Customer Reviews (2)

Cute
I'm a fan of Bataille, but I'm afraid that in most translations into English this major thinker comes across as being merely silly about sex and excrement and the Absolute.From his own febrile, pathological alluvium located in a fertile triangle between Eros and Thanatos, anus and genitals, Bataille (said in the helpful introduction by the translator to be using poetry to reach the Eternal) comes up with cuties like these:

The Wall

A hatchet
give me a hatchet
so I can frighten myself
with my shadow on the wall
ennui
feeling of emptiness
fatigue.

I have to admit feeling like that myself recently.And:

Laughing

To laugh and laugh
at the sun
at the nettles
at the pebbles
at the ducks

at the rain
at the pope's p**
at mommy
and a coffin full of sh**.

It doesn't get any better than that folks, although Bataille makes lots of references to the void, Zarathrustra, Heraclitus, and other touchstones of modern Western culture.I do admire his mixture of profundity and scatology and wish that more post-modern writers would follow Bataille's example.Why let the makers of popular movies and television sit-coms get a jump on the rest of us?

Death + Sex + More Death
Bataille's poetry is often beautiful, using words and ideas to paint vague emotional pictures. You might get bored when he goes on and on about immensity or death, but it's worth it for the good parts. ... Read more

Product Description
An important literary and philosophical figure,Georges Bataille has had a significant influence on other French writers, such as Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard. The Thirst for Annihilation is the first book in English to respond to Bataille's writings. In no way, though, is Nick Land's book an attempt to appropriate Bataille's writings to a secular intelligibility or to compromise with the aridity ofacademic discourse - rather, it is written as a communion .Theoretical issues in philosophy, sociology, psychodynamics, politics and poetry are discussed, but only as stepping stones into the deep water of textual sacrifice where words pass over into the broken voice of death. Cultural modernity is diagnosed down to its Kantian bedrock with its transcendental philosophy of the object, but Bataille's writings cut violently across this tightly disciplined reading to reveal the strong underlying currents that bear us towards chaos and dissolution - the violent impulse to escape, the thirst for annihilation. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Unrateable
Goodness, what an ... odd book. I picked it up in essay crisis mode (i.e. I grabbed anything in the library with the word Bataille in the title) and that's how I encountered Land's book. I have never read anything odder in my life. If you're after a straightforward Bataille crit, then this is not the book for you - it has about 2 useful pages'-worth of material in it. If you want to feel like you put your head into a tumble-dryer full of acid and leprechauns and things, then give this book a go. Land's approach to Bataille is a two-way process - he engages with Bataille's thought, and his writing is very much an attempt to write in an authentically Bataillean way. Hence the descriptions of drunkenness, of anger, of madness. You certainly couldn't accuse Land of being conventional. And the dedication is hilarious - worth the cover price by itself.

Read this and expand your mental borders a bit.

This piece of hole for madmen
I cannot compare reading this book to any other book I have read. It is not a poem. It is not a fiction. Philosophy? No, obviously not. Nick Land curses philosophy and everything about it but its philosophical chapters are sharp, intelligent, rich and mysteriously gloomy. If demons wished to write a book, all together, then you could expect to read this book. Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari once shouted "they are already a crowd". Thirst for Annihilation has been written by a legion. Nick Land deserves to go to hell because of writing a book like this, feit de viande et de sperme fou. I cast my vote with the close-minded reviewer who has given such a book just one star: "Don't read this book." It has not been written for you, human!

Nick Land and Victor Vitanza
I remember when i was student and studying this book with Prof. Victor Vitanza who loved this book. we grew up with this book, Lyotard's libidinal economy and DG's Anti-Oedipus. We discussed that Nick Land's book is an independent work which itself is a masterpiece or at least too thrilling to bear. Although this book is very difficult and english is my second language but it is the best book i have ever read so far. this reviewer who has given it one star either doesn't understand bataille at all or has some personal issues with the writer. i don't wonder how UK reviewers hated this man when he did a radical thing and went to China and started to work as an unknown columnist. his later texts and his writings on America and War should be read with no moral presuppositions as this great book suffers no morality; i imagine they have hidden purposes behind thier clear messages. i don't exaggerate when i claim Nick Land is the bravest writer in our time compared to Lautreamont, Celine, Vian, Sade and Bataille himself. It is too much to ask UK readers or other enemies of this book and its writer to put thier hatred and rigid values aside and look deep into this book. if i could only offer this book 10 stars...

