Word: genet
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...BALCONY (Caedmon). Jean Genet's decadence has enjoyed a worldwide vogue since the beginning of the decade; this Balcony view of the world shows why. Even minus the trappings of the bordello in which it takes place, the effect remains undiminished in vengeance and comic force. Read by a superlative cast including Pamela Brown, Patrick Magee, Cyril Cusack and a gifted English company...
MIRACLE OF THE ROSE by Jean Genet. Translated by Bernard Frechtman. 344 pages. Grove Press...
...literature that emerges from prison is as various as Mein Kampf and Pilgrim's Progress. But the authors usually share a common conviction. More often than not they are men who regard themselves as unjustly condemned. In that company, Jailbird Jean Genet is a rarity; he has no complaint against society at large, nor does he whine that he took a bum rap. His latest book, Miracle of the Rose, is neither by an outsider looking in nor an insider look-ing out. Imprisoned for theft, Genet belonged behind bars-not only legally but spiritually. He writes...
...principal figure in the homosexual love fantasies of the narrator. Much of the force of Miracle of the Rose depends on the authenticity of the prison argot. As a ten-time loser who has spent a good part of his first 35 years in reformatories and jails, Genet doubtless knows the con's language like a native, but when it comes to English equivalents, Translator Frechtman has no luck at all. Genet, who is a practicing pervert and retired male prostitute, presumably knows the camp language exchanged by consenting adults. And it is hard to believe, for example, that...
...celebrated and interminable essay on Genet, Jean-Paul Sartre philosophizes to the effect that by aligning himself with the forces of evil Genet affirms the existence of the good, which makes him a moralist of a kind. But the Sartrean paradox does not altogether explain the demonic intensity and energy of Genet's writing. The source may be found in another French aphorist, Baudelaire, who said that "Everyman who does not accept the conditions of life sells his soul." As a corollary, he who accepts the conditions of life-as Genet accepts the worst life can dish out-presumably...