Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Story of the Eye
Book Review: .
Summary: 5 Stars
Gothic metaphysical pretension doesn't get any better than this. This is one of Bataille's best. Extroadinarily adept in evoking Bataille's rich and profoundly unique atmosphere, and compulsively readable provided you can handle pages upon pages of extremely taboo pornographic imagery. But this is very different from reading, say, De Sade -- there is a spellbindingly dreamlike quality to Bataille's writing and incredibly effective aesthetic sensibilities. Sure, it's often pretentious, but it remains dazzling and thought-provoking at the same time -- it is never cliche or anything less than utterly, twistedly original. Burroughs fans ought to enjoy this, or people who find De Sade's excess interesting but consider his writing to be unreadably dry.Book Review: A Gothic Glimpse Into Undergound Reality.
Summary: 5 Stars
This tale travels in lurid sketches detailing the experiences & experiments of 3 people who lived up at their own & got away with it.Their obsessions & fantasies executed in highly mysterious & near supernatural imagery leave a detachingly cold atmosphere in short & cluttered sentences occassionally highlighted by bits of lyricism.Their sinister perversions & mania for the gravel of sexual satisfaction & eventual accomplishment of this stretches the boundaries of subcultural degeneracy a bit furhther.The characters analogousness in each undertaking exemplify mankind fulfilling the natural dictates of what I would call the "Basic Fixative Essence" of things.Simone's fascination for the things she satisfies herself on is a perfect illustration of man rediscovering the core of his basest desires.Fetishisms arise in ecstatic motions in this slightly revolutionary novelette,including the famous augmentation of the sex impulse through the rending sights & scents of nature.The piece powerfully ends in a revealing sadness surprising for it's romantic symbolitry imprinted by an unforgettable vision of sight.These works of art are best appreciated when one has no preconceived notions;when one can enter it's world & LIVE IN IT rather than merely browsing through.Book Review: A JUXTAPOSITION OF EROTICA AND HORROR.
Summary: 5 Stars
THIS BOOK IS A ROLLERCOASTER RIDE. IT TAKES FROM THE HEIGHT OF EROTIC FANTASY TO THE DARKEST DEPTHS OF HUMANITY. AT POINTS I DIDN'T KNOW WEATHER TO BLUSH OR TO VOMIT. SIMPLY PUT IT IS A TRUE MENTAL EXPERIENCE (FOR ADULTS ONLY THOUGH). BUY A COPY TODAYBook Review: A splendid tale of initiation
Summary: 4 Stars
Quite apart from the gruesome details, this is a wonderful story of a prolonged initiation to oversexuality. And also of the writer's initiation to writing, as this is his first book. Bataille plays with the goriness as if trying to find out how far his pen can go, just as we all did on couches when our parents were away. Literaturewise, however, there's nothing much in it. Anyone over 25 will find it tiresome.Book Review: Bare, raw, open--a subtle gunshot of philosophy
Summary: 5 Stars
Despite his perversions, one cannot help but identify with the protagonist: propelled by his own barely-understood desires, captivated by relationship with a woman so intense as to be unintelligible to language, pulled along by the power of circumstances seemingly out of his control, trying desparately to save adolescent loves from parental and medical power... Bataille takes the twinges of teenage desire we all feel and runs with them all the way out. He drops you in and lets you try to swim back to civilization, to morality, to desire denuded. If you let yourself, you just might be inspired by this tale--not to sexual perversion, but to the limits of the real and the ends of your powers.
Bataille opens himself up, and invites us to do the same. To take this as simply a sexual or pornographic tale would be ignobling. The Sartre quote on the back of the book really ought to be on the first page, for it makes the entire work as sensible as it can ever be: speaking of Bataille, he said, "In him, reality is conflict."
If you let it, this book will blast open your ideas and feelings, and open you up to the waves and tendrils of the world. If you whether the storm, congratulate yourself. Most people won't let it get that close.
On the other hand, Story of the Eye is, despite its apparent casual treatment of language, complex and arcane. This is not because Bataille has covered over his 'real' meaning, but because this book partakes of a structure of meaning that destroys structuration. As a result, it doesn't have a 'point' to hide _or_ to reveal. Habituated to more conventional literary method, my initial response was near-total confusion, gasping and giggling at the same time. Story of the Eye is refreshing and stunning, exhilirating and terrifying. In the confused aftermath of reading it, one is left thoughtful, nude, and in pain. Accepting that reality is never finished, that humanity can not, should not, achieve stasis and perfection, that we need to be confronted with ourselves--only with these realizations will one truly love this book. Coming to terms with the acceptability of not knowing what is going on is part of loving this book, and it may be part of loving life, too...