Onanistic hubris
Quite simply the most misguided, irritating, self-indulgent...let's just say the worst text ever written on Bataille (although I certainly do not limit its putrescence to Bataille literature alone). On every page this author is practically screaming, "Look at me! I can be like him! I'm the Ass who saw the Angel (yes, he wishes he were Nick Cave too, I imagine) I can write like him!". Seriously... perhaps the lowest point...an anecdote...a guy walks into a bar and explains to the bartender that he just cut the throat of God. It doesn't, nay can't get any worse than this.

A PIT FULL OF BAT DUNG
Even better than Bataille's works ... this is a dangerous book indeed. ... Read more

Product Description
Set against the backdrop of Europe's slide into Fascism, this twentieth-century erotic classic takes the reader on a dark journey through the psyche of the pre-war French intelligentsia, torn between identification with the victims of history and the glamour of its victors. One of Bataille's overtly political works, it explores the ambiguity of sex as a subversive force, bringing violence, power and death together in a terrifying unity. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

A Review by Dr. Joseph Suglia
According to Georges Bataille's autobiographical note, LE BLEU DU CIEL ("The Blue of the Sky") was composed in the twilight before the occupation of Vichy France.

The descending night darkens these pages.

Dissolute journalist Henri Troppmann ("Too-Much-Man") and his lover, Dirty give way to every impulse, to every surfacing urge, no matter how vulgar. Careening from one sex-and-death spasm to the next, they deliver themselves over to infinite possibilities of debauchery. A fly drowning in a puddle of whitish fluid (or is it the thought of his mother, a woman he must not desire?) prompts Troppmann to plunge a fork into a woman's supple white thigh. The threat of Nazi terror incites a coupling in a boneyard.

Their only desire is to besmirch whatever is elevated, to vulgarize the holy, to pollute it, to corrupt it, to bring it down into the mud.

By muddying whatever is "sacred," they maintain the force of "the sacred."

As a historical document, BLEU DU CIEL is eminently interesting. It offers unforgettably vivid portraits of Colette Peignot (as Dirty) and the "red nun" Simone Weil (as Lazare).

It is also the story of a man who is fascinated with fascism and the phallus, of someone who loves war, although not for teleological reasons. It is the story of a man who celebrates war on its own terms, who nihilistically affirms its limitless power of destruction.

As the night materializes, the blue of the sky disappears.

Dr. Joseph Suglia

More languid than arousing
Not nearly as memorable as the surrealist pornography of "The Story of an Eye," nor as thought-provoking as his study of the tangling of the great death and the "little death" of orgasm in his sex-and-mortality, violence-and-the sacred exploration "Erotism," this slim novel, as the author's uncomfortable tone betrays in its afterword, appears half-finished and abandoned rather than meant as it is for publication.

Lazare's fanatical devotion to the Left and especially Dirty's penchant for decadent and unsanitary lifestyle choices remain the most powerfully characterized moments, but too much of the novel remains as jittery and haphazard-- albeit Bataille argues in the afterword he meant it to be read as such-- as comparatively mundane next to the strong opening vignette of Troppmann and Dirty in one of literature's most effectively rendered dives, even by Parisian standards.

As one who has read plenty of Céline, a bit of Sade, and some of Sartre's fiction, this novel held some interest. Yet, it seems too slack, too dragged down by ennui. Far less erotic than a reader of "The Story of An Eye" might expect, this instead recalls Bataille's protege, Pierre Klossowski (his novels have been reviewed by me on Amazon; he's the brother of the painter Balthus) and his philosophical protagonists who also are prone more to shuffling about rather than coupling energetically. The extravagant claims left by readers here appear unfounded, given the turgid pace of its pages and the uneven tone of the narrative.

a severely underrated masterpiece
I don't understand why this book is considered to be one of Bataille's [illegitimate] children. It's beautifully written. The man was capable of working miracles with words through his style and arrangement of them. Blue of Noon is definitely not an exception.

