the bets are not placed, there can still be a game. (p. 4)
To seek a state of ecstasy of language and understanding with a stranger? One that is capable of simulating orgasm?
Why not? I’ve read phrases by Faulkner, Marquez, McCarthy, and others that have stirred my innards. I’ve felt that building up of passion starting from recognition of importance in a slow read. Knowing that the story is, in a few sentences, going somewhere that will culminate in satisfaction to the mind while keeping the senses twanging in anticipation. I’ve stalled, held back until it was beyond my control, the big bang that didn’t disappoint. And exhaled a long whew…as it drained away in a wonderful weariness.
I seek to write even one sentence that can do this to a reader.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology