The 120 Days of Sodom & Other Writings

This is, without a doubt the most horrendous, shockingly cruel piece of garbage our species has ever produced. I only give it two stars because of how amazingly creative (NOT A COMPLEMENT) this person was. When i first heard about it it was said that it contained (among other things) several hundred brief descriptions of bizarre sex acts, which i didn't think was possible... but holy hell did he ever pull it off. The man's mind was a bottomless cesspool of depravity. Children are skinned alive and thrown into furnaces in front of their parents, feces is feasted apon, and one of the characters said of their pregnant captive that there is "no reason under the sun why you couldn't deliever that baby with a few broken bones!" and then proceded to break a few of her bones. And, honest to God, those are the MILD parts. However, it... does have some appeal in a strange sort of way, morbid curiousity you could call it, and reminds me of the episode of south park where a book was written that was so horrible people had to vomit every few minutes and cry out in disgust... but couldn't stop reading it, well, it turns out there is a book like that, this one. I'd say its worth at least reading a few sentences, and start from the end of the book, not the beginning, its pretty slow getting off the ground but then slowly escalates to inhuman levels of depravity.

Wow! I just finished Salo 5 minutes ago, and this had to be the most disturbing, horrifying book I ever read. Sade just doesn't catalogue depravity, he enacts it, and allows the reader to enter into the scenes, becoming a libertine. Some of the passions included werein are ones that people could not even remotley DREAM of, nor act out. Sade is an excellent writer, and the other works in the volume are great, also. His play Oxtiern is included, as is the Oedipus-like Florville and Courval. But none are as brutal or as shocking as Salo: the 120 Days of Sodom, and only read this novel if you have a strong stomach. DK

I guess the best way for someone to describe this novel, and yes, I will call it a novel because I believe that it does have literary value, is a mental trip into the debauched and erotic mind of a genious. Sure, it is hard to read, but it is definatly something that I would suggest to someone that was intrested in 18th century literature. It is easier to see how other authors of the enlightenment found the fauder for their cynicism. It is also easier for someone to see how the French aristicrats could definatly be revolted against when they behaved as such. This is a novel that I would definatly suggest for anyone, not of a weak mind.

I have read numerous reviews of Marquis De Sade's 120 Days of Sodom that condemn the book for its HIGHLY graphic sexual content. However, this is my favorite book ever written for that exact reason. Sade crossed the lines repeatedly to make us question! He wanted us to question ourselves, question others, and question our own desires.

The reason he is so graphic in the book is directly related to every person's own desire. The sexual boundaries are crossed because it is to make you (the reader) question your sexual desires of others. Is that normal? Is it accepted by society?

Personally, I think Sade is a genius in that he can make 1,000 people hate him, and then even more love him. When you purchase this book and begin reading it, think about what you're reading and WHY he wrote what he wrote. This book is for highly intellectual people or people that can think on an intellectual level. Don't buy it if you're not willing to think about what you've read and be open-minded enough to accept what the Divine Marquis has "suggested".

A frightening insight into the wants and desires of frail human beings. Admittedly I did have to "step away" from the book every 50 pages or so just to catch my breath. An algebreic equasion of the darkest corners of the human mind.

Unwitting readers beware: 120 Days Of Sodom is not really a "novel." You can call it a novel, I suppose, because the events depicted in it are fictional. But it does not, for instance, have much of a plot. A bunch of libertines lure a group of innocent youths to a secluded location, proceed to rape and torture them for 120 days, and finally gruesomely kill them. That's it. That's the whole book.

Nor does 120 Days Of Sodom have "characters." The people depicted in the book are not people in any way, nor are they really meant to be. The youths are just helpless victims, whose sole purpose is to suffer. But the torturers are also ciphers. They don't just commit evil acts, they have to explain them to the victims (and the readers) in stentorian, painstakingly detailed monologues. Much like "people" in philosophical treatises, they serve as mouthpieces. They can't do something evil just for the hell of it, it always has to have some kind of complicated intellectual justification. No one talks like this in real life, but again that's not the point.

But the book is not really a "philosophical" work either. While the libertines are defined solely by their speeches, the focus of the book is still on the acts themselves, which go to great lengths to outdo each other in brutality. It goes without saying that there's nothing "erotic" about them either.

The book says nothing that Sade hadn't said before, for example in "Justine." The content of that book was entirely identical to this one. The libertines were just as long-winded and self-important, the victims just as helpless and faceless, and the book expressed the exact same ideas. 120 Days Of Sodom just increases the gore factor.

The only purpose of this book was to be written. Sade was trying to make a kind of statement here -- that it is possible to imagine such extreme things, and even to record them (and presumably to publish them later). And there were probably some personal issues at work there too, since he wrote it while imprisoned in the Bastille. 120 Days Of Sodom is a sort of performance art -- for some reason people are impressed when they find out that a book like this exists, but not many people want to read it.

