I'd been meaning to read Story of the Eye for a while. I ended up reading the first PDF version I found on google, so I'm not sure how accurate the translation was--a lot of it seemed... not good. But I'm happy I read it. I gave it three stars because I was never bored, and some of the scenes were super interesting, like the whole Marcelle thing. That was really disturbing. The version I read included a sort of explanation of the book by Georges Bataille in which he describes how it was largely influenced by his weird relationships with both of his parents.

Also I kept picturing the young priest guy as Rickety Cricket so that was fun.

This is probably the strangest book that I have ever read. There is no real plot to speak of, but that, in and of itself, does not mean anything. Being that Georges Bataille is primarily a philosopher the purpose of this book was not, I don't think, meant to "tell a story". The narrative is completely centered on the symbolism of certain objects: an egg, a bull's testicle, and an eye. The strange, surreal and disturbing scenes that take place in the interim between coming into contact with these objects are disturbing sometimes, but happen so often as to become the new normal. As the tale goes on the wild sexual exploits are not quite as shocking.

It's a very short novella, that can probably be read in the space of a few hours. It might be worth reading more than once.

Wow um. Equally parts titillating and terrifying. I'm not sure if The Story of The Eye is a commentary on the supposed bounderies of pleasure or a gleeful exploration of pure human id. Either way it was a pretty good time.

This is a very famous erotic novella. Written in 1928 and detailing the narrator (a young male) and his sexual escapades with a girl called Simone.

They begin having a sexual relationship but don't engage in full intercourse, only masturbation and exhibitionism. Eventually, they manipulate a local girl, Marcelle, into joining them in their games. This leads to an orgy which in turn leads to Marcelle having a mental breakdown resulting in her going to a sanitorium. Eventually, she commits suicide and the narrator and Simone go on the run to Spain with the help of an Englishman called Sir Edmund (another like-minded pervert). In Seville, Simone seduces a priest and with the two men helping her, she rapes and murders him, taking a unique pleasure from removing his eye.

As you might expect, this book has a lot of gratuitous language and sexual imagery. There's milk and eggs and bull's testicles and, of course, the titular eye ball.

When I first read it, I assumed it was supposed to be a true story. As the story goes on, however, you quickly understand that it's too fantastical to be true, a classic male fantasy which puts the power in the hands of the female protagonist. Bataille himself confirms that it was indeed 'a mostly' manufactured story, a kind of wish fantasy about women being as dirty, as sexual, and as aggressive as the men. Women, After all, have all that sexual capital yet never seem to exploit it. Hence Simone is always the instigator in the sexual acts, always the leader in their games.

There was a moment when Bataille seemed to be equating semen with urine because, in his interpretation, that's what orgasm is to a man -- it's not something we build up to like women, but something we relieve ourselves of. Like so many other bodily functions it is primitive, basic, nothing more meaningful than eating, defecating, breathing, sleeping. They all exist on a spectrum of pleasure.

I actually laughed out loud at the final chapter with the priest. It was so utterly unreal, so visually crisp, that it developed a distinct comedic element.

I loved this book. The prose was quite sincerely beautiful at times.

If you're a fan of piss (and who isn't?) you'll love this. Highly recommended.

It is surprising just how much literary content is actually contained in Bataille's most famous work. What starts as an exercise in gratuity starts to become something more akin to an elaborate metaphor for Catholic puberty, in all it's traumatizing and cathartic glory and shame.


Dubious? Yes. A must-read? Absolutely.

I found a copy of this book, freshly bought from the campus bookstore, still with the receipt and complementary bookmark in it, sitting primly atop a pile of black garbage bags outside my dorm my sophomore year of college. I, in a drunken haze, proclaimed this to be the work of the divine book distribution system, and took it home. We then proceeded to do a drunk round robin and discovered why the book had been immediately abandoned with the refuse.

Weird and not my style. Respect to those wo can look at these books with a professional eye (for example book reviewers.)

L’histoire est déstabilisante et principalement répugnante au début. Mais de fil en aiguille l’exaltation sexuelle des personnages, provoquée par des images plus saugrenues les unes que les autres, culmine en une forte image surréaliste et érotique que Dali lui-même aurait pu peindre.