Story Of The Eye

I might just make it my mission to make everyone in the world read this book. It says you do whatever you want, even if it’s morally incorrect.

For instance, if you feel like a train is running through your head, it is. And if you feel like putting eggs inside your bottom, you should.

There’s no such freedom in the world, that you can pick anything you want and put it in your butt.

I was still very shy. I was all hairy and wet on the inside, not saying anything, double double shy. My boyfriend gave me the book. It was one of these books that proved to me that I was not insane.

Written in 1928, it is a short novel, but it packs into its few pages almost endless violations. There are rapes. There is a murder. Eggs and the testicle of a freshly killed bull disappear up various orifices. At the book’s climax, the eyeball of a murdered priest is used instead.

It’s not to be taken literally. It’s a mind thing. You know when you wake up in the morning, and you’ve dreamed you are Elvis Presley ? Do you know what I mean ?

Well, I never have actually dreamed I was Elvis Presley, but...

No, not me either. I’m just saying. It’s about all the things that you think about, even though they don’t happen in real life. With that sort of freedom, you can play games with your mind and feel quite healthy about it. It was very good for a seventeen-year-old to read that book.

So it didn’t make you think, "Oh wow, maybe it would be fun to stick an egg up my bum....?"

No. Honestly, I didn’t.

Details, july 1994