Bataille's style is always one of brutal elegance. He's like a lover who slaps you in the face, only to pull you into a gentle embrace a moment later.

The main character, Troppman, is the star here - he is a deviant trying is best not to be. Ahhhh, the internal struggles - do you stay married and live your life as a respectable, productive member of society. Or do you run off with [prostitutes] and derelicts to indulge the savage needs you've so long supressed.

Not to be outdone, his brightest co-star, is a woman named Dirty. She is a beautiful creation. She is a train wreck of a woman. She and Troppman braid themselves together in clearly conspicuous codependence of the worst sort, bawdy drunkeness paving the pathways to irrevocable damnation.

I also enjoyed Lazare; a woman Troppman finds himself thoroughly disgusted with, she has no redeeming features. Yet, he cannot stay away.

If you are a fan of the madman Bataille, don't miss out on this one. I think this is truly some of his best work.

a severely underrated masterpiece
I don't understand why this book is considered to be one of Bataille's bastard children. It's beautifully written. The man was capable of working miracles with words through his style and arrangement of them. Blue of Noon is definitely not an exception.

Bataille's style is always one of brutal elegance. He's like a lover who slaps you in the face, only to pull you into a gentle embrace a moment later.

The main character, Troppman, is the star here - he is a deviant trying is best not to be. Ahhhh, the internal struggles - do you stay married and live your life as a respectable, productive member of society. Or do you run off with whores and derelicts to indulge the savage needs you've so long supressed.

Not to be outdone, his brightest co-star, is a woman named Dirty. She is a beautiful creation. She is a train wreck of a woman. She and Troppman braid themselves together in clearly conspicuous codependence of the worst sort, bawdy drunkeness paving the pathways to irrevocable damnation.

I also enjoyed Lazare; a woman Troppman finds himself thoroughly disgusted with, she has no redeeming features. Yet, he cannot stay away.

If you are a fan of the madman Bataille, don't miss out on this one. I think this is truly some of his best work.

De Sade's nephew gets all sociopolitical.
"Blue of Noon" is the story of Henri, an amoral man living in Europe during the 1930s. He is supposedly married, but spends his time with similarly amoral women, lacking clothing, inhibition, shame, and even proper hygeine at times. He zips between London, Paris, Barcelona, and Frankfurt, and frankly, engages in nothing but immoral self-satisfying activities in every spot.

At various times, he agonizes over his relationships with his wife, his sexual partners, and his deceased mother. He becomes embroiled in a Communist revolutionary plot in Barcelona, with one of his sexual partners, a Jewish woman, involved in its planning and execution. He reveals his necrophilic obsession to two of his partners, further revealing the exact, even more sickening, subject of his obsession to one of them. He has sex, he gets sick, his women have sex, they get sick, everybody has sex, everybody gets sick. For the punchline, near the end of the novel, Bataille throws Nazis into the picture, showing us that all the depravity of fascism is comparable to the depravity he has shown us all along. Though published in 1957, the book was originally written in 1936.

This reviewer isn't buying it. Not a word of it. Not the story, not even the "1936" part. For one thing, the writing style is actually more mature than that of "L'Abbe C", published in 1950. Bataille is most probably trying to show off that he detected the evil inherent in the Nazis "way back when". I don't give him that much credit.

For another thing, I think he uses Nazis as an easy way to score "scary" points. One might intellectualize his choice by saying Bataille is trying to tell us that no matter how disgusting humans may act, at least we're not as bad as Nazis. Imagine a murderer begging leniency because he's not a Nazi. He's still a murderer. It seems Bataille is using Nazis to justify the pornography he just wrote, as if the world is such a horrible place that pornography is just another little bit of it, and tries to throw a philosophical wrench into the works, as if saying life is meaningless in the face of all the horrible things fascism is doing to us in Europe, but I suspect it was all done just for the hell of it. I frankly don't see any rhyme or reason to the thematic choices he makes.

