jpronan124's review
4.0
"The events that followed were without transition or connection, not because they weren't actually related, but because my attention was so absent as to remain absolutely dissociated. In just a few seconds: first, Simon bit into one of the raw balls, to my dismay; then Granero advanced towards the bull, wavering his scarlet cloth; finally, almost at once, Simone, with a blood-red face and a suffocating lewdness, uncovered her long white thighs up to her moist vulva, into which she slowly and surely fitted the second pale globule - Granero was thrown back by the bull and wedged against the balustrade; the horns struct the balustrade three times at full speed; at the third blow, one horn plunged into the right eye and through the head. A shriek of unmeasured horror coincided with a brief orgasm for Simone, who was lifted up from the stone seat only to be flung back with a bleeding nose, under the blinding sun; men instantly rushed over to haul away Granero's body, the right eye dangling from the head."
Beautiful, sick porn
Beautiful, sick porn
karthnemesis's review
challenging
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Toxic relationship, Sexual content, Stalking, Sexual violence, Murder, and Sexual assault
Moderate: Excrement, Adult/minor relationship, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Domestic abuse, and Suicide
Minor: Racism, Racial slurs, Forced institutionalization, Rape, and Suicidal thoughts
kaiacat's review
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
kinbote4zembla's review
3.0
It's a nice book, Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye (1928). Or, okay, maybe not nice, but, certainly, all right. A pornographic rendering of the kinky relationship between cousins, a better title for this novel would be How Many Ovoids Can Simone Put in Her Vagina?
What begins without penetration between these young people becomes overwhelmingly sexual as rape and murder and mutilation become integral to the young couple's sexual repertoire.
I wonder what Bataille was suggesting with this work. Sartre offers in a blurb on the back of my copy that Bataille has committed a "holocaust of words," effectively "destroying all literature." But I'm not buying that. Just because it is anarchically sexual, I just don't see some visionary deconstruction of literature. I think it's simply a nervy, pervy excursion into the taboo.
But let's take a second to talk about those ovoids. What the fuck. The first ovoid is an egg, the second is a testicle, and the third is an eyeball. Each of these objects is eventually inserted into Simone, the narrator's partner — "lover" seems like the wrong word. The first two objects fit the novel, since both are sexual in function. And maybe Bataille is suggesting that the third is, as well. An orgy of aesthetics.
"I stretched out in the grass, my skull on a large, flat rock and my eyes staring straight up at the milky way, that strange breach of astral sperm and heavenly urine across the cranial vault formed by the ring of constellations: that open crack at the summit of the sky, apparently made of ammoniacal vapors shining in the immensity (in empty space, where they burst forth absurdly like a rooster's crow in total silence), a broken egg, a broken eye, or my own dazzled skull weighing down the rock, bouncing symmetrical images back to infinity."
That's the best line in this book. And it is also the novel's most beautiful expression of its world.
Yeah. It's cute.
3 Happy Endings for the Perverts out of 5
What begins without penetration between these young people becomes overwhelmingly sexual as rape and murder and mutilation become integral to the young couple's sexual repertoire.
I wonder what Bataille was suggesting with this work. Sartre offers in a blurb on the back of my copy that Bataille has committed a "holocaust of words," effectively "destroying all literature." But I'm not buying that. Just because it is anarchically sexual, I just don't see some visionary deconstruction of literature. I think it's simply a nervy, pervy excursion into the taboo.
But let's take a second to talk about those ovoids. What the fuck. The first ovoid is an egg, the second is a testicle, and the third is an eyeball. Each of these objects is eventually inserted into Simone, the narrator's partner — "lover" seems like the wrong word. The first two objects fit the novel, since both are sexual in function. And maybe Bataille is suggesting that the third is, as well. An orgy of aesthetics.
"I stretched out in the grass, my skull on a large, flat rock and my eyes staring straight up at the milky way, that strange breach of astral sperm and heavenly urine across the cranial vault formed by the ring of constellations: that open crack at the summit of the sky, apparently made of ammoniacal vapors shining in the immensity (in empty space, where they burst forth absurdly like a rooster's crow in total silence), a broken egg, a broken eye, or my own dazzled skull weighing down the rock, bouncing symmetrical images back to infinity."
That's the best line in this book. And it is also the novel's most beautiful expression of its world.
Yeah. It's cute.
3 Happy Endings for the Perverts out of 5
tommysyk's review against another edition
Reminds me of the good ol' high school days...
(Not because I liked to partake in piss-orgies or masturbate over corpses, but because I too liked the idea of one day writing vapid shit with the sole purpose of shocking people. Those two dreadful essays at the end might enjoy thinking about how these were truly Bataille's "obsessions" and how metaphorical it all is, but I digress. This is as self-indulgent as something like Dancer in the Dark is merely an exercise in pushing the audience's visceral emotions to an extreme. And just like I can picture Von Trier maniacally laughing behind the camera, I can picture Bataille doing the exact same thing. Except that he's probably naked in this scenario.)
(Not because I liked to partake in piss-orgies or masturbate over corpses, but because I too liked the idea of one day writing vapid shit with the sole purpose of shocking people. Those two dreadful essays at the end might enjoy thinking about how these were truly Bataille's "obsessions" and how metaphorical it all is, but I digress. This is as self-indulgent as something like Dancer in the Dark is merely an exercise in pushing the audience's visceral emotions to an extreme. And just like I can picture Von Trier maniacally laughing behind the camera, I can picture Bataille doing the exact same thing. Except that he's probably naked in this scenario.)
jackb_93's review
5.0
Frenzied images, now I know where Godard got that opening section of 'Week-end' from and possibly where John Cale got the vagina/eye in 'The Jeweller' from
lauraleemcpherson's review against another edition
slow-paced
1.0
I present the most foul, disgusting and pissiest novella I have ever read. I’m not really sure what I was expecting, nor do I truly know what it is now that I have read it. Highbrow erotica where the art of metaphor itself is meant to be sexy perhaps?
Barthes’ essay that follows the text explains the metaphors of the egg, the eyes, piss testicles, the sun and so on, but at this point, I was so uninvested in it all I can’t pretend I really took it in or appreciated it.
Sontag’s essay on the pornographic imagination, however, was interesting, exploring the conventions of pornographic writing and how it is conceived, ridiculed, moralised, demonised, and misunderstood in popular society, and its potential artistic merits swept aside as a result.
While some of the ideas that emerge from the book were interesting, I would definitely rather have spent my time and money on something else. Only read this if your special interest is perverse, bizarre erotica from the 1920s.
“Now I stood up and, whilst Simone lay on her side, I drew her thighs apart, and found myself facing something I imagine I’ve been waiting for in the same way that a guillotine waits for a neck to slice.”
petrareadssometimes's review
challenging
dark
fast-paced
2.5
I don't even know what to say... I expected this but at the same time I did not expect this
elsagene's review
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.0
what did i even just read ... like a horrible wattpad smut its so bad it's not even funny
adam_zethraeus's review
…the first cute girl that I met / who could appreciate of Montreal.