Aστραίᾱ reviewed Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
Review of 'Story of the Eye' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
uh, yeah. this was uhm... interesting?
English language
Published Nov. 5, 2001
Story of the Eye
4 stars
(7 reviews)
Story of the Eye (French: L'histoire de l'œil) is a 1928 novella written by Georges Bataille that details the increasingly bizarre sexual perversions of a pair of teenage lovers, including an early depiction of omorashi fetishism in Western literature. It is narrated by the young man looking back on his exploits.
Adrián Astur Álvarez reviewed Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
Review of 'Story of the Eye' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
I can't help imagining this book being pitched to a publisher and that being the first telling of the Aristocrats joke.
Bataille, err, Lord Auch, is such an excellent writer that the project of this book is lasting, though unusual. Can you let go of every inhibition and write deeply into your grimiest, your darkest, your most profane fantasies and come out the other side with an oddly clearer picture of your mind? I'm not entirely sure this was the project's beginning, but it certainly is its lasting quality.
Reading The Story of the Eye alongside Bataille's intellectual biography has been essential. It allows many of his early philosophical notions to filter through. I think all of this is fascinating. What other philosopher can present their ideas through pornography? Probably all of them but here Bataille has actually done it and it is far more interesting than Nausea. The obsessions …
I can't help imagining this book being pitched to a publisher and that being the first telling of the Aristocrats joke.
Bataille, err, Lord Auch, is such an excellent writer that the project of this book is lasting, though unusual. Can you let go of every inhibition and write deeply into your grimiest, your darkest, your most profane fantasies and come out the other side with an oddly clearer picture of your mind? I'm not entirely sure this was the project's beginning, but it certainly is its lasting quality.
Reading The Story of the Eye alongside Bataille's intellectual biography has been essential. It allows many of his early philosophical notions to filter through. I think all of this is fascinating. What other philosopher can present their ideas through pornography? Probably all of them but here Bataille has actually done it and it is far more interesting than Nausea. The obsessions become the conclusions. The ovular motif, the exalted and the sordid, the cultured and the mad, the living and the dead and the dead of living. All of these become a kind of allegorical expression of Bataille playing out Freudian theory while getting to the bottom of his own.
Highly recommended. Particularly to anyone who is easily offended.
