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Violent Silence: Celebrating Georges Bataille
112 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1984
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
March 7, 2018
The book is not by Bataille. It's actually a vanity press of 2,000 copies (at least the print I got) from a collection of authors. The book is the printing of what I am assuming were submissions to something called "The Georges Bataille Event 1984," sponsored by Time Out Magazine, the French Government, and London Poetry Secretariat (which sounds slightly less useful than the U.S. Department of Peace). This is all according to information inside the front cover.
So this is basically the book equivalent of a Hipster.
There are a couple gnarly ink drawings in here that Bataille would love (and that I smiled at), and the inclusion of a short story by him about a woman who witnesses her husband's death, goes on an orgy of liquor and sex, and dies in the morning, as she had predicted beforehand. Those were enjoyable, as were a few poems by Georges.
The rest of the book is poetry ranging from derivative to just flat-out sh*t by submitters/participants to (I'm guessing) the 1984 Project. Bad poetry is a great reminder of how rare great poetry is. This vanity press/chapbook was probably these authors' desire for immortality, something Bataille would have sneered at.
On the flipside, I got my library to track down a never-sold, never-UPC'd, 2k-copy chapbook so I could be a bigger hipster than anyone else on this site. I even took photos of the copyright page and selected passages as a reminder of just how cool I am.
Serious fans of Bataille should request their library track down the book so they, too, can be a Bataille hipster. Given the publication run, U.S. readers stand a good chance of getting the same copy I had. Look for a handwritten checkout date of 1993 inside the back cover (the last time the book left the donating library). If you live in the mid-Atlantic, you WILL get the same copy I had. Then we can go shop for ironic hats together.
So this is basically the book equivalent of a Hipster.
There are a couple gnarly ink drawings in here that Bataille would love (and that I smiled at), and the inclusion of a short story by him about a woman who witnesses her husband's death, goes on an orgy of liquor and sex, and dies in the morning, as she had predicted beforehand. Those were enjoyable, as were a few poems by Georges.
The rest of the book is poetry ranging from derivative to just flat-out sh*t by submitters/participants to (I'm guessing) the 1984 Project. Bad poetry is a great reminder of how rare great poetry is. This vanity press/chapbook was probably these authors' desire for immortality, something Bataille would have sneered at.
On the flipside, I got my library to track down a never-sold, never-UPC'd, 2k-copy chapbook so I could be a bigger hipster than anyone else on this site. I even took photos of the copyright page and selected passages as a reminder of just how cool I am.
Serious fans of Bataille should request their library track down the book so they, too, can be a Bataille hipster. Given the publication run, U.S. readers stand a good chance of getting the same copy I had. Look for a handwritten checkout date of 1993 inside the back cover (the last time the book left the donating library). If you live in the mid-Atlantic, you WILL get the same copy I had. Then we can go shop for ironic hats together.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review