Rating: 
Summary: Some great works by the Great Libertarian
Review: This collection of works is an illuminating collection of Sade's best. The critical introductions are excellent, along with the massive chronology of Sade's life. Sade's letters and Last Will & Testament also give insight into one of France's most controversial literary minds.The collection begins with "Dialogue between a priest and a dying man", perhaps the shortest, and least depraved, of his works. The dialogue is a concise evisceration of Judeo-Christian philosophy, advocating the supremacy and amorality of Nature. "Philosophy in the Bedroom" follows, which is Sade at his most philosophically eloquent and sexually twisted. Every taboo is torn to pieces (sometimes literally) while the characters engage in philosophical dialogues about Nature, religion, politics, and, obviously, sex. There is a political treatise in the middle of the dialogues. The treatise is Sade at his most learned and compelling. Amid the erotic carnage, Sade displays himself as one of France's greatest philosophers. Foucault? Whatever. Eugenie de Franval is next. It is a romantic tale about the love between a father and his daughter. It pre-dates Balzac, although it has a realistic style familiar to anyone who has read Pere Goriot (another tale of familial love, but not about incest). Justine closes out the collection. This version is considerably longer than "the Misfortunes of Virtue" in the story collection of the same name. Sade fills the story with copious monologues discussing the stupidities of religion, the nature of fetishism (pre-dating Freud and Krafft-Ebing by a long shot), and the glories of crime. Depraved? Yes. Entertaining? Absolutely. Justine is comedy at its blackest. You'll laugh at all the misfortunes Justine gets herself into and her abundantly sentimental character. Kind of like "Pride and Prejudice", but totally messed up. Reading Sade has opened my eyes and my mind to his scorched earth brand of philosophy. Nietzsche pales in comparison to the furious directness of Sade. Also, check out the chapter on Sade and Rousseau in Camille Paglia's "Sexual Personae" for more insight than this silly little review. Quality reading. Pick it up now!
Rating:
Summary: Some great works by the Great Libertarian
Review: This collection of works is an illuminating collection of Sade's best. The critical introductions are excellent, along with the massive chronology of Sade's life. Sade's letters and Last Will & Testament also give insight into one of France's most controversial literary minds. The collection begins with "Dialogue between a priest and a dying man", perhaps the shortest, and least depraved, of his works. The dialogue is a concise evisceration of Judeo-Christian philosophy, advocating the supremacy and amorality of Nature. "Philosophy in the Bedroom" follows, which is Sade at his most philosophically eloquent and sexually twisted. Every taboo is torn to pieces (sometimes literally) while the characters engage in philosophical dialogues about Nature, religion, politics, and, obviously, sex. There is a political treatise in the middle of the dialogues. The treatise is Sade at his most learned and compelling. Amid the erotic carnage, Sade displays himself as one of France's greatest philosophers. Foucault? Whatever. Eugenie de Franval is next. It is a romantic tale about the love between a father and his daughter. It pre-dates Balzac, although it has a realistic style familiar to anyone who has read Pere Goriot (another tale of familial love, but not about incest). Justine closes out the collection. This version is considerably longer than "the Misfortunes of Virtue" in the story collection of the same name. Sade fills the story with copious monologues discussing the stupidities of religion, the nature of fetishism (pre-dating Freud and Krafft-Ebing by a long shot), and the glories of crime. Depraved? Yes. Entertaining? Absolutely. Justine is comedy at its blackest. You'll laugh at all the misfortunes Justine gets herself into and her abundantly sentimental character. Kind of like "Pride and Prejudice", but totally messed up. Reading Sade has opened my eyes and my mind to his scorched earth brand of philosophy. Nietzsche pales in comparison to the furious directness of Sade. Also, check out the chapter on Sade and Rousseau in Camille Paglia's "Sexual Personae" for more insight than this silly little review. Quality reading. Pick it up now!
Rating:
Summary: The Marquis exposes the sexual exploits of those with power.
Review: This is not a book merely about bizarre sado-masochistic sex, but an expose of the sexual exploitation by those with power. Although it was written in seemingly more decadent days, these same acts still occur on a regular basis today... albeit behind closed doors. Every word is so captivating that you will not put it down before the end. Truly, the story of Justine is a timeless treasure, adored by those whose passions are unrestrained by the capricious morality imposed by society. I found it far more intriguing than Juliette, also by the Marquis deSade.
Rating: 
Summary: Hurt So Good
Review: This titillating tome, combining three of Sade's works, is an excellent entre into the degenerate world of the Enlightenment's Larry Flynt. But unlike the modern misanthrope, Sade's characters aren't just scandalous and perpetually supine, they carry a moral, a message (although it may not be the one you want to hear). The wicked wastrel composed his Justine while imprisoned in the Bastille and dedicated it to his then mistress. It concerns an innocent young thing whose virtue is soon corrupted by unremitting villainy. The contemporary praise of Justine and the eternal censure of the writer makes this more than just a passing curiosity. The literary Sadist can really crack that whip. I'll have another!
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful piece of work!
Review: This was a masterful work that emcompasses the basic animalistic needs of man. To say that it is too "vulgar" is a sign of ignorance and a misconception of the human spirit. Sade delved into the most primitive wants and urges of man and is a true libertarian for it.
Rating:
Summary: The Siege
Review: To illustrate evil you have to read Sade - Bodler
Sade's novels struggle to refute the common idea of diminution and indecency of evil.
While "good" might be bright and attractive, Sade presents evil as "mihrab" (monastery) erected on giant solid piers offers the worshipers (executors) of its ceremonies the sublimity, triumph and opportunities. In Justine, actions and reactions of this Sad's novel take the shape of siege (blockade). And for his protagonist to get the greater pleasure from this torture (siege) the besieger should make the siege perfect and accurate.
