Equus Press

142 pages, $10.00

Review by Matt Pincus

George Bataille (1897-1962), a prominent French literary figure from the ‘20s to ‘50s, would be rolling over in his grave at the fetishization of pornographic actresses such as Alexis Texas, Rachel Roxx, Tanner Mayes and Teagan Presley.  Desire in modern pornography is a parody of itself, as actresses are expected to make eroticism look so intimate and real their viewers forget they’re faking it.  Stuart Kendall, the translator of The Little One (1942) and The Tomb of Louis XXX (1947), which together make up the book Louis XXX, writes that “erotica is the activation of desire, its implementation, wherein words, genres, discourses, images and texts, get on top of one another and become sexual.”

The Little One, originally published under the pseudonym Louis Trente, is made up of short, incomplete passages centered on a destruction of self-image. A declarative sentence attempts to affirm the speaker’s identity in reality: “I break the tie that binds me to others.” Soon, identity is split though, as if in a ritual of imagination, similar to the hallucinatory poetics of Rimbaud. The speaker says, “Evil is love. Innocence is the love of sin.” Continue reading →