Customer Reviews

The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I cannot compare reading this book to any other book I have read. It is not a poem. It is not a fiction. Philosophy? No, obviously not. Nick Land curses philosophy and everything about it but its philosophical chapters are sharp, intelligent, rich and mysteriously gloomy. If demons wished to write a book, all together, then you could expect to read this book. Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari once shouted "they are already a crowd". Thirst for Annihilation has been written by a legion. Nick Land deserves to go to hell because of writing a book like this, feit de viande et de sperme fou. I cast my vote with the close-minded reviewer who has given such a book just one star: "Don't read this book." It has not been written for you, human!

Land revels in Bataille's perverse methodology, reviving his audacity and confrontational spirit. A dangerous, evil book and a must-read for anyone who cares about French philosophy and its future

Goodness, what an ... odd book. I picked it up in essay crisis mode (i.e. I grabbed anything in the library with the word Bataille in the title) and that's how I encountered Land's book. I have never read anything odder in my life. If you're after a straightforward Bataille crit, then this is not the book for you - it has about 2 useful pages'-worth of material in it. If you want to feel like you put your head into a tumble-dryer full of acid and leprechauns and things, then give this book a go. Land's approach to Bataille is a two-way process - he engages with Bataille's thought, and his writing is very much an attempt to write in an authentically Bataillean way. Hence the descriptions of drunkenness, of anger, of madness. You certainly couldn't accuse Land of being conventional. And the dedication is hilarious - worth the cover price by itself.

Read this and expand your mental borders a bit.

Even better than Bataille's works ... this is a dangerous book indeed.

I remember when i was student and studying this book with Prof. Victor Vitanza who loved this book. we grew up with this book, Lyotard's libidinal economy and DG's Anti-Oedipus. We discussed that Nick Land's book is an independent work which itself is a masterpiece or at least too thrilling to bear. Although this book is very difficult and english is my second language but it is the best book i have ever read so far. this reviewer who has given it one star either doesn't understand bataille at all or has some personal issues with the writer. i don't wonder how UK reviewers hated this man when he did a radical thing and went to China and started to work as an unknown columnist. his later texts and his writings on America and War should be read with no moral presuppositions as this great book suffers no morality; i imagine they have hidden purposes behind thier clear messages. i don't exaggerate when i claim Nick Land is the bravest writer in our time compared to Lautreamont, Celine, Vian, Sade and Bataille himself. It is too much to ask UK readers or other enemies of this book and its writer to put thier hatred and rigid values aside and look deep into this book. if i could only offer this book 10 stars...

Imagine a jungle full of machines, full of rhizomes, lines of mutations, cyclonic logics, dangerous ciphers, etc.

Quite simply the most misguided, irritating, self-indulgent...let's just say the worst text ever written on Bataille (although I certainly do not limit its putrescence to Bataille literature alone). On every page this author is practically screaming, "Look at me! I can be like him! I'm the Ass who saw the Angel (yes, he wishes he were Nick Cave too, I imagine) I can write like him!". Seriously... perhaps the lowest point...an anecdote...a guy walks into a bar and explains to the bartender that he just cut the throat of God. It doesn't, nay can't get any worse than this.