The besieger must establish, in any way, reasons to elevate the besieged importance to give himself (as a besieger) a stature. The besieger must lengthen his prey siege with the aim of seeing "it" wriggle and meander with pain, cry for help before it capitulate to its fate (death). Marquise De Sade couldn't have had described the US siege on Iraq more accurate.
Rating:
Summary: First of the greats
Review: When I read Justine ou Les Malheurs de Virtue, I lost my appetite. That's how intense it is. However, I loved it. Only the Marquis de Sade could have come up with such sordid tales. Many people believe his books are erotica, pornography, and even Satanic. I believe that throughout this work and all his others there is an obvious show of existentialism. De Sade is one of the first modern nihilists. When you think of existentialism, one of the first you name is Camou, but when someone asks me to name an existential I think of de Sade. The book is fascinating. It might seem like a show of wanton libertines, in fact, I would have to say, this book is about how man is inherently savage and animalistic; that innocence and virtue are nothing more than hopes created by hopeless people. Justine is one of them. She believes Man is by nature divine and pure. But throughout her journey she sees the contrary. Its called the Misfortune of Virtue because Justine never realizes at any time that Man is utterly sinful and completely unsaveable. She continues to find misfortune because she holds true to her hope and faith in Man and God; the two characters de Sade completely abhors. To de Sade Man is an animal equal to pigs and rats and therefore they have no true value except for what pleasure they can bring themselves in life. Personally if you have never read any of de Sades works, you should read his biography first. His books take alot of their inspiration from the marquis' own life. By the way, if you wonder why I gave this book a 4 and not a five, it is because I felt that the end was too abrupt and didn't have the climax I had hoped for. This book also has several short pieces by him of which the one I favor most is "Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man". That will is definitely serious but in the end you can't do anything else but laugh.
Rating:
Summary: JUSTINE: The Amoral Morality Play
Review: When the Marquis de Sade was locked up in the Bastille for various crimes that ranged from sexual abuse of prostitutes to flagellation of young boys, he found that he had the time to write at length in novel form a series of books that have come to stand for his belief in the utter joy of inflicting pain on the virtuous: sadism. For the next few centuries, philosophers and literary critics have debated whether his works deserve the attention normally given to serious works of literature or whether they are simply the ravings of a mind unhinged. There is a current trend to rehabilitate his reputation, a trend which includes analysing his canon with the same set of standard literary tools that are used on mainstream authors. The reader new to de Sade might well wish to begin with JUSTINE. It is here that he delineates a world that is composed of two categories of people: those of vice and those of virtue. With the former, de Sade presents a very nearly exclusive male dominant protagonist, one who is wealthy, middle-aged, possessed of a castle or subterranean dungeon, and has a proclivity to speak at great length on the superiority of vice over virtue. With the latter, De Sade, as he does in JUSTINE, gives the reader a young, well-shaped, nearly indestructable female whose sole purpose is to suffer a non-stop series of assaults both on her body and to her mind. Each assault is a carbon copy of its predecessor. Justine (called Therese) is kidnapped or tricked into entering the lair of a rich and dissolute monk or nobleman who promptly lectures Justine/Therese on the inevitable triumph of Vice over a feckless Virtue. Each time this Vice figure rapes and sodomizes Justine, he tells her, "You see, my dear? If there were truly a virtuous God watching over innocent lambs like you, then I would surely be struck down by a bolt of lightning." Typically, Justine's only reply is, "But Moniseur, surely you can allow your hard heart to be softened by my plight." As if to punctuate the superiority of his position over Justine's, her tormentor simply increases the pace of his ravagings. What becomes clear well before the half way point is that both the tormentor and his victim are allegorical stick figures from the morality plays with which de Sade was undoubtedly quite familiar. And just as those figures of morality from the Middle Ages were sure to point to a victory of virtue over vice, de Sade was determined to reverse the results. JUSTINE, as well as his later JULIETTE and 120 DAYS OF SODOM, all point to the same nihilistic end; either there is no God or what is worse, there is one but this deity has so arranged his cosmos that the universal deck is stacked against those who seek to live the good and pure life. Today, as the modern reader plows through the thousands of pages of de Sades' canon, that reader will find that the real titillation lies not in the finite ways that a female body can be corrupted but rather in the more nearly infinite ways that this corruption can be justified. Few writers have made this point more clearly--or more horribly--than de Sade.
Rating:
Summary: exquisite filth
Review: whether you loved him or hated him, we must all admit that the most controversial authors around the world owe their corrupted souls to de sade. after reading this collection of work, it is easy to understand why so many could've been offended but i can also understand how reading his work can greatly benefit mankind scientifically and pyschologically. while certainly not for all tastes, his books provide the reader with an unflinching look at some of the most vile behavior that humans have ever exhibited both in and out of the bedroom. de sade left virtually nothing to the imagination to chew on in the annals of graphic detail here but gave us more than we could handle in the lines of philosophy and, yes, science. this may very well not be his greatest volume of work but perhaps it's a fine place to start for those not quite accumstomed to the de sade writing style. it's sinful, wicked, and i'm literally a greenish envy that i could not have written even a small portion of what the marquis wrote. each nook and cranny is seething with debauchery, lust, and over powering desire. if the marquis were to spare us a few moments with any of these topics, he then waves his fist to pound any organized religion. try and avoid him if you might but i strongly believe his message to the world was not avoid our strange desires but to understand the why behind them. the dialogue between a dying man and a preacher will raise some eyebrows but it does bring up quite a few questions for us to ponder and undoubtedly has been debated throughout the years. i daresay my favorite portion of the book has to be the philosophy in the bedroom which rmeinds me somewhat of dangerous liaisons only much more explicit and definately will turn off many a reader.
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