Story of the Eye

George Bataille's brief Sade-esque novella is a mordantly brilliant dip into the post-Nietzschen world modernity. The Story of the Eye is a pornographic disintegration of the Western ethical code. It is both magnificent and foul; a more daring and original work than his later philosophy/anthropology. A seminal piece of 20th century literature; although it was published well before the cultural abominations of our current nihilism, we are still not ready for this bleak and punkish work of literary debauchery.

What causes a mind to embrace gross sexual abstractions? When does a moment of teenage reckless abandon turn into a debauched nightmare? What causes a young mind to lean towards fetishism? Professionals have grappled with those questions for decades, and many of these and similar questions will forever remain unanswered in The Story of The Eye. And yet, even with its horrific and gruesome imagery, one cannot help but desire to know the answers. However, one must understand the human shadow with some semblance of clarity for those answers to make any sense. Georges Bataille is one philosopher who truly understands, and he does not leave us wanting. In part two of this edition, he offers some clarity as he mulls over a few of the aberrations of his own childhood - how he came to understand his own shadow and its relationship to events and images within the story itself. While Story of The Eye chronicles the deviant sexual escapades of two young lovers, this is not what I would consider a pornographic novel, as it was originally labelled. Yes, the erotic scenes are quite intense - intense enough to make the faint of heart put the book down in order to vomit. But the erotica is not the true bite of the story. The deep emotional, psychological, and pathological attachment between the two main characters is what drives this story. Their disdain for the banal is apparent in everything they do. The narration is surreal, slipping in an out of conscious thought and action so fluidly it's like sinking into quicksand - struggle against it and drown or remain still and experience this work as the true artistic endeavour that it is. If you dare to remain still, you certainly will not be disappointed.

Published nearly 80 years ago, *Story of the Eye* may still be the wildest ((and weirdest)) pornographic novel ever written. Sadomasochism, underage orgies, golden showers, homicide, necrophilia, soft-boiled eggs--and all of it in a story less than one hundred pages in length. Outstanding! Couched in a super-lucid prose of hyperbolic surreality, *Story of the Eye* is a record of the x-rated exploits of two young lovers--the narrator and the lovely Simone, who he meets on a family vacation. Equally inexperienced and perfectly matched in their precocious perversity, they set about discovering their sexuality through a series of escalating debaucheries, sucking into their erotic vortex a mentally fragile blonde, a rich English psychopath, and a priest. Bataille seems determined to out-Sade deSade and he largely succeeds in outdoing the divine Marquis, spicing up the lewd proceedings with liberal doses of libertine philosophy and poetically-fueled descriptions of the most ordinarily unpoetic and sordid of acts. Still, when all is said and done, *Story of the Eye* is truly a work of literature. You can tell because you're never once tempted to read with one hand! Complete with what amounts to a short "making of *Story of the Eye*" author's note, which traces the autobiographical links between Bataille's early life and the events of the novel, here is a fascinating take on the perverse imagination by one of its greatest theorists.

Despite his perversions, one cannot help but identify with the protagonist: propelled by his own barely-understood desires, captivated by relationship with a woman so intense as to be unintelligible to language, pulled along by the power of circumstances seemingly out of his control, trying desparately to save adolescent loves from parental and medical power... Bataille takes the twinges of teenage desire we all feel and runs with them all the way out. He drops you in and lets you try to swim back to civilization, to morality, to desire denuded. If you let yourself, you just might be inspired by this tale--not to sexual perversion, but to the limits of the real and the ends of your powers. Bataille opens himself up, and invites us to do the same. To take this as simply a sexual or pornographic tale would be ignobling. The Sartre quote on the back of the book really ought to be on the first page, for it makes the entire work as sensible as it can ever be: speaking of Bataille, he said, "In him, reality is conflict." If you let it, this book will blast open your ideas and feelings, and open you up to the waves and tendrils of the world. If you whether the storm, congratulate yourself. Most people won't let it get that close. On the other hand, Story of the Eye is, despite its apparent casual treatment of language, complex and arcane. This is not because Bataille has covered over his 'real' meaning, but because this book partakes of a structure of meaning that destroys structuration. As a result, it doesn't have a 'point' to hide _or_ to reveal. Habituated to more conventional literary method, my initial response was near-total confusion, gasping and giggling at the same time. Story of the Eye is refreshing and stunning, exhilirating and terrifying. In the confused aftermath of reading it, one is left thoughtful, nude, and in pain. Accepting that reality is never finished, that humanity can not, should not, achieve stasis and perfection, that we need to be confronted with ourselves--only with these realizations will one truly love this book. Coming to terms with the acceptability of not knowing what is going on is part of loving this book, and it may be part of loving life, too...

Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye (a novella that actually clocks in closer to a short story; you should be able to read it within a couple hours, at most) is thoroughly successful in realizing Bataille's goal--the creation of an intentionally disturbing mix of eroticism, insanity, wanton violence, surrealism, adventure, and even an occasional touch of comedy.The author's note that appears at the end of the City Lights Books edition, translated by Joachim Neugroschel (based on the original 1928 version of the book, by the way; in later editions, Bataille revised the text so that it "differs so thoroughly in all details that one can justifiably speak of two distinct books" per Neugroschel), states the psychological sources of the material in a fairly straightforward way. Bataille's father was blind and had "huge, ever gaping" eyes. He was also paralyzed and would frequently relieve himself in front of Georges, sometimes accidentally. As if that wasn't tragic enough, he also went mad towards the end of his life, shouting out obscenities that shocked the strictly-raised Bataille. Shortly after this, Bataille's mother had a temporary mental breakdown, as well. The incident at the "haunted castle" actually happened, in part, and so on.But although knowing the source material is informative, it's not necessary to enjoy the book, and Bataille extrapolates far beyond his experiences, strongly emphasizing the surrealist aspects (you can even interpret a fair amount of the book as a novelization of a handful of Dali paintings, imagined by a psychopath), and delivering the result in a beautifully terse prose--often bridging over to poetry--that owes as much to Steinbeck and Hemingway as it does to a more shocking Kafka.If you're easily offended, this book will more than do the trick. I'm not up on my banned book trivia at the moment, but Story of the Eye is undoubtedly on quite a few of those lists.Many have said that this book has no redeeming value, or indeed no artistic value. That's only true if you have a very narrow view of the scope of literature--one so narrow, that most important works of fiction from the twentieth century and beyond are probably unintelligible to you. Story of the Eye has had more than its share of influence, in everything from fiction to painting to film, and provides a gripping, if upsetting read.