I have nothing against the depravity or explicit nature of the book. "Been there, done that", right? It's not even all that explicit, there's probably less sex in this book than the average mainstream novel today, and he's certainly not advocating committing even the slightest harm to anyone. There are a few disturbing or distasteful ideas here and there, but one never gets the sense Bataille really means what he's writing. One gets the sense he's simply trying to come up with every juxtaposition of immoral behavior and social taboo he can, just to tweak the reader's moral compass a bit, trying to get a cheap rise out of his audience. Maybe this was an interesting exercise in 1957 (or "1936"), but given the state of depravity which existed in Germany during the 1920s, and the state of sexual liberation which swept Europe from the late 19th century through the early 20th century, I strongly doubt it.

Perhaps the target reader for this book will be the person interested in twisted versions of 19th-century literature (Bataille wrote like someone living 50 or 100 years before his time), or the works of De Sade (albeit in highly shortened format, this book being only 126 pages). ... Read more

Product Description
Patrick ffrench gives an imaginative theoretical reading of the unsettling masterpiece, Histoire de l'oeil (1928), by the French writer Georges Bataille, recognized now as a major figure in twentieth-century French literature. Bataille's erotic and disturbing text is a traumatic event in the history of modernity, provoking critical moments in the trajectories of structuralism and in the recent theorizations around his notion of the informe. ... Read more

Product Description
Reviled and fetishized, the work of Georges Bataille (1897–1962) has been most often reduced to his outrageous, erotic, and libertine fiction and essays. But increasingly, readers are finding his insights into politics, economics, sexuality, and performance revealing and timely. Focusing on Bataille’s most extensive work, The Accursed Share, Shannon Winnubst and the contributors to this volume present contemporary interpretations that read Bataille in a new light. These essays situate Bataille in French and European intellectual traditions, bring forward key concepts for understanding the challenges posed by his important work, and draw out his philosophy. Established voices and younger scholars cover a range of topics and themes, including ethics, politics, economy, psychology, and performance so readers can think with and through Bataille. While focusing attention on Bataille and his provocative work, this book offers a sympathetic, yet critical, reappraisal and rehabilitation.

Contributors are Alison Leigh Brown, Andrew Cutrofello, Zeynep Direk, Jesse Goldhammer, Dorothy Holland, Pierre Lamarche, Richard A. Lee, Jr., Alphonso Lingis, Ladelle McWhorter, Lucio A. Privitello, Allan Stoekl, Amy Wendling, and Shannon Winnubst. ... Read more

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illustrated edition, tr "Jayne Austen" ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Confrontation with death with drunken sex
"Confrontation with death with drunken sex" may not sound appealing as a book.However, this book has several positives that make it worth reading and rereading: 1) the book is very well structured into shortsegments titled with a summary of the action - the titles themselves bearmuch of the meaning of the story as if they formed a poem of which the textis a commentary 2) the text is extremely well written - a lesson ineffective use of words 3) the text is thought provoking - the sexual,drunken crudeness is demanded of the text not a superficial addon.Youwill be forced to reconsider your notion of death, evil and pleasure. 4)the drawings capture the madness (darkness} of the tale

While the bookcan be read quickly, multiple readings are needed to tease out meaning(s)... and it is well worth those multiple readings. ... Read more

Product Description

One of the most provocative and controversial writers of his time, these essays comprise George Bataille's most incisive study of surrealism.

For Bataille, the absence of myth had itself become the myth of the modern age. In a world that had lost the secret of its cohesion, Bataille saw surrealism as both a symptom and a beginning of an attempt to address this loss. His writings on this theme are the result of a profound reflection in the wake of World War Two.

The Absence of Myth is the most incisive study yet made of surrealism, insisting on its importance as a cultural and social phenomenon with far-reaching consequences. Clarifying Bataille's links with the surrealist movement, and throwing revealing light on his complex and greatly misunderstood relationship with Andre Breton, The Absence of Myth shows Bataille to be a much more radical figure than his postmodernist devotees would have us believe: a man who continually tried to extend Marxist social theory; a pessimistic thinker, but one as far removed from nihilism as can be.