Whether that interests you or not is up to you. But this book is not a masterpiece of literature. It's not really even a literary work as such. Nor is it erotic or philosophical. The existence of the book is the statement, not the content of the book.

I wanted to contribute a review to correct some of the impressions readers may have gotten from other customers' reviews of 120 Days of Sodom. First of all, I do regard 120 Days as a masterpiece -- Sade's only masterpiece, and a dazzling contribution to world literature. I will spend the rest of this review hopefully providing 120 Day's future readers some keys to appreciate this mammoth, peculiar novel.
120 days is shocking, horrifying -- disgusting. This is pretty well universally agreed upon. This in itself says quite a lot. We live in a world where "shocking" has lost much of its meaning. Yet the Marquis De Sade continues to shock our jaded, supposedly unshockable sensibilities; if we want to read this book well, it's worth asking ourselves why. As Simone De Beauvoir says in her introduction to this edition, Sade was a good novelist -- and a great moralist.
One thing Sade definitely was not was a proselytizer for sexual freedom. The recent move "Quills" -- while not completely misleading on this point -- was still much too frivolous, too much of a French sex comedy ( and also too traditionally heterosexual ) to reflect the Sadean universe. Sade is not Henry Miller; with him, sexual freedom is not an issue. Power is. The powerful are sexually free. Sex interests Sade far less than pleasure, and pleasure for Sade can't exist without squashing the weak. An exemplar of the Sadean universe might be the Michael Douglass character from "Wall Street" except that now he knows that sex, even above money, is the ultimate fantasy thrill of power.
In other words, they coined the word "sadism" after him for good reasons! 120 Days is not only the story of four men who act out their sick, abusive fantasies, but of four men who employ storytellers to "entertain" them -- with stories describing every sexual variation conceivable. The stories are valued by the degree to which they explore the relationship between sexuality and crime.
The curiosity is that, although his books disgust us -- particularly when we first start to read --Sade isn't particularly graphic. I can think of books with incomparably more explicit depictions of sex and violence -- for example "American Psycho". The difference is that in books like "American Psycho" or films like "Kids" the corruption is viewed from a distance; the author doesn't approve of what happens, he merely "shows it like it is." This is not Sade's attitude at all. He is a cheerleader for the horrors and excesses of vice.
I read a review recently that compared Sade to rap music. The reviewer jokingly insinuated that Sade was the eighteenth century equivalent of Ice-T. This, too, is untrue. Rap music generally makes a rather moral case. Rap artists posture to their audience as members of an underprivileged society who justify their misogamy/criminality by denouncing the brutal conditions imposed upon them. Sade justifies his cruelty by invoking Nature -- nature made me this way.
Moreover, if you look at how the world works, you will see that nature sides with the powerful. Nature encourages us to satisfy ourselves by stepping on others. This is what Sade says. In short, 120 Days isn't just a succession of shocking scenes, which many contemporary books are -- it is an intellectual justification of a philosophy of vice. Be prepared.
"That which does not kill us makes us stronger," said Nietzsche. I lastly want to emphasize why I believe a book like 120 Days has a positive value. I know this sounds strange -- particularly before you have experienced the sweeping lyricism, the ferocity of Sade's prose, the intensity of his passions, the obstinacy of a vision that few adults could sustain, and a rare children articulate -- but I believe it. Sade makes the best case that has yet been given for cruelty, if you will, evil. If his arguments weren't skillful, 120 Days would be an exercise in futility. Sade is like a nasty child, who miraculously possesses the intellect as well as the shamelessness to defend his behavior rationally.
Sade succeeds as an artist if his vision strikes us as sensible within its own terms, as bizarrely accurate, or at least well-observed. He tempts us toward the abyss of cynicism. Yet for me personally reading 120 Days was a liberating and even religious experience. It was like having my worst fears articulated -- and there was a sense of liberation in the aftermath of that.
Sade has done humanity a favor by visualizing hell. In a bizarre way, by describing the worst we could perpetuate, he also gives us a vision of the divine we cannot live up to. If you take 120 Days and invert it, you would have a vision of heaven, the divine in ourselves we believe in solely by faith -- but which escapes the capacities of words. Sade truly writes with an uncanny purity; of absolutes, absolute evil and, by implication, of innocence.This is why he is so often referred to as the Divine Marquis.

The general perception of the Marquis de Sade is that he was a complete pervert. This, probably his finest work, confirmed it! It was a very colourful account about an enjoyable holiday with his friends. Often amusing, always disgusting, this is well worth reading, if only to see what all the fuss was about.

