Barthes: Readerly Texts Vs Writerly Texts

In The Pleasures of the Text,  Barthes talks about how we read and interpret text. He emphasizes the fact that "we do not read everything with the same intensity of reading" (108). He claims there are "two systems of reading: one goes straight to the articulations of the anecdote, it considers the extent of the text, [and] ignores the play of the language... the other skips nothing" (190). The reader therefore has a choice to make: either read slowly, and read the entirety of the text, missing nothing, or skim, only reading the "important" parts, but miss out on the pleasure of the text. When reading something quickly or something boring, we tend to skim or skip certain passages that we find excessive or unnecessary. As readers, we respond to texts that evoke emotions and encourage us to continue reading.We want to enjoy what we are reading. 

Barthes identifies two different forms of text: writerly text and readerly text. Writerly text is text that provides bliss, but also allows the readers to break out of their subject position, and add on to it. Writerly text encourage us to become active participants and contribute to the writing process. Readerly text on the other hand are text that pleasure the reader, but don't challenge the reader's position as a subject. They are designed to make sense to the reader, and have a narrative or story. By this definition, I think a book like Harry Potter would be considered a readerly text, because it provides a narative for the reader to follow, and is very pleasurably to read. A writerly text, though, would be something more like the theory reader we are reading for class. It provides the needed information, but also makes the reader think and use skills of intertextuality in order to understand it. I find myself skimming this text to get to the "important" parts. Both kinds of texts are important in different ways.