De Sade: A critical biography [Paperback]

Ronald Hayman (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 252 pages
• Publisher: Constable; First Edition edition (1978)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 009461220X
• ISBN-13: 978-0094612204
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,828,682 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The most uncomfortable of scholarship . . ., March 24, 2006

By 

Russell de Ville (El Paso County, CO) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: De Sade: A critical biography

Every so often, one should venture into the unknown. Having read de Sade's `Letters from Prison' (ed Seaver) just a few years ago, I found him to be a witty and fascinating writer, full of sass and no little anger. But what of the stories, the rumors, the intrigue, the purported knowledge some seem to have (and wink at) regarding his life? I confess I still had only the vaguest notion of this man, this affirmed Libertine.

Hayman takes us into that labyrinthine quagmire that depicts the unspeakably blasphemous personal doctrine and the degenerate and perverted behavior of this non-conformist. If ever anyone was crying for help (literally from prison and figuratively through his works) it was certainly de Sade.

Mr Hayman's work is excellent and has helped me to understand the Marquise within the context of his times, and as a major voice in a chain of writers of similar persuasion. The works of de Sade contain multiple passages that are decidedly sickening. Fortunately, we are offered only enough of this rubbish that Mr Hayman's points are made. He does not try to enmesh us in the disgust of so much that is `of Sodom' but rather just enough to instruct, and perhaps to warn. His style is dispassionate to the point of being clinical, and yet `de Sade' remains an amazingly lucid and engaging display of scholarship and prose.

The writer avers that de Sade's several works could not have been written except within the confines of prison. I must agree with this assessment. Only here could such a mind fester and grow into the clouded melanoma one finds exhibited through his equally diseased quill. Now, if we only knew where to find his skull . . .

Four Stars for this fine monograph on a most disagreeable and unsettling topic.

Russell de Ville

24 March 2006

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating and revealing book, October 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: De Sade: A critical biography (Paperback)

Hayman does an excellent job of presenting the real de Sade. He reveals a gifted person whose attributions of sadism belong not to him but to the power structure of his day. Hayman writes of De Sade's struggle to prevail over his many unjust imprisonments with creative writing. This, with all else, is a much needed correction of the general misconcepton of the man and his life.