The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings
 

The 120 Days of Sodom and Other Writings

by Richard Seaver, Austryn Wainhouse, Marquis De Sade

The Marquis de Sade, vilified by respectable society from his own time through ours, apotheosized by Apollinaire as "the freest spirit that has yet existed," wrote The 120 Days of Sodom while imprisoned in the Bastille. An exhaustive catalogue of sexual aberrations and the first systematic exploration-a hundred years before Krafft-Ebing and Freud-of the psychology of sex, it is considered... (read more)

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Amazon Reviews (5)
 

Most Helpful Reviews

Liked It

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.
Jesse H
  • Rated 5 stars

A truly disturbing work with very little literary merit. Simply because it isn't literature, per se. It has, I've learned, proved to be very influential for me in many ways. One of the only books that ever managed to thoroughly "shock" me.

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Didn’t Like It

ivonne
  • Rated 2 stars

what a very disturbing book. i actually enjoyed Sade's criticisms of the novel and the story of Florville and Courval (this had a very shocking ending). 120 Days of Sodom though was too much for my taste. At first it was quite interesting how Sade described all the characters but his detail were too much. Too much details became a little boring for me after a few pages. Once the "orgies" began to happen and the four veteran prostitutes began to tell their stories then i became a little sick....

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Community:
  • Rated 3.684783 stars
Amazon:
  • Rated 4.25 stars
 

Newest Comments

  • Jeremiadist

    jeremiadist said:

    It appears that many reviewers are responding to other works of Sade's, not the one in question. (This one, for example, has no part of the 120 Days in it.) This collection is more or less un-pornographic, and includes some short pieces (like the Dialogue between a condemned man and a priest) which place Sade squarely in the Enlightenment tradition, where he belongs. Mike B is quite correct in his assessment, in my opinion - Sade is the proto-Nietzsche, and maybe the proto-Freud. Much smarter than his rep. would make you think he is.

    posted Sunday, January 6 2008
  • Simon T

    simon t said:

    All bisexual?

    posted Monday, December 24 2007
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