Since watching the movie Salo: 120 Days Of Sodom I was fascinated with this concept which originally came from Marquis De Sade, who apparently wrote this whilst incarcerated in France. Pasolini's movie disturbed me to the point where I had to watch it again and again, until my mind had digested the horrors for fear they would never leave my mind if not.

I skipped a lot of this book simply because it is a point-by-point account of horrific sexual fantasies. Child-sex is mentioned and detailed on every single page to the point the reader either becomes desensitised or bored to death at their insensitivity. The victims in this book are completely innocent, humiliated and destroyed for being beautiful and pure. This is not an emotional book; emotions during torture are never discussed so you are left to come to your own conclusion, which is actually what made Salo so unnerving. "Can it get any worse?" you ask, and after 100 pages or so it ramps up the debauchery and cruelty until its morbid conclusion; no redemption. A lot of the book is incredibly boring though for the fact it repeats itself as a day-by-day account.

The violence and sexual cruelty in this book is off the charts. Even in comparison with Pasolini's movie, this is far more disturbing. Some of the tortures are mind-blowing. These treatments are far too disturbing to be projected on screen, however, as the worst have never been used in movies, even today. Augustine, a virtuous 15-year-old girl receives the worst treatment. I just didn't know how to react to having her skin peeled off and her nerves twisted like torniquets whilst being assaulted, this is only the start however as they cut holes in her neck and drag her tongue back through them. The icing on the cake? Her bowels are cut with a scalpel and she is forced to defecate through other orifices. These are only a handful of tortures.

This is almost impossible to recommend to anyone.

Someone once said that it's important to not only look at the goodness in human nature, but the darkness. Enter this book. Not my usual cup of tea, I decided to try this out on the recommendation of a friend and wow! what an eye-opener! The writing is not the best but the ideas and stories are remarkable. Would also recommend "The Bark of the Dogwood" for those interested in the shocking, the sandalous, the funny, and the bizarre.

This book is boring, and completely a waste of time. Anybody who praises this is out of touch. Praise is best saved for well written books with exciting plotlines, irregardless of the content. This book, even with all the horridly disgusting, very impossible tales removed, would still be a waste of time. The first 1/4 of the book, actually has some thought into the reasoning behind atrocites such as fecal eating and mutalation of very young children (very digusting I might add). The final 3/4 have all the reasoning removed, and begins to appear to be a point-form pathetic display of various horrors, without rhyme or reason. This book treats children like urinals and fecal matter like food. Just think of something disgusting in your head and write it on a piece of paper, that's how much thought De Garbage put into this waste of time. Save yourself some time, and save the world some corruption by burning this piece of garbage, all it serves is a basis for ideas for criminals, as anyone with half an ounce of sanity realizes its horribly written and childish in nature. De Sade, rot in hell you piece of human waste.

The idea of awarding stars to The Marquis De Sade for his sexual torture tome 'The 120 Days Of Sodom' is radically absurd. What, exactly, is there to congratulate him for? Writing an utterly pointless, sickening book? Depicting a world full of hate and cruelty, obsessions with destroying beauty and inflicting pain for sexual gratification? Wow, let's give this guy a pat on the back. He deserves a star. I implore anyone not to read this book. The only reason one might want to read it is to explore the furthest extremes of human cruelty. Granted, this is quite compelling in itself but, far more so, it leaves a very bad impression on the brain. What they do to Augustine is the worst.

The Marquis de Sade is one of those writers whose influence has been all out of proportion to his actual talent. Basically a career sexual predator who took up writing to pass the time in jail (he spent most of his adult life in either prisons or insane asylums), he nonetheless had a profound influence on the last two hundred years of western civilization. Since his death in 1814, his shadow has fallen successively on Romantics, Symbolists, Surrealists, Existentialists, everyone from Fyodor Dostoevsky to Franz Kafka. Perhaps his closest literary confrere is Adolf Hitler, who also wrote "Mein Kampf" in the clink. Unfortunately, Hitler put into practice what de Sade only fantasized about. Virtually all the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche appear in this book, which ironically was not even discovered until after Nietzsche's death. Great minds think alike!
It's hard to believe that anyone could write a book so full of hate. Less a novel than a pervert's manifesto, "The 120 Days" describes sexual atrocities of every kind in loving detail while giving vent to the most vile contempt for humanity, especially women. De Sade anticipates Nietzsche in his hatred of Christianity, his contempt for the weak and vulnerable, and his glorifying in unrestrained savagery. If one looks hard enough, one can probably find traces of de Sade in Marx and Freud as well. His insistence on individual freedom at all cost, even at the expense of others, also foreshadows Ayn Rand's "ethical egoism." Ironically, de Sade was horrified by the butchery of the French Revolution and narrowly avoided the guillotine himself for refusing, as a judge (!), to hand down death sentences. In the end he was confined to the asylum in Charenton not for his pornography but for allegedly writing a political satire (Napoleon was a pioneer in the practice of committing one's political enemies to mental hospitals). De Sade was not treated badly at the asylum, writing and producing plays for his fellow inmates to perform which were well attended by the local gentry. He became the asylum director's eminence grise and even took up the collection plate at Sunday chapel, despite being an inveterate atheist. After his death he was given a Christian burial, despite his wish for an unmarked grave in the middle of the forest.
De Sade evidently intended to entitle his book "The School for Libertines," but he lost the manuscript when he was unexpectedly transferred from the Bastille months before the beginning of the French Revolution. He had hidden it in the chinks of the Bastille, and after the fortress was razed it passed through several private owners before being discovered in the early 1900s. It was originally published in Germany, just in time for the coming of the Third Reich.

