Are literature and evil inseparable? “Yes!” says Georges Bataille. Otherwise it would be boring. The French theorist discusses his book, La littérature et le Mal, in the only television interview that exists with him, filmed in 1958. His interlocutor is Pierre Dumayet. I find his concept of evil a little naïve, but see what you think. (With a hat tip to Morgan Meis and 3quarksdaily for this one.)
Author: Cynthia Haven
Cynthia Haven has written for The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, World Literature Today, and other publications. Her work has also appeared in Le Monde, La Repubblica, The Kenyon Review, Quarterly Conversation, The Georgia Review, Civilization, and others. She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. Peter Dale in Conversation with Cynthia Haven was published in London, 2005. Her Czestaw Mitosz: Conversations was published in 2006; Joseph Brodsky: Conversations in 2003; An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czestaw Mitosz was published in 2011 with Ohio University Press / Swallow Press. She is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford. Her biography René Girard, A Life will be published next year.
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Are literature and evil inseparable? “Yes!” says Georges Bataille. Otherwise it would be boring. The French theorist discusses his book, La littérature et le Mal, in the only television interview that exists with him, filmed in 1958. His interlocutor is Pierre Dumayet. I find his concept of evil a little naïve, but see what you think. (With a hat tip to Morgan Meis and 3quarksdaily for this one.)