My Mother, Madame Edwarda and The Dead Man
by Georges Bataille
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Book Summary Information
Author: Georges BatailleEdition: Paperback
Audio: French (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1969
ISBN: 0714530042
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd
Book Reviews of My Mother, Madame Edwarda and The Dead Man
Book Review: Unbelievable...
Summary: 5 Stars
(Before I get into my review of this book, I would like to point out that some of the unheralded treasures in this collection are found in the extra pieces. These include the prefaces written by Bataille for "Madame Edwarda" and the "Dead Man", and two critical essays, one of which was written by another equally intriguing author, Yukio Mishima, who wrote The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea and The Sound of Waves, among other things. The information in these pieces is quite helpful in understanding the philosophy and intent of Bataille's three short stories, and also serves as a great springboard to his other writings. I would also like to mention that I stumbled upon Bataille through the movie "Before Sunrise" - this was the book she was reading on the train - so if you like this book, you might like that movie.)To start my review, I would like to say that the previous reviewer appears to have understood the broad strokes of Bataille's writing, but failed to see the finer points of it. Their descriptions are accurate, but the conclusions they draw seem to be results of their own moralizing and do not necessarily reflect the basic themes of the stories.
For example, while "My Mother" is a study of the mother's search for destruction and the influence of this on her son (as mygotta has pointed out) it is not a moralistic fable revealing the inevitable pitfalls of a profligate life. This kind of puritanical idea in regards to human sexuality is completely antithetical to the philosphy Bataille espoused in this and other texts. In the case of "My Mother," the libertine lifestyle and sexual openness of the characters is not the result of a slow, fatalistic slumping towards the gutter, but rather is a quest for transcendence through intense experience, especially sexual experience. This attitude is revealed, for example, when the mother writes to her son, telling him that, "I have absolutely no interest in this world where they scratch about, patiently waiting for death to enlighten them. As for me, it is the wind of death that sustains the life in me," or when the son realizes that, "Again and again during those interminable days of my solitude and of my sinfulness I would stiffen as though from an electric shock when the thought thrilled through me that my mother's crime elevated her into God, in the very way in which terror and the vertiginous idea of God became identified. And, wanting to find God, I wanted to burrow down and cover myself with mud, so as not to be more unworthy of Him than my mother." The juxtaposing of base sensuality with divinity, and the constant invocation of taboos in this story are interwoven with what seems to be an ultimate moral ambiguity. And these themes are continued in the other two stories as well.
Bataille's writing is terrific stuff if you can handle its pornographic imagery and blasphemous intonations. His stories and essays question not only the foundations of religion, morality and social norms, but also the fabric of reality itself. This stuff is not just well-written erotica: it is profound and provocative philosophy .
Summary of My Mother, Madame Edwarda and The Dead Man
My Mother is a unique bildungsroman of a young man's sexual initiation and corruption by his mother.?Publishers WeeklyMy Mother, Madame Edwarda and The Dead Man comprises three short pieces of erotic prose that fuse elements of sex and spirituality in a highly personal vision of the flesh. They present a world of sensation in which only the vaulting demands of disruptive excess and the anguish of heightened awareness can combat the stultifying world of reason and social order. Each of the narratives contains a sense of intoxication and insanity so carefully delineated by the author that it seems to infect the reader.
Philosopher, novelist and critic, Georges Bataille is a major figure in twentieth-century literature whose startling and original ideas increasingly exert a vital influence on the shaping of thought, language and experience. Best known outside France for the vertiginous sexual delirium of his short novel, Story of the Eye, the vast scope of Bataille's interests and intellect made him a major force in many spheres.
Bataille's essays range over such diverse topics as economics, psychoanalysis, Marxism, yoga and anthropology. His critical essays, Literature and Evil and his complex meditations on the dark coupling of sex and death, Eroticism, are both available from Marion Boyars. Bataille's available fiction includes L'Abb? C, a twisted document detailing the holy horrors of sex and Blue of Noon, now an established modern classic in its seventh printing.
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