Jean Genet
From Philosopedia
Genet, Jean (19 December 1910 - 15 April 1986)
A controversial French dramatist noted for his autobiographical narratives about homosexuality and crime, Genet wrote Our Lady of the Flowers (1943), The Balcony (1956), The Blacks (1958), and The Screens (1961), all examples of the theater of the absurd.
Genet was the illegitimate son of a Parisian prostitute. He was orphaned seven months later, and at the age of ten was accused of stealing something. Erroneously charged, however, he resolved to be a thief: "Thus, I decisively repudiated a world that had repudiated me."
Genet, whose education was at a French reform school, Mettray, had a record of depression, vagrancy, smuggling, burglary, theft (imprisoned in Fresnes in 1942 and he was convicted for the 10th time in 1948), desertion, receiving a dishonorable discharge, attempting suicide in 1967, and indulging in "indecent acts."
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Edmund White on Genet
Edmund White, writing "Once a sodomite, twice a philosopher in The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, details Genet's
- • first love affair, when 18, was with a 16-year-old Damascus hair dresser: "The women were veiled and scarcely visible. But the boys, the young men and the old menall smiled and were amused. They said to me, 'Aha! Go with him.'"
- • quick sexual encounters, but "the sex act for him wasalways linked to affection. As he put it in a conversationin old age, "I never lived out my sexuality in a pure state. It was alwaysmixed with tenderness, perhaps it was just a brisk, cursory affection, but until the very end of my sexual life there was always - well, I never made love in a void, I mean, without a bit of human feeling. For me itwas a matter of individuals, of guys, of individuals, but not of roles. I'd be attracted to a boy my own age - don't push me too hard to defineit. I certainly can't define love, that's for sure. But I could only makelove with boys I loved. Otherwise I would make love with certain guys just for the money."
- • life changed when he was writing fiction, for "he seemed todistinguish between his romantic crushes on men, almost always tough straightmen whom he was able to seduce only as "trade," and johns who paid him and whom he despised and sometimes beat up and robbed. Even after he'dbecome celebrated as an author and was living with a hoodlum nicknamed "Java," he would encourage Java to roll queers. His sense of solidarity with other thieves was certainly stronger than his links with other homosexuals.
- • first encounter with a pur sang homosexual, an Italian gigolo, was a disaster. The hustler broke his heart when heleft Genet for a rich Englishman; as a result Genet wrote an extremely gloomy text about homosexuality that he could never finish and that was eventually published in 1954 under the title "Fragments..." Genet was also depressed at this time for two reasons: he though he was dying of tuberculosisof the kidneys and he was no longer capable of writing fiction.
- • views in the 1970s changed, because he "took up two great causes, the Black Panthers and the Palestinians, and he was quite open abut his erotic interest in both groups (though there's no evidence he ever had sex with anyone of either group). He never disguised his homosexuality (or his atheism) from the Palestinians, who were shockedby both eccentricities, but who admired Genet for his courage in owningup to his predilections. Genet never marched in a gay pride parade in France, mainly because by the time such marches were staged in Paris in the early 70's he wasno longer interested in domestic political issues, and was concentrating exclusively on the fate of the Palestinians (at this delicate moment in their history he was virtually their only celebrated friend the West).
Amy Farmer on Genet
Amy Farmer, editor of Voices/Writing, has commented that
- In the case of the Panthers [in The Blacks], Genet admitted his erotic attraction to black men; likewise, he was aware of the libidinal charge that hedged his fascination with the young soldiers of the PLO. However, erotic attraction leads to the clearer articulation of what Genet’s work had always promised to do: establish a new ethic. Rather than ostracize and eroticize these new attractions, Genet attempts to use them as an incitement to dialogue and self-scrutiny. despite its focus on the male bonds of the military, Prisoner of Love also led to Genet’s most sustained medication on women.
On Atheism
It would have been ironically absurd of Genet to have chosen belief over non-belief. As Edmund White and others have documented, he was an atheist who, occupied with alleyway sexual escapades and prison-shower gang bangs, failed specifically to go on record as being an outright atheist. Tim Keane, reviewing Prisoner of Love, explaining this wrote,
- Reliant on Francophone guides, Genet manages to forge meaningful connections with almost inexplicable ease, and even religious debates provide an inspiring cultural dissonance. Barely clinging to his grip on his professed atheism, Genet frequently resorts to patterns of pagan imagery and grotesque wartime anecdotes that resonate like fables.
Death
Genet died of throat cancer and is buried in the Spanish Cemetery, Larache, Morocco.
Books
- Miracle de la rose (1945–46, novel)
- Pompes funèbres (1947, novel)
- Querelle de Brest (1947, novel)
- Journal du voleur (1949)
Plays
- Les Bonnes (1947)
- Haute Surveillance (1949)
- Le Balcon (1956)
- Les Nègres (1958)
- Les Paravents (1961)
(See erotically sensuous stills from Genet's silent film in black and white, Un Chant d'Amour (1950); or see the entire film.)
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