GEORGES BATAILLE

"Georges Bataille's was a life of paradox. Famous for his friendships with Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris and Andre Masson, Jacques Lacan and Colette Peignot, among others, he was infamous for his feuds with Andre Breton and Jean-Paul Sartre. Famous as a celebrant of communal life, he was, like Nietzsche, a great solitary. Famous for his often pornographic fictions, he signed them pseudonymously. Famous among the famous, he was among the most influential writers of his century. Yet the diverse body of his work as a whole remains largely unknown." "Bataille's life was lived in opposition. A mystic, he was also an atheist in a Catholic land. He violently opposed all of the defining intellectual currents of his day - Surrealism, Marxism, Existentialism, psychoanalysis, the French school of sociology - while retaining and reshaping their essential lessons. Indeed, Bataille made crucial contributions to fields ranging from the arts and letters to sociology, psychology, theology and economics. He became arguably the greatest influence on the next generation of artists and intellectuals. More so than any other thinker, Georges Bataille occasioned the post-structuralist revolution in twentieth-century thought and literature." "Stuart Kendall distils the life and work of a writer who courted controversy into a concise and yet informative biography that reveals the tensions and contradictions of both Bataille and his times."--Jacket.