Blue of Noon

Georges Bataille

Penguin, 2001 - Fascism - 128 pages

One of the twentieth century's great nihilist novels, Blue of Noon is a blackly compelling account of depravity and terror that retains all its shocking power today. Set in pre-war Europe, its narrator lurches despairingly from city to city in a surreal sexual and mental nightmare of squalor, sadism and drunken encounters - his journey into madness mirroring the fighting and marching on the streets outside. Confronting Fascism, the novel is torn between identifying with history's victims and being seduced by the violent glamour of its terrible victors. One of the most brilliant intellects and influential French writers of his time, Bataille's unflinching exploration of the dark forces beneath the surface of civilization defies all our expectations.

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LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Kristelh - LibraryThing

A nihilist novel by Georges Bataille, Blue of Noon, is set during the Spanish Civil War and the early years of Nazi movement. The protagonist, Henri Timmermann is a sick man (physically and ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - amerynth - LibraryThing

While I didn't actually hate Georges Bataille's "Blue of Noon," I really didn't get it either. This supposed to be a novel that used eroticism to show how sex, violence and power is intertwined and ...

Contents

• The Evil Omen: 19
• Motherly Feet: 33
• Antonios Story: 69

About the author

Georges Bataille was a French poet, novelist, and philosopher. He was born in Billon, Puy-de-Dome, in central France on September 10, 1897. His father was already blind and paralyzed from syphilis when Bataille was born. In 1915, Bataille's father died, his mind destroyed by his illness. The death marked his son for life. While working at the Bibliotheque National in Paris during the 1920s, Bataille underwent psychoanalysis and became involved with some of the intellectuals in the Surrealist movement, from whom he learned the concept of incongruous imagery in art. In 1946 he founded the journal Critique, which published the early work of some of his contemporaries in French intellectual life, including Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida. Bataille believed that in the darkest moments of human existence-in orgiastic sex and terrible death-lay ultimate reality. By observing them and even by experiencing them, actually in sex and vicariously in death, he felt that one could come as close as possible to fully experiencing life in all its dimensions. Bataille's works include The Naked Beast at Heaven's Gate (1956), A Tale of Satisfied Desire (1953), Death and Sensuality: A Study of Eroticism and the Taboo (1962), and The Birth of Art: Prehistoric Painting (1955). Bataille died in Paris on July 8, 1962.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Blue of Noon; Penguin Classics Series
• Author: Georges Bataille
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Penguin, 2001
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Mar 25, 2008
• ISBN: 0141184094, 9780141184098
• Length: 128 pages