About this title: 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 Sade's crowning achievement and the cornerstone of his thought. Lost after the storming of the Bastille in 1789, it was later retrieved but remained unpublished until 1935. In addition to The 120 Days, ...
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Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Grove Press
Date Published: 1994-01-10
ISBN-13:9780802130129ISBN:0802130127
Description: Fair. WATER SPILL made some of the pages stiff and wrinkled. No highlighting or underlining. Acceptable reading copy-Read it and pass it on! read more
Description: [0-8021-3012-7] [date not known], later printing., later printing. (Trade paperback) Very good. Translated by Richard Seaver & Austryn Wainhouse. (Historical Fiction, Erotica) read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Grove Pr
Date Published: 1987-11-01
ISBN-13:9780802130129ISBN:0802130127
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780802130129. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Grove Press
Date Published: 1994
ISBN-13:9780802130129ISBN:0802130127
Description: New. Brand New! Buy with confidence-your satisfaction is guaranteed at B-Logistics! Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. Please note that Expedited shipping is not available at this time. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Arrow Books
Date Published: 1990
ISBN-13:9780099629603ISBN:0099629607
Description: Good. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Little wear on the cover of this book. There is a crack in the spine and a few dog ears. Very attractive copy. 799 pp. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Arrow Books Ltd
Date Published: 07/09/1989
ISBN-13:9780099629603ISBN:0099629607
Description: Used-Good. Book in good or better condition. Dispatched same day from warehouse. Please email with any questions for quick response. read more
"It is worthwhile to skim a few passages online to see what the fuss is about. But it is extremely repetitive, so there's no reason to buy the book and actually read it. His prose still has the ability to shock. Even the "Saw" movies owe a debt to him:
"He chains one of the girl's hands and secures the chain to the wall; he leaves her thus, without food. Near her is a large knife, and just beyond her reach sits an excellent meal: if she wishes to eat, she has but to cut through her forearm; otherwise, she dies of starvation. Prior to this he has embuggered her. He observers her through a window.""
"In a good/evil/either/or universe, the only way to be truly anti-god is to become the most vile and reprehensible creatures you can imagine. It almost an inviting challenge to these libertines, and a real gas to read. It's also a great catalogue of bizarre fetishes that could give liven up your love life if you're want for inspiration."
"I don't know if this is the version I read. I read, I think, the Project Guttenberg version, whichever one that is. This is not the Sade to read if you want to get turned on. (Unless you get turned on by poop, in which case, stop reading this and get to it.) The frame of the book is a moral outrage against war profiteers, which seems quite apropos in our time. (The four libertines who drive the plot, kidnap women and children and take them into a mountain retreat where four harlots tell stories every night for a month and in between various sex acts are committed.) I considered mounting a reading of it as a war protest, but as most people don't want to read about poop much less hear about it... Sade apparently thought this MS was lost. He'd never been able to finish it and I think he would have had to rework significantly to do so. Any writer could immediately see how ambitious his project is from the outline he's left. The 120 days are supposed to increase in sexual violence from day 1 to day 120. This is the literary version of building an aquaduct with a slight but steady slope... a difficult feat for engineers and for writers. I don't, frankly, think Sade had the discipline or skill to do this. In the first 30 days, he describes such depravities that he has virtually no room to move and according to his plan he has 90 days left. Finished or unfinished, he just wasn't going to make it. He has written out the end scenario and describes the last day at the castle where pretty much everybody dies. His outline between day 30 and day 119 is pretty funny. Impossible to prove, but I think he might well have just abandoned it, realizing that it required more work than he wanted to put into it. Again, not the best Sade if you want to get turned on. That's Justine if you ask me."
"After Watching Quills I was engulfed in the character Geoffry Rush played, the character being the Marquis De Sade. After some quick IMDB research I learned the Marquis De Sade was in fact real and wrote many stories. I knew I had to read them. I ran to the library and picked up 120 Days of Sodom. First, I read a few essays preceding the story, all focusing on the Marquis from different angles, one being biographical and psychological, another focusing on him from a religious perspective another looking at him only through his writings and so on. Being naturally curious I couldn't wait to get to the actual story, I was dying to know what 18th century porn looked like (or read like). Once I reached 120 of Sodom, I was disappointed. It was raunchy and vulgar (not that I didn't expect it) but repetitive. Every other sentence described an old man's blessed endowments or a woman's protruding clitoris and the Marquis' clear obsession with sodomy was unbearable(of course I didn't pay attention to the title). All in all, it wasn't terrible, just not very fresh."
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