Product Description
Georges Bataille's powerful writings have fascinated many readers, enmeshed as they are with the themes of sex and death. His emotive discourse of excess, transgression, sacrifice, and the sacred has had a profound and notable influence on thinkers such as Foucault, Derrida and Kristeva. Bataille: Writing the Sacred examines the continuing power and influence of his work.
The full extent of Bataille's subversive and influential writings has only been made available to an English-speaking audience in recent years. By bringing together international specialists on Bataille from philosophy and literature to art history, this collection is able to explore the many facets of his writings.
... Read more

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Product Description
In the 1930s, Georges Bataille proclaimed a "ferociously religious" sensibility characterized by simultaneous ecstasy and horror. Ecce Monstrum investigates the content and implications of this religious sensibility by examining Bataille's insistent linking of monstrosity and the sacred.Extending and sometimes challenging major interpretations of Bataille by thinkers like Denis Hollier and Rosalind Krauss the book reveals how his writings betray the monstrous marks of the affective and intellectual contradictions he seeks to produce in his readers. Charting a new approach to recent debates concerning Bataille's formulation of the informe ("formless"), the author demonstrates that the motif of monstrosity is keyed to Bataille's notion of sacrifice--an operation that ruptures the integrality of the individual form. Bataille enacts a "monstrous" mode of reading and writing in his approaches to other thinkers and artists--a mode that is at once agonistic and intimate. Ecce Monstrum examines this monstrous mode of reading and writing through investigations of Bataille's "sacrificial" interpretations of Kojève's Hegel and Friedrich Nietzsche; his contentious relationship with Simone Weil and its implications for his mystical and writing practices; his fraught affiliation with surrealist André Breton and his attempt to displace surrealism with "hyperchristianity"; and his peculiar relations to artist Hans Bellmer, whose work evokes Bataille's "religious sensibility."With its wide-ranging analyses, this book offers insights of interest to scholars of religion, philosophers, art historians, and students of French intellectual history and early modernism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Inspired, riveting work
This is a redemptive, haunting work of genius.Don't be dissuaded by the academic overlay; it will change your life.

"brilliant, exquisitely written"
Georges Bataille was an epistolary friend of the historian of religion Mircea Eliade, whose thoughts on the sacred provide one entrance to the labyrinth of Bataille's life work.In this brilliant, exquisitely written analysis of Bataille's religious thought, Jeremy Biles has not only immersed himself in the philosophy and fiction of Bataille but also his contemporaries Andre Breton, Simone Weil, and Hans Bellmer, all of whom prove critical for an understanding of such concepts as the "monstrous," the "formless," "hyperchristianity," and Bataille's "ferociously religious" relation to the world.Like Amy Hollywood's excellent "Sensible Ecstasy," which integrates Bataille's seemingly peculiar meditative techniques within Christian tradition, Biles is intensely interested in not only what Bataille says about religion but how his ideas can inform a rigorous and functional theology.

This book will prove indispensible for anyone seriously interested in Bataille, Weil, surrealism, or the dynamics of the sacred in modern European thought, but while academics in everything from art history to literary criticism will make use of this text for years to come, it should also prove, with its obvious passion and erudite-yet-enthralling untanglings of otherwise complicated and esoteric ideas, of real enjoyment for the lay reader, for anyone interested in what it might mean to live a "ferociously religious" life outside the bounds of traditional community.

... Read more

Product Description
Told in a series of first-person accounts, L'Abbe C is a startling narrative about the intense and terrifying relationship between twin brothers, Charles and Robert.Charles is a modern libertine, dedicated to vice and depravity, while Robert is a priest so devout that he is nicknamed 'L'Abbe'.When the sexually wild Eponine intrudes on their suffocating relationship, madness and death ensue. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A Portrait of Projection, Deception, and Deceit ...
Our story begins in the voice of the editor as he explains how he received a mysterious and unfinished manuscript from his acquaintance, Charles.This manuscript depicts the untold events of Charles' Brother Robert and his final days.

Charles and Robert are identical twins, and as in many stories of this nature, they are complete opposites, or so it appears on the surface.Charles denies himself nothing, and Robert is a priest.One might assume that this would be a story of conflicting principles or maybe even a story of dysfunctional sibling rivalry ... but no, this story is much more corrupt than that, for it is a story of perception, projection, and deceit.

