Story of the Eye

by Georges Bataille, Joachim Neugroschel (Translator)

Overview

Bataille’s first novel, published under the pseudonym ‘Lord Auch’, is still his most notorious work. In this explicit pornographic fantasy, the young male narrator and his lovers Simone and Marcelle embark on a sexual quest involving sadism, torture, orgies, madness and defilement, culminating in a final act of transgression. Shocking and sacreligious, Story of the Eye is the fullest expression of Bataille’s obsession with the closeness of sex, violence and death. Yet it is also hallucinogenic in its power, and is one of the erotic classics of the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780141913674
Publisher:	Penguin UK
Publication date:	09/26/2013
Series:	Penguin Modern Classics
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	307 KB

About the Author

Georges Bataille was born in Billom, France, in 1897. He was a librarian by profession. Also a philosopher, novelist, and critic he was founder of the College of Sociology. Bataille died in 1962.

What People are Saying About This

Jean Paul Sartre

"Bataille denudes himself, exposes himself, his exhibitionism aims at destroying all literature. He has a holocaust of words. The tale speaks about man's condition, not his nature. His tone recalls the scornful aggressiveness of the surrealist. The tale has survived the death of God. In him, reality is conflict."

Susan Sontag

"Bataille's work...indicated the aesthetic possibilities of pornography as an art form: 'Story of the Eye' being the most accomplished artistically of all pornographic prose I've read."

Editorial Reviews

The main thing to keep in mind is that The Story of the Eye was written in France at the height of the Surrealist movement. As such, it addresses the most cherished of Gallic intellectual concerns. The forbidden vs. Catholicism. Bourgeois behavior vs. primitive passion. Even that old saw about faith and redemption (as opposed to good clean sin) gets a workout. Yet never, ever does it become pedantic.

Maybe it's because there seems to be something truly sincere about it all. Or maybe it's because the action comes fast and furious around the soliloquies. While the author's intent might have been to draw the line between the eye (sight/knowledge) and the groin (passion/feeling), the result is a damn hot read -- not only in the "one-handed sense," but also in the classic intellectual tradition. Images and metaphors leap out at you like the lightning crack of ejaculation, when you squeeze your eyes closed and see geometric shapes, all spiderwebbery and gleaming.
—Playboy.com

Steven Lee Beeber