Marina Galletti and Alastair Brochte (eds): The Sacred Conspiracy

 Though the author listed on the binding of this volume is Georges Bataille, he deserves very little credit for the work within.  For one thing, he is only the author of a fraction of the texts.  For another, it is really the work of the editors that gives it any meaning at all.  The texts themselves, for the most part and especially those penned by Bataille, are just the bleatings of untethered, if powerful, minds in the maelstrom of Fascist Europe.  All of the ideas have the flavor of desperate clinging to an unserviceable metaphor, of men with too much time on their hands.

But placed side by side in context, they become something much more useful.  The ideas themselves are occasionally interesting, but never to the level of those ideas whence they came: De Sade, Nietzsche, et al.  They fail to develop those greater ideas into anything new or rooted, and as such can safely be ignored.  Seen chronologically, however, they reveal a narrative.  The story of a group of smart, but idle and egotistical men aiming to achieve something great, but ultimately doing nothing but quibble, is familiar and nearly farcical in its clarity.  The observer, and the editors, can see so clearly that Bataille's ego kept these thoughts from maturing into a philosophy--let alone an action--that it becomes a cautionary tale, rather than a treatise.