True to form, Bataille offers us, not just a grazing of the skin, but a deep penetration into the void of depravation and obscenity.His style is that of a clinical master, as he dissects the bloody entrails of human desire, selfishness, conceit, and delusion.Charles is written as an open wound, and he bleeds his confession onto the pages.But as we have come to expect from Bataille, the prose is restrained, the imagery subtle and often obscured by the characters' emotions.He leaves the details to the imagination and focuses purely on the internal emotional turmoil of the characters.Those emotions are bludgeoning in their corruption and confusion.

Charles, upon finding that his brother is ill, sets out to prove a theory.Charles has been convinced all his life that his brother Robert is a fraud.That his piety is a masterful deception and that Robert, beneath the cassock and his own flesh, is exactly like Charles himself. He conspires with his mistress, the local whore, to seduce Robert.The whore is willing to oblige, as she has been in love with Robert since childhood.She is wounded and vengeful.She and Robert had been close at one time, but her chosen lifestyle of sexual and moral freedom caused Robert to completely extricate her from his life.His rejection was so final and so complete that she vowed an eternal pledge to destroy him, and Charles is more than willing to help in order to satisfy his own demented curiosity and emotional needs.

During the story, events unfold as one would assume, but they gradually build to an unexpected and blinding conclusion, exposing a truth about Robert that Charles cannot comprehend nor deal with.This is not a story about Robert, and the whore is merely a catalyst ... This is a portrait of Charles and his unrealized and unreconciled need to not only compare himself to his brother but his need to reduce an ideal he feels convinced is false and yet cannot and will not face the undeniable truth of his own theory.What happens when a man realizes his ideal is a lie?This is by far Bataille's best story ... deftly portrayed, the portraits of these two men and their relationship is left raw and uncompromising. Deeply emotional and psychologically devastating, this is what discerning readers have come to expect from Bataille, the seamless merging of fiction, psychology, and philosophy.Deviant and Damaged is Bataille's speciality, and with each book, he leaves the reader wanting for more.If you have only read 'Story of The Eye', do not expect the same blunt and vulgar prose from this book, 'Eye' was a deviation from Bataille's norm - equally exceptional but very different in its intent. One of the true masters of the Novella form, Bataille's stories require a bit of effort from the reader, but the treasure discovered, humanity's sense of self, is well worth that effort.

Morally candid, but overdone.
"L'Abbe C" is the story of Robert, a priest who is so upstanding he is called "L'Abbe" ("the abbot"), and his twin brother Charles, a "libertine" (i.e., a playboy, or man of loose morals). Charles has a sexual relationship with Eponine, a woman whose morals approach his, but Eponine is attracted to Robert, making for sexual tension. Worse, Robert is secretly attracted to Eponine, making for psychological tension. We learn early in the book that the story will turn out badly for all parties involved, each suffering in their own way, so it is not revealing a secret to say the tensions in this multi-faceted relationship do not lead to a healthy outcome. The story is told mostly from Charles's point of view.

Robert breaks down psychologically, fainting at a church service he is attempting to deliver with Eponine in the congregation. Robert begins drinking heavily, and begins stalking Eponine's home in the dead of night, leaving behind sick signs of his presence. He can no longer discern good from evil, nor morality from immorality, and eventually cracks altogether, leaving town for a hotel on the outskirts, where he stays with two semi-professional ladies of looser morals than Eponine's. The novel twists a few more times from there, then resolves itself tragically.

The book is essentially a reflection on morality and cowardice, the latter being the human element required for maintaining morality, but also for being true to one's self, which can sometimes oppose what we believe to be moral. While it has an interesting theme, it is written almost entirely for shock value (or at least what passes for shock value for an author born in 1897, and writing in 1950), but does not convincingly expound upon or communicate its theme to the reader. For one instance, we are never convinced Robert was so pious to begin with. He does not earn his title "L'Abbe" in our eyes, so we are not affected by his supposed turning away from piety during the book.

