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Blue of Noon by Georges Bataille
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Blue of Noon (original 1957; edition 2002)

by Georges Bataille

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6961132,526 (3.43)23
A nihilist novel by Georges Bataille, Blue of Noon, is set during the Spanish Civil War and the early years of Nazi movement. The protagonist, Henri Timmermann is a sick man (physically and emotionally). This book is thankfully short, it is so horrible and not enjoyable in any sense of the word. The author has tried and achieved to include every human excretion and depravity in this novella. There are three women, Lazare--a political activist, Dirty--an alcoholic and Xenia--a young woman who nursed Troppmann back to health. Supposedly this is a rewrite of Don Juan but I have not read it so I wouldn't know and the author has used the writing of sex to describe the political climate. I do not feel this work has much merit. ( )
  Kristelh | Nov 16, 2013 |
English (9)  French (1)  Dutch (1)  All languages (11)
Showing 9 of 9
Bataille brings his inimitable style to '30s nihilism and the threat of impending war, in both Spain and Germany.

Don't bother. Anything he was trying to do here is very weak and you'd be so much better off reading Isherwood.

Even the offensive debauchery here seems half-hearted. ( )
  Andy_Dingley | Apr 2, 2023 |
Un cocktail azzurro puffo, ghiacciato, viscoso, amaro, secco, che prende alla testa e alle gambe. Ad alta gradazione alcolica.
Un teschio che morde un'amarena nera come guarnizione. ( )
  downisthenewup | Aug 17, 2017 |
A nihilist novel by Georges Bataille, Blue of Noon, is set during the Spanish Civil War and the early years of Nazi movement. The protagonist, Henri Timmermann is a sick man (physically and emotionally). This book is thankfully short, it is so horrible and not enjoyable in any sense of the word. The author has tried and achieved to include every human excretion and depravity in this novella. There are three women, Lazare--a political activist, Dirty--an alcoholic and Xenia--a young woman who nursed Troppmann back to health. Supposedly this is a rewrite of Don Juan but I have not read it so I wouldn't know and the author has used the writing of sex to describe the political climate. I do not feel this work has much merit. ( )
  Kristelh | Nov 16, 2013 |
While I didn't actually hate Georges Bataille's "Blue of Noon," I really didn't get it either. This supposed to be a novel that used eroticism to show how sex, violence and power is intertwined and that message really never came together for me.

The narrator is Henri Troppmann, who lives life to excess when it comes to alcohol and the debauched women who flit in and out of this life. Each woman is also on the decline for her own reasons. Henri is terrified of death and the novel is set against a backdrop of the first rumblings of the Spanish Civil War.

The book is certainly dark and not for the faint of heart (or prudish.) The most stunning scene of the book is near the end and is the novel's one true sex scene. Without giving too much away, I'll just say that scene did pull together some of the story for me, just not in the way Bataille apparently intended.

Perhaps I just don't know enough about the Spanish Civil War to understand what Bataille was going for. The novel seemed to be more of a book about depression, alcoholism and sexual dysfunction than a thought-provoking statement about politics for me.

Overall, I found the book to be just okay, but with a couple of worthwhile scenes that will stick with me for quite a while. ( )
  amerynth | Sep 29, 2012 |
(This review includes a cautionary spoiler that does not divulge the ending or ruin the narrative tension--I consider it important.)

Nothing is flattered in “Blue of Noon.” The backdrop of Europe’s march towards jingoism and war seems to be offered as cover fire for the unrepentant mess of Bataille’s frivolous, cruel and debauched characters. The various women on whom the parasitic narrator feeds are at different stages of their own personal decomposition, up to and including his own dead mother. Yes, if Bataille’s big surprise is going to be that the narrator has fucked the corpse of his dead mother, I’m going to raise a flag so that would-have-been-unsuspecting-readers don’t actually have to go there.

Of course, most people approach Bataille with the knowledge that he will attempt to be shocking or “perverse” or with the hopes that his prose will eroticize something unlikely in a thought-provoking way. Perhaps, Bataille is responding to such appetites with a punitive tableau intended to show that even the most unflinching readers can still be cowed by something abhorrent; but I don’t truly suspect him of such a moralistic or vengeful act. The fortified taboo that he places at the rotten core of his first-person narrator is more likely a summons to a whole series of psychoanalytical operations that would unravel the quartet of women named Xenie, Lazare, Dirty and Dead Mother. The progression is a bit self-evident and clearly overlaps with the succession of sick bodies, dead bodies, dying bodies, vomiting bodies, wax bodies, doll bodies, play coffins, dream coffins and real coffins which display a similar symbolic circularity to the eyes and eggs and testicles in Bataille’s “Story of the Eye.”

All of this could prove quite diverting to some readers; but I’m not currently that fascinated by this sort of writing. As a break from pure theory and philosophy, a novel in the tradition of Blanchot or Bataille, can be refreshing; but when such double-freighted works are introduced to the less overburdened company of good literature, they can seem a bit like a chore. However, the prose of Bataille’s novel moves quickly and has more in common with detective fiction or the swagger of novels wherein protagonists are quite proud of their glamorous self-destruction, than it does with critical theory. I thought this was because of Bataille’s humor; but when I went in search of examples of this, I realized that it might be stretching to define his crisper moments as comical: “Even in her debauchery, there was such candor in her that I sometimes wanted to grovel at her feet . . . Her mean, hunted look was driving me insane. She stopped—I think her legs were squirming under her dress. There was no doubt that she was about to start raving.” “When she came into the bar, her frazzled, black silhouette in the doorway seemed, in this fief of luck and wealth, a pointless incarnation of disaster; but I would jump up and guide her to my table.” “What I loved in her was her hatred: I loved the sudden ugliness, the dreadful ugliness that hate stamped on her features.”

And, finally, “I needed to stop thinking about myself, at least for the time being. I needed to think about other people and reassure myself that inside his own skull each was alive.” One feels that if the narrator had heeded this last statement more successfully, the book might have seemed more dimensional and human, which could actually have made it more shocking. I don’t regret reading this book. It kept me entertained and had some memorable lines. But its guts are rotten and the prose can seem rushed in odd contrast to its deliberate plotline. ( )
1 vote fieldnotes | Nov 11, 2008 |
In Blue of Noon, Bataille again utilizes the intertwined aesthetics of eros and death. The primary difference from his other novels is that they are not used for moral or artistic transgression, but for political commentary. This work is a surreal treatise against fascism, where attraction to the yoni is used as a symbol for the mystical allure of death and war. ( )
2 vote poetontheone | Oct 19, 2008 |
‘To Neil,

Hopefully a more successful encounter than after ‘The Story of the Eye’

Love,
Sherilyn x’

The scrawled in message behind the front cover of my copy. Fuck you Neil. Fuck you Sherilyn. ( )
  theoaustin | May 19, 2023 |
Terrible book. ( )
1 vote | ShelleyAlberta | Jun 4, 2016 |
one of my favorite novels. ( )
  dagseoul | Mar 30, 2013 |
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Penguin Australia

An edition of this book was published by Penguin Australia.

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