Classic Erotica: Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
About The Book:
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.
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.
Georges Bataille was born in Billom, France, in 1897. He was a librarian by profession. Also a philosopher, novelist, and critic, he was founder of the College of Sociology. Bataille died in 1962.
