Critique of "Death of the Author" The title to the story "The Death of an Author," by Roland Barthes, suggests this story may be a fictional novel about the story of an author's death. Perhaps one might pick it up, and skim the foreword in hopes that beneath the cover of this book there would be a mystery, a story of detectives, eye- witnesses, clues, and a puzzle for the reader to solve. Before I read this story, the title "The Death of an Author" brought to my imagination the biography of a writer slowly drinking himself to death trying to finish the story of his life, but the author would be stuck and depressed becaus