Anti-philosopher, literary critic, and erotica-obsessed overall word-genius Georges Bataille is a shadow-name, a name at the edges of theory. For every twenty references to a Derrida or a Foucault, there is but one to Bataille… I’m trying to read everything he wrote this year, and it’s going swimmingly. He immediately earns an Honourable Badge Of Merit.

Here a few early highlights:

In theory the body is a strictly subordinate element, which is of no consequence for itself—a utility of the same nature as canvas, iron, or lumber.

As one can see, I have placed the tool and the manufactured object on the same plane, the reason being that the tool is first of all a manufactured object and, conversely, a manufactured object is in a certain sense a tool.  The only means of freeing the manufactured object from the servility of the tool is art, understood as a true end.  But art itself does not as a rule prevent the object it embellishes from being used for this or that: a house, a table, or a garment are no less useful than a hammer.  Few indeed are the objects that have the virtue of serving no function in the cycle of useful activity.

—Theory of Religion.

These studies are the result of my attempt to extract the essence of literature.  Literature is either the essential or nothing.  I believe that the Evil—an acute form of Evil—which it expresses, has a sovereign value for us.  But this concept does not exclude morality: on the contrary, it demands a ‘hypermorality.’

Literature is communication.  Communication requires loyalty.  A rigorous morality results from complicity in the knowledge of Evil, which is the basis of intense communication.

—Literature and Evil.

The man, looking all Nosferatu-esque. Probably thinking about “unknowledge,” the sovereign, animality, his own particular take on Marx, or—far more likely—about sex. Another possibility, given the content of his books: eating eggs. Dude must have loved him some eggs in the morning…

Extra points for the creepy child-with-cane oil in the background!

Read the review on The Outlet.

In this review:

• A quotation from Benjamin Franklin
• Brief review of Mishima’s powers as poet and logician
• Lust and death-lust* (*”Death Lust” = good band name, sans hyphen, perhaps sans the A in “death,” so making it “DETH LUST,” probably all caps)
• EVEN MORE

In this blog post:

• BONUS image of Mishima Yukio, looking like a pensive young genius:

Read the review on The Outlet. Denon’s masterful long short story is translated by Lydia Davis and introduced by Peter Brooks, who hints at the mystery of the novella.

On my own ongoing investigation into the novella, for Electric Literature:

What makes a novella a novella, as opposed to a long short story or a short novel? Why does the novella seduce us, even though relatively few are published or taught? (You never hear, for example, “Mommy, I want to grow up to be a famous novella-ist!”) Deleuze and Guattari offer a few hypnotic thoughts on the subject, but even they abandon the question after only—and perhaps appropriately—half-contemplating it.

Towards a literary–psychological theory of the novella, writer and compulsive short-text reader Wythe Marschall offers a biweekly review of classic and contemporary works that may or may not fit your definition of the term.

By focusing on their playful relationship with theme—a constant seesaw between story and meditation, narrative-packed-into-a single moment and timeless “whoa” of profound human experience—Wythe hopes to pin down just what the novella does to its reader’s brain:

Can we situate “the novella effect” somewhere between the constrained, heightened consciousness of the short story and the taxonomizing–exhausting consciousness of the novel? Tune in every other week to find out—

Or, at least, to discover several novellas worth reading.

Thanks to Electric Literature, New Directions, NYRB Classics, and Melville House.

The man’s (invented) name was V.D., and he wrote about sex. Lulz.

That’s Jeff Vilencia’s first art house movie, made in 1992, courtesy Hugh Raffles (Insectopedia). Says Raffles of the whole intriguing philosophical quandary of squishing living things:

The Supreme Court decision of April 20, 2010, voiding HR 1887, the so-called “crush video law,” by an 8-1 majority, provoked an intense and immediate response, summarised in this article in The Huffington Post. Mary Tieffenbrunn wrote this piece in The News-Gazette.

What is unknown or is fragile is erotic. I can imagine a whole compendium of fragile-skinned, differently-insided squishables (and therefore objects-erotic). Sushi, meatball, eclair. And of course the the grape, the furry animal, the easy stand-in for the organ…

Gross, but who doesn’t love to squish stuff? Think of Burroughs’s exterminator tragic heroes… Roach-stamp, bubblewrap-pop, tomato-burst: These are the uneasy loves of some universal, unconscious imp with big feet. A new supervillain: SQUISHOR.

…Or Stimpy. Maybe we all are a little Stimpy in taste, somewhere in there…