Since two of my favorite filmmakers name De Sade their source of inspiration and admit his influence (Luis Bunuel quotes "120 Days of Sodom" in his "Age of Gold" and Jan Svankmajer was inspired by his writings in his brilliant "Conspirators of Pleasure"), I decided to read "120 Days of Sodom". I tried. I really did and I went through first forty or so pages of "120 Days of Sodom" but it should be called "120 Days of Boredom". I stopped. I could not read it because it is not the novel really rather a catalogue of disgusting. The main characters have been introduced in the beginning as the fully developed monsters. Their victims just stayed that - the victims. There is no plot, no intrigue, and no development, just the endless loop of rapes, tortures, and murders. Yes, I understand that it is a satire and the absolute power corrupts absolutely but reading the book is a torture of boredom. Did I miss anything?

So, I thought when, after I was grown and thought about this book I read (half-way..)when I was young; "This is what the aristocracy is all about!" This has every description of deviant sex a rich man could possibly be paying for out there!

This "novel" chronicles the "adventures" of men who realize sexual ecstasy through cold-blooded murder and other crimes, who kidnap young children and repeatedly rape them on an extended retreat into the wilderness.

Perhaps that will shock, disgust and/or horrify you. It probably should. But I'm a pretty open-minded sort--it isn't the subject matter which earns this work my low rating. Instead, I rate De Sade's "masterpiece" low because it really isn't very entertaining or relevant.

Look, I've never believed that sexuality is wrong in any way, really. Of course, the scenes described in Sodom *are* wrong; forcing people, and especially children, into any such acts against their wills is heinous. But, in reading, more crucial to me is how repetitive all of the "action" becomes. Fine, the first 100 pages of non-stop "libertinage" has some amount of curiosity about it... but the fact that the book proceeds ponderously, day by day, without anything really new introducing itself is insurmountable.

I was hoping, at least, to be titillated; I don't ask a whole lot out of my pornography (and for all of its pseudo-philosophical trappings, Sodom is nothing more than that). I am certain others will find thrills in some of the scenes described, such as people achieveing "lubricity" by having their genitalia vomited upon, or sucking snot out of others' noses, or eating other's toe-cheese, but I must report that it didn't do a whole lot for me. I suppose I'm rather more "traditional" in that sense. For sexual excitement, I prefer the thought of attractive, consenting adults giving and receiving pleasure.

Yes. Yes, I understand that Sade's work is not really about sexuality and is, instead, about "power." And a fair dose of woman-hating (all of his "heroes" have a prediliction to the feminine aft rather than the fore, and boys above all; their sport consists of denigrating and humiliating their wives). I get that. But so what? These kinds of "power fantasies" aren't daring or enticing, they're insipid and juvenile. Sade's psychological abnormalities, however bizarre/extreme, don't necessarily make for entertaining or enlightening reading.

In the end, I can't really think of an excellent use for this novel. Philosophy can be found better by the tons in any local bookstore or library, in varieties fiction and non. If you want sexual freedom, specifically, check out Stranger in a Strange Land. If you want philosophical defenses of ruthless debauchism and assorted villanies, nothing bests Les Liasons Dangereuses. Better works about psychotics are available--if such fascinates, try In Cold Blood or Helter Skelter. Better pornography is (massively) available in, essentially, every medium available to man. I find the quasi-amateur efforts of Ed Powers to be rather enjoyable. Better explorations of abnormal psychology are certainly out there, for instance the classic Sybil. In every way, in everything it does or could hope to do, The 120 Days of Sodom is mediocre and dull and bettered by a hundred and twenty other works. Reading it does not make one "edgy" or "perverse" or "intellectual" or, really, anything other than bored.

I was reading an interview with serial-killer Richard Ramirez (the night stalker)and in it he talks about this book and De Sade in general. He was reading Justine at the time the article was written and I can't help but wonder why death-row inmates are allowed access to this type of reading material. I can see why he is so fasinated by this book - it reads like a serial killer's to-do list. Very sick stuff.