The Thief's Journal

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant, accessible intro to Genet
Review: Genet's "the Thief's Journal" is to me his greatest novel-if that's whatyou want to categorize it as. The only reason I don't say its his greatest book is because of a wonderful book called "Prisoner of Love", and who knows what may turn up altho I doubt much of anything as he was so private and transient. Anyway, it clearly maps out the genesis of his artistic, sexual, and criminal life. For any gay male reader, it is essential, higher in priority than almost any other gay fiction. Of course, it is essential not just to gays but any serious reader. On a final note it is also quite accessible. so if you tried reading "Our Lady..." or others I think you will be pleasantly surprised and absorbed. If you like French novels of the forties you might also check out the writer Celine. He is quite caustic and brilliant and many of his novels are in English. For cultural referents, Todd Haynes film "Poison" wa in part inspired by Genet and John Waters named Glenn Milstead "DIVINE" from one of Genet's novels. So there you are

Rating:
Summary: Revealing
Review: Genet's final novel is perhaps his most personal written document. All his desires are finely crafted here and his book is , as usual, crammed with idols and mystification. What prevents me from calling this his greatest novel is the influence of Sartre. By this point, as Genet's biographrer Edmund White has pointed out, Genet was conciously incorporating the use of Sartre's theories in his work (as Sartre at that time was Genet's friend - and sort of replacement for Jean Cocteau). The novel lacks the inovation of 'Our Lady' - but at the same time it has many more direct personal references to Genet himself.

What makes Genet, for me, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century is the way he embraces fate. He is always so clear in his novels about what is going to happen and the significance of what is going to happen. Thus, his writing always sounds so inevitable and profound - and his characters are like shrines of worship - he creates mythology. This is what makes Genet so refreshing to me - and he is, in my opinion, an equal to authors like Proust, Joyce, and Kafka - a gem of self-concious literature.

The Thiefs Journal is a good place to start with Genet. It is very clear and detailed and he pours the same great poetic prose into it - that he gave books like 'Our Lady' and 'Querelle'.

Rating:
Summary: More existential(?) than homosexual
Review: I don't think I would categorize The Thief's Journal as Gay fiction. I would allign it more with existentialism/metaphysics in that Genet's sensibilities and motives lie in other areas than solely his own homosexuality. Genet seeks to travel deeper and deeper within himself in order to reject "your world" as well as its inherent value and morals systems. I think his own homosexuality is among one of the many plateaus or steps that he uses in his "journey". As he says, his life was open to his own interpretation; the signs were interpreted in his own way for his own purposes. Sometimes Genet's prose is heavy in that his lines are long and he uses run-ons separated by commas. He takes great care in his descriptions (necessarily so) such as the gob of white saliva in the corner of someone's mouth. The work is another bold gesture by a man who brings the reader as close to the author as is seemingly possible. Another reviewer here says to check out Celine. Make sure to read the editions translated by Ralph Mannheim, he's superb.

Rating:
Summary: beautiful work
Review: I've read the Japanese translation of this book several times some years ago. It is a well known fact that western languages are so very difficult to transltate into Japanese language, but this book did not seem to suffer as much as others.

It is intellectually very satisfying, the language is exceptionally beautiful, and more than anything else, it is very gentle.

It does not have many dialogs, and not a story, since it's a journal, but it's a very readable book and easy to follow even for someone like me who can only read books in a story-telling format.

If you feel like something gentle, this book is a good companion.

Rating:
Summary: beautiful work
Review: I've read the Japanese translation of this book several times some years ago. It is a well known fact that western languages are so very difficult to transltate into Japanese language, but this book did not seem to suffer as much as others.

It is intellectually very satisfying, the language is exceptionally beautiful, and more than anything else, it is very gentle.

It does not have many dialogs, and not a story, since it's a journal, but it's a very readable book and easy to follow even for someone like me who can only read books in a story-telling format.

If you feel like something gentle, this book is a good companion.

Rating:
Summary: In The Age Of The Poet-Assassins
Review: In Jean Genet's complex novel The Thief's Journal, the author has modeled his protagonist, Jean, on himself, and the loose, conversational plot after his own experiences as a young thief, drifter, and poet in thirties and forties Europe. 'Jean' is Genet's fictional recreation of himself; but readers should keep in mind that Jean's relationship to Genet is to some degree imaginative. The book provides an excellent illustration of how even when speaking or writing with as complete an honesty as believed possible, man is still caught in a process of creation, structuring, and discrimination-a process of fictionalization. Therefore, honesty, sincerity, and truthfulness always retain elements of artifice, and, as pure states, remain ideals only.

Abandoned by his family as a boy, sentenced to reform school at sixteen, as a young man, Jean is still "alone, rigorously so," he lives "with desolation in satanic solitude." Realizing early that he is, in status and nature, completely at odds with the social order, Jean learns through trial and error how to care and not to care, how to make all possible outcomes to his actions reasonably acceptable. "Rejecting the world that rejected me," Jean exacerbates his position: identifying with his rejectee status, he feels it appropriate that he should "aggravate this condition with a preference for boys." Thus his homosexuality is at least partially an act of self-creation, part of his perverse desire to transgress the rules of order as broadly as possible. Jean decides he will henceforth admit to guilt whenever accused, regardless of the truth or the nature of the crime, and thus rob his accusers of the ability to jeopardize his fate.

