The Happy Hypocrite

What am I? Roland Barthes. As if. Garbed in a sequence of paradigmatic structures such as the joke, the notebook, the novel and the script, this latest issue of the ever-engrossing, ever-puzzling Happy Hypocrite offers a range of contributions that defy the innate obsolescence of classification through their embrace of poetic analysis. Drawing theme and method from a new translation of Barthes's essay The Preparation of the Novel, which starts ''...as if I was going to write one,'' contributors include Chris Kraus, Beatrice Gibson, Seth Price, Antonia Hirsch, a new translation of Roland Barthes, and a reprint from The Plebs, What Am I? is not quite what it looks, but the ever intrepid Book Works decided to publish anyway.