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Rating: 
Summary: Sensitive Look at a Complex Man
Review: Edmund White uses his incredible research ability and his fantastic writing ability to bring Genet up close in a detailed biography that was a thrill to read. I especially loved the explanation of the situations in the Mettray boy's reformatory and the French prisons and how they were so central to Genet's work, espcecially THE MIRACLE OF THE ROSE. Another one of those biographies that makes you wish you'd known the autor, Genet in this case, or White would do. Top quality. A must for the gay literature student.
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Summary: Gay rollercoster ride
Review: 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.
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Summary: Excellence in-depth study of Jean Genet
Review: 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.
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Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: Jean Genet wrote masterpieces,this autobiography is a masterpiece in itself !
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Summary: A Masterpece
Review: Jean Genet wrote masterpieces...this autobiography is a masterpiece too !!!
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Summary: The Ultimate Companion to Genet's Writing
Review: This is the most detailed study of Genet ever written - and it deffinately sheds some light on his character both in writing and in life. I refer to it constantly when I am reading his books. I wish there were biographies like this of some of my other favorite authors - without a doubt I am excited to read White's book about Proust.
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