The story of the eye offers to both camps: those that want to have a quick mesmerising read and those who are interested in understanding a modern continental perspective on a philosophy of art.


Definately worth a read   January 9, 2006
 7 out of 7 found this review helpful

Story of the Eye is not so much an erotic text, as an exploration on what it is that drives every human- desire. Desire to live, breath eat, make love, our lives revolve around it, and if there was no desire we would not be alive.It is a mistake to have Batailles novella down as an erotic fiction- it is so much more than that. He exorcises his demons through eroticism at its highest level, in order to find a release, or death, of that wanting, which can never be resolved. It is an important read, and whatever it is you take away from it, it will be something important.


dirty literary masterpiece   July 5, 2005
 11 out of 12 found this review helpful

If you're thinking plot and characterization, you're missing the point. This is modernism all the way: vignettes with their own individual logic which do thread together, but not in the way of an epic which builds and smooths out contradictions. It works perfectly as an erotic text because it illuminates the way desire catches on the tiniest of details, magnifying each beyond the reach of rational discourse. It moves skilfully, evading the capture of novelistic conventions, denying a too easy satisfaction. It's precisely these qualities which make it great erotic writing; it allows the reader to engage their own desires in the gaps which a lesser novel would be tempted to fill in. It's not there to be understood, it's to be revelled in!


Your hard-earned money doesn't deserve to be spent on this   May 19, 2003
 7 out of 17 found this review helpful

'Story of the Eye' is, summarily, wholly disappointing, more so when read under the mantle of "greatest erotic masterpiece of the century". This is an especially ludicrous claim given the book's modest length, and the absurdly disjointed plot which Bataille lazily attempts to cram into it. The characters are shallow and forgettable, seemingly ill-disguised personifications of Bataille's own childish and under-developed fantasies.

The book reads like a hasty and excited first draft, with proportionally huge passages coming across as sparse, drivelling babble. The erotica, while undoubtedly imaginative and original for its time (at least in terms of being published), is cold, uncaptivating and largely rather boring. What little of it that shows potential is either completely smothered in immaturity by the tone of the writing, or left horribly isolated by the sloppy plot, leaving genuinely erotic moments few and far between.

If you plan to buy this book as a lover of literature, you are likely to take nothing more from it than profound embarrassment and a lesson in how not to write fiction, erotic or otherwise. If you plan to buy it as a lover of erotica, you'll be left disappointed, cold and ultimately confused as to why it has drawn such critical acclaim.