Genet: A Biography
A major biography of Jean Genet based on years of research; highly acclaimed in biographical literature.
Work Information
A major biography based on years of research.
Lambda Literary Award-winning biography of Jean Genet, built from years of research and attentive to his literary legacy.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Knopf
- Published
- 1993-11-02
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 16.51 x 5.08 x 24.77 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780394571713
- ISBN-10
- 0394571711
- Price
- 5160 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Biographies & Memoirs
In this revelatory biography of Jean Genet, we have the first full-scale life of one of the great -- and controversial -- figures of twentieth-century literature. Edmund White shows us the writer in all his permutations: poet, dandy, homosexual, thief; a 'thug of genius', as Simone de Beauvoir called him. Moving from Genet's illegitimate birth in 1910 to his foster childhood in a farming village in central France, Edmund White explores the early milieu that transformed an inherently theatrical child into a petty criminal and prodigiously original writer, whose most startling creation may have been his invention of himself. Accused of stealing and running away, Genet was sent to reform school at Mettray, where his imagination flourished under the spell of an all-male communal life and his first homosexual experiences. In the 1930s, he deserted from the army and travelled in Europe as a vagabond, prostitute and thief, always on the lam from the police and the military. In 1942, he emerged from one of several prison stays with the first of his remarkable novels, Our Lady of the Flowers. It was admired by Cocteau, who undertook to get it published and interceded with the French authorities to keep its author out of prison. White shows us how Cocteau thrust the 'marvelous, mysterious, intolerable' Genet into the heart of literary Paris, where he enjoyed a curious celebrity as great writer and petty thief, was painted by Giacometti (from whom he stole) and was canonized by Sartre in his monumental study, Saint Genet. By 1948, Genet had produced five highly original novels. In the mid-1950s, after several years of debilitating depression, he turned to the writing of plays, of which The Balcony, The Blacks and The Screens were immediately hailed as masterpieces. Despite his ambivalence about political movements, he supported the Paris student uprising in 1968 and turned up -- as a journalist -- at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. In 1970, he became a spokesman for the Black Panthers, but in his last decade he immersed himself -- politically and aesthetically -- in the Arab world, championing the struggle for a Palestinian homeland and writing his last, posthumously published book, Prisoner of Love. Edmund White explores the perverse extremes of Genet's life and separates the facts from the mythology that Genet himself fashioned. Drawing on interviews with Genet's friends, lovers, publishers and acquaintances, and using new material from correspondence, journals, police records, psychiatric reports and other original sources, White reveals a life animated by contradictory impulses: authenticity and dissembling, fidelity and flirtation, domination and submission, honor and betrayal. Throughout, he brilliantly interprets and appraises Genet's astonishing oeuvre, reading the fiction with the focussed attention of a novelist and opening up the dense invention of the plays. His masterful and intuitive biography fully illuminates a hitherto enigmatic literary genius.
Edmund White was born in Cincinnati in 1940. His previous books include Forgetting Elena, Nocturnes for the King of Naples, States of Desire: Travels in Gay America, A Boy's Own Story, Caracole and The Beautiful Room Is Empty. He lives in Paris.
Reviews
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Ticks all the boxes
Does what quality biography needs to do. Well-written and engrossing, it offers good insights into Genet's work without getting in the way of a great story. Best point for me is the social history of pre- and post-war France.
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Very very quick arrival.
I like very much this product.
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Perfeito
👍
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GENET depicts the intersection of literary genius, class politics & sex
Thanks to our Corona lock-down, I finally had time to tackle Ed White's GENET bio. What a fascinating life White captured - a disposable nobody who educates himself to become a celebrated literary genius - only to learn later in life that his success felt empty until he is reborn as a political champion for the oppressed & disenfranchised. White was a hero to many gay men like me in the 1970s for his writing about that era, so its no surprise that every time GENET goes deep into literary analysis--suddenly some male hustler is naked on all 4s in Genet's bed to perk the text back up. It's then you realize how you much you learn along the way and how White keeps you focused on a tortured life well-lived, using what it takes to keep you glued to the end. GENET may have gone from prostitution to hiring prostitutes, but White depicts a man for whom sex was always about making love. It's a richly rewarding read (especially for those who value art & activism and the terrain where the two can meet.)
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Best ever on this author
Deeply impressive, this book tells the story of Jean Genet from sources that Edmund White garnered from all over France. Known first for his poetry, then novels, then his plays, then his works in criticism, Genet was an anomaly in world literature. He endlessly revised his work, sometimes then withdrawing them after many years of them being read and performed. Mercurial, unhappy, he rarely really lived anywhere, but lived around the world in hotel rooms, having his mail delivered to his publisher. His life peaked early; his novels were well received as modernist works, and his plays were performed world-wide. After that, he repudiated much of what he'd done, and worked for the downtrodden of the world -- the Palestinians, the Black Panthers. It is an oftentimes touching story, although as a person Genet was not much the icon to be admired. White knows that and while admiring the works, the man is thoroughly examined and is lacking in the final analysis.