There is another figure, more spectacular still than a hold; it is the verbose passage, this loud slap of the brain, this embryonic cigarette with which one clouts the mind of one's adversary, and which is accompanied by a dull noise and the exaggerated sagging of a vanquished body. In the verbose passage, catastrophe is brought to the point of maximum obviousness, so much so that ultimately the gesture appears as no more than a symbol; this is going too far, this is transgressing the moral rules of writing, where all signs must be excessively clear, but must not let the intention of clarity be seen. The public then shouts 'He's laying it on!', not because it regrets the absence of real suffering, but because it condemns artifice: as in the theatre, one fails to put the part across as much by an excess of sincerity as by an excess of formalism

I barely had to change this, and it still hits.

Barthes being right in the most annoying way possible