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A review by athousandgreatbooks
Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
5.0
The young protagonist and his lovers Simone and Marcelle perform acts of depraved sexual lunacy, involving torture, sadism, rape and an obsession with eyeballs which culminates in the ultimate act of violence and debauched sexual expression. Through the story, the shock value of their acts climbs steeply up, but so does the author's reflection on his own obsession with the closeness of death, sex, and violence.
George Bataille's vision is relentless, erotic one time and plain gross the next, and then both simultaneously (not sure what it says about me). Though it will definitely be hard to stomach for some, none can question its literary value as being a 20th-century classic and a phenomenon unto its own. Delivered in a dreamlike and near-hallucinatory narrative, the language flows thick in the metaphorical landscape of eyes, eggs, urine, balls, sex, sperm, and naked fetishes, colouring the world in a magical realism yellowed with an imagination that is both brilliant and agitated.
Obscene, lewd, and absurd to the point of disbelief, Story of the Eye is a notorious piece of work. It's a short novella, so whatever excitement or dread you feel is not going to last long.
George Bataille's vision is relentless, erotic one time and plain gross the next, and then both simultaneously (not sure what it says about me). Though it will definitely be hard to stomach for some, none can question its literary value as being a 20th-century classic and a phenomenon unto its own. Delivered in a dreamlike and near-hallucinatory narrative, the language flows thick in the metaphorical landscape of eyes, eggs, urine, balls, sex, sperm, and naked fetishes, colouring the world in a magical realism yellowed with an imagination that is both brilliant and agitated.
Obscene, lewd, and absurd to the point of disbelief, Story of the Eye is a notorious piece of work. It's a short novella, so whatever excitement or dread you feel is not going to last long.