How to Live Together

In The Preparation of the Novel, a collection of lectures delivered at a defining moment in Roland Barthess career (and completed just weeks before his death), the critic spoke of his struggle to discover a different way of writing and a new approach to life. The Neutral preceded this work, containing Barthess challenge to the classic oppositions of Western thought and his effort to establish new pathways of meaning. How to Live Together predates both achievements, a series of lectures exploring solitude and the degree of contact necessary for individuals to exist and create at their own pace. A distinct project that sets the tone for his subsequent lectures, How to Live Together is a key introduction to Barthess pedagogical methods and critical worldview. Barthes focuses on the concept of idiorrhythmy, a productive form of living together in which one recognizes and respects the individual rhythms of the other. He explores this phenomenon in five texts representing different living spaces and their associated ways of life: Émile Zolas Pot-Bouille; Thomas Manns The Magic Mountain; André Gides La Séquestrée de Poitiers; Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe; and Pallidiuss Lausiac History.