"I'm homosexual... how & why are idle questions. It's a little like wanting to know why my eyes are green."
If you need an introduction to the life of Jean Genet try Edmund White's accomplished & absorbing Jean Genet: A Biography, which gives readers access to Genet's brilliant & brutal mind. Abandoned, arrested, & repeatedly jailed, Genet led a life that could be described as a tour of the underworld of the 20th century. Check out the Fassbinder 1982 film of his novel- Querelle starring Brad Davis. This movie was my introduction to this major artist figure.
Genet's work is recognized by its nearly obsessive & often savage treatment of certain recurring themes: desire, death, & domination. These ideas, central to Genet's artistic voice, came directly from the artist's travels, imprisonments, sexual & emotional relationships, & political engagements & protests. Genet's works have been hugely influential for a vast array of writers, filmmakers, choreographers, & directors, Genet's life is not only at the source for his own work but also that of many important artists of the 20th century.
Jean Genet was born in Paris 101 years ago. Abandoned by his mother at 7 months, he was raised in state institutions & charged with his first crime when he was 10 years old. After spending many of his teenage years in a reformatory, Genet joined the French Foreign Legion, but he later deserted, turning to a life of theft & prostituition that resulted in repeated jail terms &, eventually, a sentence of life imprisonment. In prison Genet began to write poems & prose that combined pornography & an open celebration of the life of a scoundrel, with an extraordinary baroque, high literary style. On the strength of this work, Genet found himself acclaimed by such literary luminaries as Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, & Simone de Beauvoir, whose advocacy secured him a presidential pardon in 1948.
Between 1944 & 1948 Genet wrote 4 novels: Our Lady of the Flowers, Miracle of the Rose, Funeral Rites, & Querelle, plus the scandalizing memoir A Thief's Journal. Throughout the 1950s, he devoted himself to theater, writing the boldly experimental & increasingly political plays: The Balcony, The Blacks, & The Screens. After a silence of some 20 years, Genet began his last book, Prisoner of Love, in 1983. It was completed just before he died in 1986, in Paris. Genet is buried in the Spanish cemetery in Larache, Morocco.
If you need an introduction to the life of Jean Genet try Edmund White's accomplished & absorbing Jean Genet: A Biography, which gives readers access to Genet's brilliant & brutal mind. Abandoned, arrested, & repeatedly jailed, Genet led a life that could be described as a tour of the underworld of the 20th century. Check out the Fassbinder 1982 film of his novel- Querelle starring Brad Davis. This movie was my introduction to this major artist figure.
Genet's work is recognized by its nearly obsessive & often savage treatment of certain recurring themes: desire, death, & domination. These ideas, central to Genet's artistic voice, came directly from the artist's travels, imprisonments, sexual & emotional relationships, & political engagements & protests. Genet's works have been hugely influential for a vast array of writers, filmmakers, choreographers, & directors, Genet's life is not only at the source for his own work but also that of many important artists of the 20th century.
Jean Genet was born in Paris 101 years ago. Abandoned by his mother at 7 months, he was raised in state institutions & charged with his first crime when he was 10 years old. After spending many of his teenage years in a reformatory, Genet joined the French Foreign Legion, but he later deserted, turning to a life of theft & prostituition that resulted in repeated jail terms &, eventually, a sentence of life imprisonment. In prison Genet began to write poems & prose that combined pornography & an open celebration of the life of a scoundrel, with an extraordinary baroque, high literary style. On the strength of this work, Genet found himself acclaimed by such literary luminaries as Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, & Simone de Beauvoir, whose advocacy secured him a presidential pardon in 1948.
Between 1944 & 1948 Genet wrote 4 novels: Our Lady of the Flowers, Miracle of the Rose, Funeral Rites, & Querelle, plus the scandalizing memoir A Thief's Journal. Throughout the 1950s, he devoted himself to theater, writing the boldly experimental & increasingly political plays: The Balcony, The Blacks, & The Screens. After a silence of some 20 years, Genet began his last book, Prisoner of Love, in 1983. It was completed just before he died in 1986, in Paris. Genet is buried in the Spanish cemetery in Larache, Morocco.
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