39. Marquis de Sade - 120 Days of Sodom

This week was a week of firsts; The first time I've read a book on my Kindle, which was a great experience. And the first time I haven't finished it, because the book wasn't a great experience. I'm talking about Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom. I started the book very hopefully, from the start they already give you clues it will get smutty, but then for at least 200 pages they go on and on and on about eating faeces and mild S&M. That, I could handle, but then....

Let me first describe what this book is about. It's about 4 libertines who decide to live in a remote villa with a harem filled with young girls, young boys, fuckers, dirty old women, their own wives and 4 storytellers. The storytellers each have a month to tell the nastiest stories to arouse the libertines. And, of course, everyone else in the house is merely there as playthings. This introduction gives you a good insight of what their plans were:

"The thing is, unhappily, only too well known: there is no libertine at least a little steeped in vice who is not aware of the great sway murder exerts over the senses, and how voluptuously it determines a discharge." (de Sade 16)

It reminds me of a film I saw last year called La Grande Bouffe. Where gluttons lock themselves into a house in the the course of a month eat themselves to death. Same kind of libertines different addiction.

Please don't read this if you don't think your stomach can handle it. There is one quote that clearly influenced Bret Easton Ellis when he wrote American Psycho. I managed to finish that novel, although it made me feel sick. But Marquis de Sade has beaten me, I can't do it...

"'That is to say,' stammered the financier , beginning to lose all control of himself, 'you'd spew into her mouth, she'd swallow and then have to blow it back at you?'" (de Sade 120)

"She assured us that all his joy consisted in eating expelled ovulations and in lapping up miscarriages; he would be notified whenever a girl found herself in that case, he would rush to the house and swallow the embryo, half swooning with satisfaction." (de Sade 128)

De Sade only managed to elaborately explain the first thirty days, then he gets into summary mode, with lose passages like this flying around:

"31. He fucks a goat from behind while being flogged; the goat conceives and gives birth to a monster. Monster though it be, he embuggers it." (de Sade 321)

And here it is Ellis, I'm sure you read this one as well:

"By means of a hollow tube, a mouse is introduced into her cunt, the tube withdrawn, the cunt sewn up, and the animal, unable to get out, devours her entrails." (de Sade highlights)