Rating: 
Summary: A collection of badly put together ramblings....
Review: Everyone seems to have forgotten that this is not a novel per se. That while in jail and while hiding out he was jotting down notes and a sort of outline. These were collected and somehow now have the title of being a book. If it weren't for the subject matter no one in their right mind would have let this work get published. The subject matter at hand is S/M or let's just say plain ole torture. I have to believe the lure for some people is that they think it has the ring of truth to it. That the author was actually practicing this stuff or would have if he could get away with it. I suspect that makes it less than the drudgery it really is. Incest and the chopping off of various body parts starts to lose some of the thrill once you have read about it a good ten or thirty times. The Marquis knew his writing limitations, liked his sex with young, stupid and easily manipulated people and above all thought like most of the aristocracy of his time; that the world owed him for just being around. He needed money and that's what this book is about, MONEY. If he had the time he would have polished it up and you bet earned more money, please people, garbage in, garbage out.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: I was drawn to this book by my affinity to history. I was interested in the man and the tribulations that he went through in his unusual life. I had heard rumors about his work and decided to read it for myself. This book is a disjointed collection of repetitive depravity and reading it is work rather than enjoyment. If you are into self-flagellation you may enjoy slogging through this book. As for me, I retain my interest in the history of the man but believe that his work should have been buried with him.
Rating: 
Summary: Disgusting and Horrifying
Review: The Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom is the most disgusting and horrifying work of fiction that I've ever read. The story is simple: four eighteenth-century French libertines spend an entire winter in an isolated chateau, cut off from the outside world, listening to fantastic tales of sexual violence and perversion, then acting out these fantasies on a helpless group of sex slaves. It's not much of a story, actually: there is no plot or character development, and by the end of the book de Sade has discarded narrative altogether, simply listing each days' atrocities, one after another. He concludes The 120 Days with a chillingly matter-of-fact tally of casualties and survivors, which reads like a report from the Commandant from a Nazi concentration camp. Now that it's over, I'm extremely ambivalent about The 120 Days of Sodom: it's a remarkable book, but I'm not sure that it's a very good book. Many of the previous reviewers have praised The 120 Days of Sodom as a work of philosophy, but all I found was the occasional philosophical aside between sex scenes. The 'sex' in those scenes is brutal and grotesque, and the explicit depictions of coprophilia in particular made me ill. (The reviewer who described this as "pretty tame stuff" was simply posturing.) The critical essays by de Beauvoir and Klossowski at the start of the book assured me that de Sade made a serious philosophical point with this novel, but whatever this point was, it escaped me: there was more philosophy in de Sade's brief "Dialogue between a Priest and a Dying Man" than in all the hundreds of pages of this novel put together. Perhaps de Sade's other novels, Justine and Juliette, are more reflective. To be fair, I should mention that, in addition to The 120 Days of Sodom, this edition also contains a play by de Sade and some short stories from The Crimes of Love, which were considerably easier to read and more entertaining than the novel itself. There is also an interesting essay on the history of the novel and some amusing correspondence between de Sade and one of his critics.
Rating:
Summary: 120 Days of Sodom
Review: I enjoy reading erotica and most forms of S&M but I found this book to be beyond my imagination in a disturbing way. The content of this book may not be everyone's idea of a sexual turn on.
Rating: 
Summary: 120 Days of Mindless Dribble!
Review: A Missunderstood Genius? A rebel against religious tyranny? Hardly! De Sade didn't care about religion! He wasn't some rebel trying to make the world more free for the masses. He was simply putting his own disturbed fantasies to paper. Half of them people we call insane and are in institutions right now are no where near as mad as this man whom we call a is understood genius! This book is actually written in the form of a list, detailing the daily (repetative) events taken on by a group of perverse people. I do however give him credit for being origional with this mess of a plot. Each time, he does think of some disgusting obsenities no one else would have thought of. But, is that a good thing? The story is basically the bio of this woman who entertains the rest of these fools by telling them her life story. Listen to this charactors life story and compare it to his book Juliette. Alike much?
Rating: 
Summary: Everyone seems to gloss over...
Review: ...the unique linguistic structure of this book. As legend has it, Sade wrote the entire novel on both sides of a huge roll of paper while imprionsed in the Bastille. Beginning it in the overwrought prose style common to his era and milieu, the Marquis found himself filling up paper more quickly than the plot was developing. Therefore -- as the "Passions" of the book's four main sections become increasingly more perverse and "sadistic" (there really oughta be a different word), the writing style begions to pare itself down in inverse proportion. By the end of the book, he has even abandoned basic sentence and paragraph structure, and simply lists what each day's increasingly vile atrocities are. The strange effect inherent in all this is that as the reader reads on, he/she gradually takes over for Sade, supplying all the things which Sade leaves out, verbs and settings and dialogue and description. In the end, the reader has completely assumed the writer's job. Who, then, is guiltier of summoning such demons from the imagination -- the reader or the Marquis? In it's own way (whether Sade consciously intended it or really did write the book that way because of lack of paper) "The 120 Days of Sodom" presents a trap as confounding as Blackbeard's feat of natural engineering on Oak Island.
Rating: 
Summary: THE PAIN OF THIS BOOK HAS TO BE ENDURED
Review: THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST THOUGH OUT BOOKS OF ITS TIME HE HAD A SET OF STEEL BALLS TO WRITE THIS IN HIS TIME WITH OUT THE FEAR OF BEENING BURNED AT THE STAKE
Rating:
Summary: The Sadist Manifesto
Review: I haven't read the English issue of the book, but I suppose it too contains a kind of pathetic fore- or afterword apologizing for publishing this book - explaining how scientific it is etc. Well, nothing like that! This is page after page, chapter after chapter describing the most horrible kind of cruelties against women. Never in your wildest dreams would you imagine abusing women in the way the heroes of this book are doing it. I'll never understand how a book like this is allowed to be printed and sold at the first place - with no mobs of enraged feminists smashing the book company's windows. What's even more amazing - there actually are women who like the book. But who can understand them, anyway? Now, among the hundreds of episodes in this book, there surely are some you won't like. I don't like many of them. I noticed that my personal taste differs very much from that of Marquis de Sade's. Still, the book's a work of a genius. The general plot is amazing - and I won't tell you any more about it, you'll have to read it yourself. This book's a required reading for everyone who's into SM. Not that you should do the things Marquis de Sade's writing about. (That would indeed be a waste of women). Reading this book is a matter of education - it's the main work of the Founding Father of Sadism.
Rating:
Summary: Falls apart quickly
Review: The first part, "The Simple Passions" is interesting. This part of the text is where most of his philosophy is woven in and the story is strong. But the rest of the book, the sexual deviations written in the laundry-list format, is absolutely boring, unimaginative and repetitive to the point that it is unbearable. And the story is gone. Save your money, don't buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: marquis -- what else is there?
Review: hey -- if you wanna buy a really radical book, get this one. he's famous. so is the book. it's not uncommon here in LA. you gotta get it. do it now
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