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Title: Story of the Eye
ISBN: 0872862097
Author:
Georges Bataille
Publicate Date: 2001-01-01
Publish: 2001-01-01
List Price: $9.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $5.30
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $5.00
Amazon Merchant Price: $9.95
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| Customer Review: |
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1: So different and interesting read
This is the strangest book I have ever read. But I am learning now as a grown women that not every thing in a is about Monsters or happy endings. This is a dark and disturbing book that is very thought prevoking. I feel as though I am reading a secret diary and I love it. Makes me look at me and how society views sexuality. Yes, the main charactors are a little crazy but it is a erotic fantasy many of us would like to visit if only for an afternoon. PS What's up with the eggs???
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2: Great First Novel
This was Bataille's first novel and it is the first novel by Bataille that I've read. It was recommended to me by a friend as well as Amazon.com after I informed them both that I had read Venus in Furs, which I love. Initially I found Bataille's open pornographic style a bit surprising and it took me while to adjust. Because of this I missed the literary significance in the first few chapters. However, once I adjusted I saw what wonderful modern scenes he was creating, and how complete they were. All I can do is offer a panegyric for this book, which I would recommend to anyone interested in sexual deviance.
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3: Haunting Endeavor Plunging Across Literary Boundaries (featuring medicore storytelling)
Well, chances are probably good that if you're reading this then you've heard of the classic erotic Story of the Eye. It's sheer outrageous absurdity in the form of sensation overload. Pornographic endeavors of the most grotesque, extraordinary, and perverse leads the narrative (i. e. bulls and eggs) and drives the main themes straight to the point. Mr. Bataille's work is mostly driven on his philosophy that, like de Sade, focuses on violence, death, isolation, irrationality versus rationality (the will to life of Schoepenhauer, and the spirit of Nietzsche) and of course passion (through sex and desire). At times the book was arousing, at times disgusting, but inevitably the story becomes so numbing that I lost sense of my own human characteristics. If that sounds like a stretch to you, read the book and see what you think. This book is a shocker that disables social and literary boundaries, though the form of the book (13(?) chapters, linear narrative) is only clouded over by some poor narration. For fans of Henry Miller, Marquis de Sade, Anais Nin's erotica, and the Story of O, check this out, but be weary that this book is more meta than you might care for.
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4: Grotesque and Astonishing
George Bataille's brief Sade-esque novella is a mordantly brilliant dip into the post-Nietzschen world modernity. The Story of the Eye is a pornographic disintegration of the Western ethical code. It is both magnificent and foul; a more daring and original work than his later philosophy/anthropology. A seminal piece of 20th century literature; although it was published well before the cultural abominations of our current nihilism, we are still not ready for this bleak and punkish work of literary debauchery.
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5: Thought Provoking, Brilliant and Grotesque ...
What causes a mind to embrace gross sexual abstractions? When does a moment of teenage reckless abandon turn into a debauched nightmare? What causes a young mind to lean towards fetishism?
Professionals have grappled with those questions for decades, and many of these and similar questions will forever remain unanswered in The Story of The Eye. And yet, even with its horrific and gruesome imagery, one cannot help but desire to know the answers. However, one must understand the human shadow with some semblance of clarity for those answers to make any sense. Georges Bataille is one philosopher who truly understands, and he does not leave us wanting. In part two of this edition, he offers some clarity as he mulls over a few of the aberrations of his own childhood - how he came to understand his own shadow and its relationship to events and images within the story itself.
While Story of The Eye chronicles the deviant sexual escapades of two young lovers, this is not what I would consider a pornographic novel, as it was originally labelled. Yes, the erotic scenes are quite intense - intense enough to make the faint of heart put the book down in order to vomit. But the erotica is not the true bite of the story. The deep emotional, psychological, and pathological attachment between the two main characters is what drives this story. Their disdain for the banal is apparent in everything they do.
The narration is surreal, slipping in an out of conscious thought and action so fluidly it's like sinking into quicksand - struggle against it and drown or remain still and experience this work as the true artistic endeavour that it is. If you dare to remain still, you certainly will not be disappointed.
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