*A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments* brought Roland Barthes fame; following the book’s publication in 1977, the semiotician and theorist came to be viewed as a new kind of pop star. He was invited to appear on television shows alongside Françoise Sagan and Anne Golon (co-author of the *Angélique* novels), and interviews with him appeared in mass-market magazines such as *Playboy* (which Barthes had once mocked in his book *Mythologies*) and *Elle*. This success stemmed from a quality apparent to every reader: the book’s resemblance to a work of fiction, complete with its own characters and narrative arc. Thus, a critic and theorist’s book about the language of lovers became, in itself, an example and embodiment of that very language.