"Betrayal, theft, and homosexuality are the basic subject of this book," he says. For Jean, theft becomes a means of survival while simultaneously representing a daily blow against society. If caught and arrested, he readily throws himself into the homosexual life of the prison, making himself available to those in authority as well as to fellow inmates. Jean allows himself a somewhat desperate game of searching for a dominant male partner who is completely, impossibly powerful. Submitting physically and emotionally to men he believes meet this standard, Jean repeatedly proves himself the more powerful by betraying the men when he inevitably senses a definitive crack in his exaggerated conception of them. Once he has glimpsed some "inelegant," unforgivable portion of their imperfect humanity, his slavish masochism fades and sociopathic indifference replaces it: the abandonee becomes the abandoner and assassin. For Jean, a well-planned, keenly-felt personal betrayal is the ultimate show of toughness and "a handsome gesture, compounded with nervous force and grace."

As in Genet's other novels, homosexual love and physical interaction is a given between all of the male characters--pimps, prostitutes, gamblers, gangsters, and thugs--each of whom has a theoretical set of rules and limits concerning the degree of their own participation. But regardless of their speeches and proud macho denunciations, they loosen their belts for one another at a moment's notice if they feel so inclined. Genet cleverly has Jean reacting and reporting in the same indeterminate manner: Jean identifies Michaelis as wholly homosexual but then denies it; one-armed stud Stilitano, who wears a bunch of artificial grapes buttoned inside his fly to lure strangers and enhance his mystique, routinely denies Jean access to his body at night but coyly raises the subject repeatedly during daylight hours. Regardless, Stilitano and Jean live and share a bed together, affectionately plucking one another clean of head and body lice. Ugly Salvador strikes Jean on the street for kissing him in public while simultaneously whispering, "tonight, if you like," in his ear. When hairy Armand decides he respects Jean too much to be anything other than friends, Jean sleeps between his open legs, Armand's colossal sex organs resting nightly on his forehead.

Only gorilla-like, Paul Muni-faced Java is wholly unconcerned with the nature of his acts or words. He provocatively exposes himself to other men in saloons, daring them to hold and guess the weight of his genitals, and repeatedly forces himself on willing Jean, who, gloriously obliterated by Java's assault, finds it a blissful but inevitably temporary salvation. Java "cringes in fright" during a fight, and Jean sees even his cringing as beautiful. But then "yellow diarrhea flows down his monumental thighs," and--well, so much for Java. Clinging to his masochistic illusion, Jean continues drifting, his submissive position a seeming necessity. When discovered sleeping in a beachfront shack by a guard, Jean services him automatically and the guard accepts it automatically as a given in turn. These are the strange, all-encompassing rules of Genet's world. But free or imprisoned, single or partnered, masochist or sly sadist, Jean is ultimately self-fulfilling and independent.

Jean, who says "metamorphosis lies in wait for us," is an almost unknown quintessence, a mass of animal meat and instincts coupled with emerging homo sapien characteristics. Constantly in a liminal state of becoming, he atavistically prefers stepping sideways or backward instead of forward; for long periods his existence seems mere ostensible movement through time and space. But Jean, who in fact secretly enjoys and protects his isolation, really seeks only to fulfill himself "in the rarest of destinies," a kind of quest for "sainthood," one born of reducing himself to pure essence and thus becoming his own temple, savior, and deity. On this final road, which Jean sees reachable by both subjective and objective methods, including sacred betrayal, there is in truth no room for anyone but himself, as there will be none afterward when he has attained his goal of becoming a selfless but self-complete being, like Jung's psychological, alchemical, and hieratical hermaphrodite.

The Thief's Journal is a full-frontal, multi-layered book that should be read several times to be fully appreciated. One of the finest portrayals of the introverted character in literature, The Thief's Journal has a great many things to express about man's nature and psychology, most of which should be revelatory if somewhat jarring to the general reader.

Rating:
Summary: Jean Genet is a magician
Review: Jean Genet suffers a lot, I think, due to popular culture...the fact that his works necessarily involve homosexual activities leads mainstream culture (including even university professors!) to marginalize him beyond all rational limits, and leads conversely, the gay community to celebrate him possibly a little too much...but that's just my opinion. The fact is that he's a master of language, and when he writes about almost anything, it's transformed into an incredible landscape of experience, thought, desire, motives. In most of his purely fictional works he acts as an omniscient narrator to describe exactly why the characters do as they do...and in a way that not only makes perfect sense, but also in a way that the reader probably never thought of. This work being mostly autobiographical differs, actually, not much. If all you asked of this book was to take you into the world of small-time crime and skid row activities of barely post world war II europe, you'll be more than happily surprised. If you demand more, direct transportation even, to the world he was living in, you won't be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: Among my very favourite books
Review: This book is mesmerising. The distinction between the beautiful and the obscene is folded inside out like a velvet glove. Abjection has never seemed so appealing.