Visions Of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939 (Theory and History of Literature) (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: second manifesto, lugubrious game, joy before death, Popular Front, Van Gogh, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press; 1 edition (June 20, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816612838
• ISBN-13: 978-0816612833
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #197,386 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Difficult to Place, August 2, 2009

By	Mr. Steiner (New York) - See all my reviews

Bataille remains for me a thinker who is almost always interesting but rarely coherent. His fiction is brilliantly conceived and revolutionary, but this collection of essays ranges from the inspired to the merely fragmentary. Although by his own admission, Bataille was not interested in forging a positive philosophy to replace the systems of materialism or idealism, still there remains something strangely absent in Bataille's varied speculations on sacrifice, auto-mutilation, or the unforgettable 'pineal eye.' It is difficult to discern how literally he is to be taken. On the one hand, his excoriations of the Nazi's appropriation seems totally sincere and convincing, but his work on 'the solar [...]' is both juvenile and uninteresting. Granted, his essay on Sade is a brilliant and provocative analysis of the 'use value' of excrement, but this still remains a minor and confused work of thinking.

11 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, May 21, 1998

By A Customer

Im so impresed with this mans work I am obsessed. He is a rare breed of intelligence. He has a piece in this called 'Mouth" which refers tothe position our heads take well being thrown back in a scream as that of an extension to our spines, inother words that we assume an animal architecture to our bones in the most extreme pains. Batailles constant opinions detailed here in wonderful totaly controlled short pieces , is for me, the only truly awful reading I have ever done. A music piece I often play also has this effect. It is genuis to have the power of horror in works not involving the 'supernatural". I am in awe of this odd,dead man.

4 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing and beautiful!, October 8, 1997

By A Customer

Bataille was French surrealist who wrote like an alien trapped on a hostile planet. In searing essays like "the Solar Anus," he almost convinces you that the end is not just near, but here. Disturbing and beautiful, this book is highly recommended.