I'll never make it through this whole book

[maderr]

Because I'm only on the essays at the beginning and am already snickering.

Memo to me: Look up Simone de Beauvoir. This isn't my normal realm of academia, so I know nothing about the scholars and whathaveyou involved. Except Ms. Simone is so entirely fangirling. For serious. There's a difference b/t being fascinated by a person and fangirling him. I love and am fascinated by the Emperor Meiji. I fangirl the Tokugawa Yoshinobu. This means I can talk entirley too much about the former, but embarass myself doing so with the latter. Ms. Simone is so entirely fangirling.

I don't think I'll make it through the actual novels and plays.

Oh. Am reading 120 Days of Sodom & Other Writings.

Madame de Beauvoir has a gift for stating the fucking obvious, at least in this "landmark essay" fronting the book. Honestly. Sade tried to make a point by pissing off his readers? You think? What a novel idea! No one throughtout history has ever tired that, nor has anyone ever noticed. How clever of you to point it out to us.

She's also about as contradictory as she claims her subject to be.

Near as I can tell, Sade's works are going to give me a headache. But it's a vampire kind of headache -- I can bitch about it for ages and have ever so much fun doing so. If that makes any sense.

Comments

[wobblygoblin.livejournal.com]

Aaaaahahahaha, omfg I forgot you were going to read that. Excuse me while I laugh hysterically in the corner. (And it's just "120 Days of Sodom", though Sodomy is perhaps more apt. Along with TORTURE AND GRUESOME DEATH. EEGADS.) Make sure not to eat anything for thirty minutes before or after you get in the book.

[maderr.livejournal.com]

Oops. I always do that. It's right here beside me, you'd think I'd get it right for once. *rolls eyes*

Yeah, I've already glanced at some of that, just b/c you'd mentioned it before and it's not like I'm worried about spoiling the ending or anything. I guess we all have our little ways of killing time with daydreams and fantasies but O_o I'dve kept his ass in prison in too.

[wobblygoblin.livejournal.com]

I must say, it was a pretty rough read for me to get through. I think you'll find yourself going, "...the FUCK?" a lot. And just... yeah. It's sort of sickening.

I found Justine slightly more enjoyable because rather than being a bunch of horrifying debauchery it is a bunch of horrifying debauchery with plot. Have you seen the movie Quills yet? That's about our dandy little marquis. And for a slightly cuter S&M ride (without the blood and urinating and defecating) there is the movie Secretary.

ALSO, your package has gone as far as Memphis! No, I am not checking the tracking numbers once an hour.

[yukon-jack.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think it's wrong to judge anybody by their kink (and anyone who claims to be devoid of some taboo fantasy or another is a liar) but the De Sade stuff is repulsive rather than appealing and it's hard to argue with his imprisonment.

Simone De Beauvoir's stuff is interesting, I got into her through her connection to Sartre - still one of my heroes but totally, wildly important to me when I was 16; that was me, the kid at 16 who wondered why an encyclopedic knowledge of feminist thought and Ani Difranco records failed to get him laid - even though she's not on the existentalist bandwagon.

[alixkat.livejournal.com]

Simone de Beauvoir was a woman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_de_Beauvoir

Just so ya know. :o)

[alixkat.livejournal.com]

She wrote "The Second Sex" which probably accounts for her commentary in whatever you're reading by the Marquis de Sade. :)

[maderr.livejournal.com]

Again, the female should have clicked with me. *shakes head* Clearly I've turned st00pid.

I swear to god this woman was typing one handed.

And thanks, Queen :)

[alixkat.livejournal.com]

She was French... I'm sure she was typing one-handed. All the great feminist thinkers do.

*moohahahahahaha*

[minni.livejournal.com]

Ha hah! I am muchly amused by this post, mostly because my former roomie was a major fan of good ol' Simone. Roomie was, of course, a philosophy major who doubled as a lesbian femanist.

And yet, somehow, we managed to get along with never an argument!