Genet: A Biography

Jean Genet was a precocious and complex human being at an early age, and knew it. He came into the world as a "ward of the state" and never ever learned to trust either his adopted overseers or the French society into which he had been remanded. The epiphany in this, Edmund White's outstanding biography, that defined both Genet's artistic ability and his normal life came while sitting on the outhouse toilet at the age of eight, peeking out at the world between the slits. This smelly self-imposed cage, this moment of transcendental peace in the midst of an outer world of foulness became a metaphor for both Genet's artistic as well as his normal life. His life time of petty thefts, homosexuality, and repeated imprisonment, either self-imposed or not, became the incubator for his staccato like bursts of creativity. The problem with Jean Genet is that he really never was able to (nor did he ever want to) negotiate the world just above his head, between the slits of the outhouse as it were. Oh, he understood normal French society all right? In fact, that was his problem; even from a birds-eye view from below, he "over-understood" it and thus wanted no part of the role it had assigned to him. The horizon for a "welfare brat" was limited and bracketed by pity and despair. Genet wanted no parts of that life; and thus he chose his own outlandish, rebellious counter-route. His avoidance of the corrupt reality of normal French society, the so-called "real world of haute culture" in exchange for his own alternative reality: the naughty (almost debased) side of the societal street came natural and it seems to me, was a profoundly existential choice. It was a choice between existing as another "ascribed and imposed zombie," an "other" among the "normal living dead," or becoming "alive" under ones own powers as an independent free and radical human being. Thus, Genet was always "fleeing from" everything, never "fleeing to" anything. He was fleeing away from a stifling world of proscribed nonsense to a world of random travels to sample exotic lands and cultures: often finding himself plopped down in the dead center of great excitement on the naughty sides of the street (the outhouse image again?). It was a charmed if an uncharted and an untidy if not an unclean life, one lived with gusto, and with maximum irresponsibility. It was a life with long periods of solitude and imprisonment interspersed with frenetic periods of creativity. It was a life in which he, never a committed ideologue, bumped into people and causes that resonated with his own. Somehow, he came to adopt them and was adopted by them. But life to Genet was always a random walk towards an unachievable freedom. That is why Jean Genet lived his life richly like his pants were on fire. That is why since the age of fifteen he was in and out of reform schools and prisons, deserter, general societal incorrigible, and never once throughout his life had a fixed address even when his writings made h

Edmund White is perhaps best known as a novelist but this biography of Jean Genet may well be his magnum opus. (And I find it astonishing that it seems to be out of print as of May 2007, since there is no other decent English biography of Genet available.) It's a monster of a book, but it's one of the more readable literary biographies that I've come across--not least because "literary" in Genet's case also means social and political and scandalous. Readers who have never read a word of Genet may question the need for perusing this book, but it was my introduction to the work and, as I work my way through Genet's prose, I appreciate difficult or seemingly unfathomable passages all the more because of White's memorable explication (although I can't share White's enthusiasm for the plays). Genet's "rebellious" worldview--which often comes across as much a stage-managed affectation as a genuine philosophy--may be unattractive to those of a more traditional ethic (and I include myself among that group), but it's never boring. Much of Genet's writing depicts, glorifies, and justifies his careers as a thief, as an outsider, as an anarchist; he was also a notorious freeloader who forsook the attractions of materialism yet siphoned the wealth of others--and who sapped the remarkably patient generosity of his publishers). Genet idealizes his years at Mettray (a colony for adolescent delinquents), his life as a thief (which ended in 1944, after he had completed two books and earned the approbation and support of Cocteau), and "the erotic charm of prison" (his many convictions for petty theft earned him sentences totaled nearly four years). And it's a good thing his writing is so remarkable: as White never tires of pointing out, Genet was a famously bad thief who spent so much time in prison because he was most adept at getting caught. White covers far more than Genet's own life and work and lovers, however; this biography is also a decent introduction to the Parisian literary set that included such luminaries as Cocteau, Beauvoir, Duras, Giacometti, and Sartre. Since I was more interested in the literature, I had feared that the appeal of the biography would flag once I reached Genet's later years, after he had stopped writing and spent his time supporting various political causes (Algerian independence, pro-Palestinian movement, Black Panthers). But these chapters, too, were riveting and essential for an understanding both of his life's ethic and of his posthumously published "Prisoner of Love." Overall, White makes a convincing case for Genet's importance, arguing "Genet and Celine are the most discussed twentieth-century French writers after Proust." I'm not sure I would go that far (Camus? Sartre? Beauvoir? Ionesco? Beckett? Gide?), although I suppose it depends on who's doing the "discussing." Nevertheless, White has certainly presented a solid case that Genet belongs in the top tier.