Bataille has written this book in an old-fashioned style, almost Victorian, using wrenching emotional adjectives, and over-romanticized means of communicating inner thoughts. It is a bit overdone for the "been there, done that" reader of today, and not handsome enough for the admirer of 19th-century literature. (Also, there is some reference to Nazis near the end of the story. Judging from another Bataille book, "Blue of Noon", Bataille seems to throw Nazis into the bargain when he can no longer figure out where to go, and when he needs to show someone else as depraved as his other characters. The reference to Nazis is unecessary and superficial.)

This is a very short work, 158 pages, written in a halting diarized style in most parts. It's almost a pamphlet, hardly a full book. In the final analysis, this is a sexually frank and morally candid tale, but one that is philosophical and even memorable. It may not be great literature, the ending may be a bit incongruous, and it may read as though it is fifty years older than it really is, but it was an interesting little volume nonetheless. I subtract a star, however, because it is a tiny little book at a full-size price.

.
Bataille's L'Abbe C provides you with a reading atmosphere of unsettling density akin to that of the more famous Story of the Eye, while lacking the flood of relentless pornographic imagery that can be witnessed in thatnovel. The book can be tedious and pretentious at times (as with anythingby Bataille), but it remains a rather fascinating literary diversion. Thestory, which seems to concern the muddled web of feelings existing betweena pair of brothers who are in love with the same mysterious woman, ispresented in too surreal a fashion to be particularly coherent; however,the most immediately accessible merits of Bataille's literature have lessto do with understanding specifically what is happening, and more to dowith the dream-like sense (or rather nightmare-like sense) of profundityprovoked. Think of one of David Lynch's better films in the form of afrench novel from the early part of the century, and you'll be on the righttrack. L'abbe C isn't as compulsively readable as the disturbingpornographic masterpiece Story of the Eye, but will still provide thepatient reader with numerous rewards. The mad priest's diary, at the end ofthe novel, is of particular interest. ... Read more

Product Description
George Bataille (1867-1962) is widely recognized as one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. This is the first book in English to examine Bataille's work as a whole. It offers an accessible introduction to a complex and often ambiguous thinker. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

unclear on the concepts
This is a simplistic, narrow-minded, and conservative attempt to place Bataille within a conventional art historical framework. The author spends the first chapter ranting and raving about how poststructuralist claims of allegiance to Bataille are misguided because Bataille died before structuralism was even invented. He congratulates himself on this in-the-box insight, wondering why no one else has thought of it before. I put the book away at that point. Thank God I borrowed this from the library rather than spend money on it.

Bataille, considered from a position of sobriety...
Bataille is often more fun to talk about than to actually read, more inspiring to misunderstand than to comprehend. As a result, a lot of books on Bataille end up being a record of the author's subject and intoxicated personal encounter with Bataille's supposed ideas. This, they often claim, is encouraged by the very nature of Bataille's work...in which Bataille is often engaged, quite literally, in the extreme.

Richardson's main objective in this introductory study is to rescue Bataille from this sort of breathless, hysterical, and inaccurate "critical" response and restore Bataille to his rightful place in traditional scholarship--a place, Richardson argues, that Bataille never entirely foreswore in spite of his own wild, personal, and unconventional way of philosophizing.

The results is a concise and lucidly written overvew of Bataille's work from soup to stern. Richardson does an excellent job of charting Bataille's labyrinthine thought and lighting the way through the blacker passages; it's an even more impressive accomplishment in a work as short as this one.

Although he seeks to take some of the fang out of Bataille and rather overstates his case to make his point, and to situate Bataille within the purview of a conventional scholarship where, in fact, Bataille does not easily fit, if at all, Richardson's little book remains a much-needed shot of corrective sobriety in a field where so many others have used Bataille as license to flail about unreservedly in a state of philosophical intoxication speculating in ways that reveal more about themselves than about what Bataille actually wrote.

Richardson gives us a Bataille without the hero worship, without the sensationalism, and without the personal "responses" of authors on Bataille whose value as entertainment often comes at the price of distortion.

In any event, a good little book to sit on the shelf between your others on Bataille.
... Read more