Customer Reviews

Sade: A Biography (Harvest Book)

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This book was my introduction to the Marquis de Sade. I was expecting (and hoping for) a narrative portrait of the cruel beast so often alluded to in popular culture and vernacular speech, along with a laundry list of his misdeeds. What I got instead was a fascinating life history of a man who was at best a product of his own culture and upbringing, an avaricious, often petty noble, who took the libertinage of many of the members of the Ancien Regime to incredible lengths; at worst he was a captive of his own twisted fantasies, a soul who arguably lacked the even the most basic of built-in moral "stop signs" that most members of society both acknowledge and use as guidance. The most interesting aspect of this voluminous work was the thorough narration of the familial, political and administrative twists and turns that Sade endured during his life. The accurate and detailed accounting of the buildup to the French Revolution was enthralling and unexpected. In summary, if I had thought I was beginning a nearly 600-page history of societal and governmental France, I doubt I would have made it past the Prologue. Having just finished the book, though, I can say that this is one of the most satisfying and informative reads I have ever undertaken.

PROS: This is a very well-researched book. The author, Maurice Lever, went thru great pains to find the journals, notes, letters upon this book was created. Then he delves deep into the recesses and reads between the lines to verify if the information in the letters was true to life. For example, when Sade cries in his letters for more money and says he is desperately poor, the Lever tells us that in reality, Sade was not so bad off, that Sade exaggerated his condition., and reminds us that it is Sade's character to constantly beg and we shouldn't believe his letters outright.

CON: This is a ridiculously long book. A total of 568 pages of reading (notes and biblio take an additional 58 pages). I read it every night for 20 min and needed almost 2 months to finish it. It is tedious, full of minor details in letter that are irrelevant and hinder the progress of learning about Sade's life. This entire book cold have been shortened into 200 pages. And it's NOT easy reading. The translation from French into English, makes the sentences long, cryptic, and nonsensical. Even after reading and re-reading Sade's letter or Lever's text I STILL don't understand what he meant. Too many negatives upon negatives and that make for a confusing letter. Even if Lever wanted to include the original Sade's letter, as Sade wrote it (confusing and all), then he should have summarized it in one or two sentences below. What Lever does wrong, is include 1.5 book pages (sometimes 3 full pages) letters and just Expect you to understand. Then he goes to the next part. INSTEAD what Lever should have done is include one or two sentences that stand out from the letter and summarize the rest. Then he should have connected it to the greater context. They just don't make sense. Lever does NOT connect the letter to the situation.

CON: Another great gripe of mine is that Lever uses different names for the same person without telling you IT IS THE SAME PERSON. So when you first start reading book you think he's talking about different people. He does this ALL throughout the book and you had to go back and froth over and over just to VERIFY in your OWN head, he was referring to the once and same person. For example, Lever first refers to his mother-in-law as "Mme de Montreuil" then he talks about "la Presidente", but it isn't until 5 pages later that you realize it's the same PERSON. He does this all throughout the book with OTHER people. It's just NOT GOOD WRITING.

TO SUMMARIZE: Good Research, horrible explanations, bad use of names. The book is WAY too long.

PS.. There is NO Erotica in this book, and the only "sex" and "torture" that Sade did, spans about 5 pages out of the book. The rest is social politics and french history. Whoever labeled this book as "BDSM" is an idiot.

Sade has a host of apologists (Roland Bathes, Micheal Foucault, Camus, a lot of the surrealists), intellectuals who see in his porn a sexual liberation. The bio appears to be fair -- it pleads the guy was a good writer but a a bit of a jerk -- but, the thing is, he was more than a bit of a jerk. The writer treats Sade as more of a recalcitrant frat boy than the actual monster that he was. Not enough is made of the fact that if he pulled those stunts today that he did at La Coste, he'd be looking at some serious time. He was responsibile for the death of an infant. Lever doesn't condemn him enough. Andrea Dworkin was a soapbox loon, but i have to say her essay on Sade was more on the mark than books like this. Still, the epistolary fashion of the bio works well, and gives good insight to the times De Sade lived in and the penal system that he had to deal with. Overall a good read.

Ah, de Sade. Extremist by name, extreme by nature. And there's no doubt that he was extreme. This novel is noteworthy, not because it explains his works, or even attempts to explain the man, but because it details his life in context. It explains Sade, not as the villian that we would expect from his novels, but as a member of the arisocracy of France during the French Revolution. Despised by his contemporaries, this book discusses his life as a real man, and not as a mythical monster. It will be something of a disappointment for those eager for a smutty read, although many of the more sordid details of his exploits are discussed. Instead, it explains his life in the context of his time, and as a result says a lot more about the morals of his persecutors than it does of Sade himself. This is not a sympathetic novel. Rather it is a fascinating account of the life of one of history's blackest names, in one of history's blackest times. A wonderfully readable read.

Donatien Aldonse Francois, Marquis de Sade, had the dubious honour of being imprisoned by three entirely different French governments: the Old Regime, the First Republic, and the Empire. He also nearly survived them all, dying (in prison) in 1814. He wrote a fantastic amount - his first and most notorious book, The 120 Days of Sodom, was inscribed in microscopic writing on a gigantic roll of paper. Lever's biography steers carefully clear of both condemnation and canonisation, presenting the Marquis as an aristocratic anarchist - totally incapable of bowing to authority or of being "useful" in the robotic utilitarian fashion advocated by the Revolutionary authorities. Accused of no real crimes other than "immorality" and a rather trumped-up charge of assaulting a prostitute, he seems to have been incarcerated mostly thanks to the malignancy of his thoroughly unpleasant mother-in-law; and if Lever does not portray him as particularly likeable, he certainly comes across a!s having wit, plenty of principle and more than his share of guts. And it's hard for any writer to resist admiring a man who produced so much of interest under such adverse conditions. Lever has thoroughly studied the Marquis' letters (at one point he gives a hilarious list of the nicknames Sade bestowed on his wife) and the historical background, which makes for a long, fascinating epic, filled like the Marquis' books with power philosophy, lavatory humour and the invigorating crack of the whip.

I read this book hoping to gain some insight into the pervasive cruelty in humans, which is so alien to me. I thought that in an examination of one of the most famous cruel people, the rottenness of humanity would make more sense to me. But alas, it didn't work. I give Lever credit for a thorough examination of Sade. The details of his life and actions are laid out, along with Lever's attempt to explain the thought process that went into those actions. Lever portrays Sade as both a product of his environment (growing up arond the politically and morally chaotic French revolution) and a uniquely twisted individual. That seems accurate. He makes clear that the material in Sade's most infamously "Sadistic" writing is almost all based on Sade's fantasy instead of a protrayal of his actions. Lever demurely doesn't give us excerpts of Sade's more salacious writings, and spares us the details of Sade's own salacious behaviour, except when those actions caused pivotal turns of fate in Sade's life. Lever attempted to explain Sade's psyche as thoroughly as anyone could hope to, yet through it all, Sade remained an alien character to me. When Lever at last described Sade's death, I didn't feel the slightest bit of sadness or sympathy. Sade was just a plain old jerk. The man's nature was so different from mine that no valiant effort at explanation could ever really make me understand him. Though I appreciate Lever's effort.