Blue of Noon

I'm working my way through Bataille's oeuvre as I read his biography. This is the first time I've ever done something like this and I'm having a great time. So far Blue of Noon is my favorite. It is a largely political novel that manages to weave every one of Bataille's philosophical interests into a relatively coherent storyline. This novel has a lot in common with Sartre's Nausea but imho it is better written. Where Nausea feels a little overwritten, Blue of Noon chooses concision and for the project at hand I think that is more appropriate.

In Bataille's own words:

"A story that reveals the possibilities of life is not necessarily an appeal; but it does appeal to a moment of fury without which its author would remain blind to these possibilities, which are those of excess. Of this I am sure: only an intolerable, impossible ordeal can give an author the means of achieving that wide-ranging vision that readers weary of the narrow limitations imposed by convention are waiting for."

It's all in here: Excess, war, the blinding fury of an impossible ordeal as generative to an exultant work, sex, power, death... and I have to say, as heady as that may sound this is a very readable book. Even a page turner for some stretches. Bataille was a pretty fantastic writer and his clear and confident vision for the world allows him to put plainly into fiction what his worldview implies.