Following the rags to riches life of Jean Genet is an interesting reliving of French literature and history. Edmund White is certainly capable of empathy and psychological understanding for Genet, unlike in his biographies if William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. Though White makes the mistake of trying to incorporate some Michel Foucault, the homoseuxal philosopher, into his own penal insights into Jean Genet, the works and the man. Other than that fact, this handsome book is one long guitar solo at the altar of Genet.Most of Genet's life is well-known, and partly used as the subjects for his novels. Genet was an orphan, had foster parents, and went to reform school. He had a bunch of early gay relationships, and he stole a lot of books. In prison Genet wrote Our Lady of The Flowers, and later shows it to Jean Cocteau, who is pissed off because he didn't write a similiar work first. Genet wrote five novels and a few plays around and during World War II. They books are originally published anonymously. The books become an overnight sensation. As Genet becomes old and bald, and when the flamboyant Cocteau becomes bored with him, heterosexual Sartre and multisexual Simone de Beauvoir, both sort of yuppies of their time, become enamoured with the idea of hanging out and slumming it with Genet, a real thief. Sartre saw him as a good example of his existential philosophy, and wrote Saint Genet. This book of his life came out when Genet was in his mid-forties. Genet doesn't write very much during the last years of his life. He does become involved with the Black Panthers and Palestinians. Genet lived in Tangiers with his young Kiki. He wrote a final book that was banned before his death in 1986.Genet's life was one long homosexual rollercoster ride. Genet's long life is an achievement which White gives a literary form in this tribute and gentle biography. As far as literary biographies go, this one is up there with the biographies of Oscar Wilde, Sade, and Frank O'Hara.

Jean Genet's major works are considered masterpieces. His plays, The Screen and The Blacks are performed worldwide. During his lifetime, he received the Grand Prix des Arts et Lettres and he is remembered for championing the causes of the oppressed. Yet, surprisingly, for many years, no biography of Genet had been attempted. Writers could have been intimidated by Sartre's huge psychological study, St. Genet, published in 1952, or perhaps by the elusive nature of Genet, himself, and his complex morality.In 1987 Edmund White began what became a six-year study of Genet's life and works. The result of that work is this book, Genet, a shining and enduring biography that shares much in common with Starkie's excellent biography of Rimbaud and Ellman's Oscar Wilde.White read Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers for the first time in 1964. He responded to Genet's "deeper, more extravagant prose," and, in doing so, he experienced a self-liberation as the gay world was presented without apology or explanation and gay men were afforded the experience of seeing their world, not as tacky but as glamorous and poetic. In addition, Genet's affectionate rendering of drag queens helped to elevate their view in the eyes of all.White, who had tested HIV-positive in 1985, was grateful for the chance to work on the biography as it also afforded him the opportunity to reflect on his own homosexuality, art and literature in a world not yet affected by the AIDS virus, for Genet had inhabited a world and culture prior to the outbreak of AIDS.In this sensitive biography, White takes us on a journey through the French welfare and prison systems; high society led by Cocteau; café society led by Sartre; and revolutionary movements as well.In Genet: A Biography, White shows us that Genet's work, like Genet, himself, is a terrain of contradictions, and he spells out both the kindnesses and the cruelty with sincere and translucent clarity.Genet began life in 1911 as a ward of the state. Raised as an outcast, by a young age he was attempting to come to terms with his sensitive and convulsive nature. At the age of thirteen he began lying and stealing; by fourteen, he was branded a thief, something he accepted with arrogance rather than shame. At fifteen, he was arrested and led, in handcuffs, into the Penitentiary Colony of Mettray.At Mettray, he worked in the fields and performed naval drills on landlocked ships. By night, however, the prisoners lived by their own code. The handsome, sadistic heterosexual was king, and someone, like Genet, passive and adoring, not only served, but blossomed as a princess and a scribe.As brutal as life was for Genet in Mettray, he cherished his time there, for he experienced many awakenings within its walls. The time in Mettray also afforded Genet a chance to look inward. What he saw caused him tremendous anguish, for he had to face the realization that he did, indeed, possess all the evil that others had attributed to him. His suffering

Jean Genet was one of the most intriguing characters of this century and White's biography gives an excellent detailed description and analysis of his life.