This is what I grew up reading, kids! Page 3 of the NME! Or maybe Page 5! At any rate, right up front, not tucked away in some ghetto section like Books, but considered as newsworthy and relevant to the readers's interests as hotshit new band Shillelagh Sisters or whatever other Bad Music Era offering featured in that week's issue. (This is September 1984).
NME literally throwing "filth at our pop kids" to use an oft jokily used phrase of the time (originally a tabloid newspaper headline complaining about the Sex Pistols on Bill Grundy).
That said, I don't remember actually reading this Boy Georges paean at the time.
I think I found my way to Bataille independently - or possibly it was via some quote or namedrop in a piece on a band (quite likely the dropper in question would have been Barney Hoskyns)
There being this thing called the Internet, you can find traces of documentation about the Visible Silence event at the Bloomsbury Theatre..
Here's Cosey Fanni Tutti talking about GB. And her performance was videotaped and sold.
Here's a preview in another publication (City Limits?)
Here's Marc Almond's contribution to the event.
It is a hamstrung annoyance that Bataille is best known for Story of the Eye, when his best literary work is by far Blue of Noon.
ReplyDeleteAnd that was my introduction to Bataille. As a bookish 16-yr-old, I was perusing the shelves of my local bookshop (a three mile walk), and saw a Penguin Modern Classics spine (the metallic grey editions, rather than the seagreen ones). The front had a female nude, and the blurb on the back began "One of the century's most nihilistic novels...". I bought it instantly and read it in one sitting that evening (it's not a long book; Bataille was a literary miniaturist).
I suppose the issue I have is that the Story of the Eye-dominated perspective falls too easily to caricature, and ignores other important facets of Bataille's writings, such as his response to fascism. It's not all just sex and shit (though essential parts, yes). Ignore the turds! Dismiss the cunts! Never mind the bollocks! (I am pathetically proud of that.)