Name: Story of the Eye
Rating: 3.064102564102564 (39 reviews)
ISBN: 9780141913674

Georges Bataille

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.

Story of the Eye

Jasmine 

Les assiettes, c’est fait pour s’asseoir 

I cared only for what is classified as "dirty." On the other hand, I was not even satisfied with the usual debauchery, because the only thing it dirties is debauchery itself, while, in some way or other, anything sublime and perfectly pure is left intact by it.

We did not lack modesty—on the contrary—but something urgently drove us to defy modesty together as immodestly as possible.

Story of the eye

gingy :3

Disgusting, perverted, sensual, grotesque, filthy, repulsive, but couldn’t put it down. Sartre was right, it’s a “holocaust of words.” Great gateway into pornographic and morally reprehensible erotica. Not for the easily squeamish.

jaya kohol

Had to read this book for a class. Didn't like the fetishization of milk, eggs, bulls testicles, and potential rape (basically everything.)

Susan

Tobias V. Langhoff

I didn't read this book for the porn. Luckily. I read it because it's in the public domain and was mentioned in one of my favorite songs, Of Montreal – The Past is a Grotesque Animal:

I fell in love with the first cute girl that I met
Who could appreciate Georges Bataille
Standing at a Swedish festival
Discussing Story of the Eye
And grotesque this book is. Yes, there are erotic passages, but there's also gore and murder. I didn't think I was squeamish, but, well, I'm glad I didn't read this book over dinner. I also don't think it's especially high literature. It gave me very little.

jess

as Sontag said before all her extra (dare to say, unnecessary) rationalization of the novel: "mere" pornography, inexplicably fancy trash.

though to which her essay does reflect upon the idea of "humaneness" in pure blatant eroticism, the unspeakable existence of "pornographic society" (basically japan), the duality and perception of eroticism as form of literature and art, the transcendence of pornography as an appreciation to literature, and the condemnation of pornography as a part of literature's nomenclature, it fails to regress an idea of how in the revelation of this vastly tabooed art without the decadence of its proper and wise understanding comes more "suspect" and "danger" than the designations it is trying to proclaim. pornography alone, serves as a taboo mainly of human's stripped-bare primalness; its inability to set the boundaries of what is "beyond human" or amongst those lines. in so, does the praise of pornographic imagination as a form of art and a grandeur part of avant-garde literature a necessary act of its celebration? is "humaneness" ever allowed to be reconstructed and surpassed through when desire, a "human" identity, overrules that counterpart? 

moreover, the whole erotica was barely able to sustain on its own without Sontag's and Barthes' essays. they existed merely to reinforce and redefine the idea of just purely pornographic, erotic novel with the prominence of the character's sexual repression that borderlines the ethics and morality of "human", as a form of avant-garde literature and transcendental art.

eris

Diana Platgalve

“Story of the Eye” is a book that will disturb the world of perceptions after the first read. At first it comes off vulgar, as a pornographic version of a “classical love story.” However, Part Two reveals underlaying threads of disturbing elements and bends the whole writing. 
Author’s tone throughout the book does not change; he uses surrealistic and erotic writing to tie in emotions very real to him, such as lust, disgust, and melancholy. These emotions are somehow transcended- the reader can feel them from the language used and not via clear description. Narrator experiences many events unfolding in front of him, while he’s involved in animalistic intercourses, it is the part that takes over his life. 
The world pictured in the book seems very dark and unapologetic. Both-ideas and elements of language- captures attention; ideas are connected through repetitive elements (such as eggs and eyes). The book does not reaches a definite conclusion, it’s a perverse protest to societal norms, to put in societies eyes exactly what it does not want to see.

This book is worth a read because of its form. It can be perceived as a form of dark art, taking into consideration the time it was first published.

Story of the Eye

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