I do not want to conceal in this journal the other reasons which made me a thief, the simplest being the need to eat With fanatical care, jealous care, I prepared for my adventure as one arranges a couch or a room for love; I was hot for crime.
- Jean Genet, The Thiefs Journal
Genet reminds me that everything, everyone, every aspect of every piece of shit asshole can be, if seen from the singularly unnerving and generally overlooked angle. Emblamatic of everything that is right with the world. I remember reading one of his books. I think it was the flowers one, gay, just so utterly gay and amazing. I liked it. Genet is the god of late summer. August is the month of the obnoxious asshole or the month of the impossible predicament, anyways the month of the strangle-hold lets say. This being true it seems clear that the only sensible thing to do in the month of August is to partake in, or bear witness to, copious amounts of hott gay sex. If I was a prisoner, put their by rich folks, with no regrets and with nothing but a bunch of brown paper bags to write on, would I write or would I kill myself. Tough choice. Perhaps I would do both. And fuck all. And escape by being so madly convinced of my own freedom, to not be imprisoned, even though I was clearly. The boundaries established. The professional lockers of the passageways, shouting for us to to obey their inane rules. The routines. And me with just a pencil. And a cock. And a mouth. And an ass. Just then, sweet jesus in the shape of my destroyer comes down from his holy place on Mt. Olympus and shows me whose in charge. Anyways, heres the introduction by Sartre which is pretty interesting, considering its Sartre.
Our lady of the flowers, which is often considered to be Genets masterpiece, was written entirely in the solitdue of a prison cell. The exceptional value of the work lies in its ambiguity. It appears at first to have only one subject, Fatality: the characters are puppets of destiny. But we quickly discover that this pitiless Providence is really the counterpart of a soveriegn-indeed divinefreedom, that of the author. Our lady of the flowers is the most pessimistic of books. With fiendish application it leads human creatures to downfall and death. And yet, in its strange language it presents this downfall as a triumph. The rogues and wretches of whom it speaks all seem to be heroes, to be of the elect. But what is far more astonishing, the book itself is an act of the rashest optimism."
"French prison authorities, convinced that work is freedom, give the inmates paper from which they are required to make bags. It was on this brown paper that Genet wrote, in pencil, our lady of the flowers. One day, while the prisoners were marching in the yard, a turnkey entered the cell, noticed the manuscript, took it away, and burned it. Genet began again. Why? For whom? There was small chance of his keeping the work until his release, and even less of getting it printed. If, against all likelihood, he succeeded, the book was bound to be banned; it would be confiscated and scrapped. Yet he wrote on, he persisted in writing. Nothing in the world mattered to him except those sheets of brown paper which a match could reduce to ashes.
- Jean Genet, The Thiefs Journal
Genet reminds me that everything, everyone, every aspect of every piece of shit asshole can be, if seen from the singularly unnerving and generally overlooked angle. Emblamatic of everything that is right with the world. I remember reading one of his books. I think it was the flowers one, gay, just so utterly gay and amazing. I liked it. Genet is the god of late summer. August is the month of the obnoxious asshole or the month of the impossible predicament, anyways the month of the strangle-hold lets say. This being true it seems clear that the only sensible thing to do in the month of August is to partake in, or bear witness to, copious amounts of hott gay sex. If I was a prisoner, put their by rich folks, with no regrets and with nothing but a bunch of brown paper bags to write on, would I write or would I kill myself. Tough choice. Perhaps I would do both. And fuck all. And escape by being so madly convinced of my own freedom, to not be imprisoned, even though I was clearly. The boundaries established. The professional lockers of the passageways, shouting for us to to obey their inane rules. The routines. And me with just a pencil. And a cock. And a mouth. And an ass. Just then, sweet jesus in the shape of my destroyer comes down from his holy place on Mt. Olympus and shows me whose in charge. Anyways, heres the introduction by Sartre which is pretty interesting, considering its Sartre.
Our lady of the flowers, which is often considered to be Genets masterpiece, was written entirely in the solitdue of a prison cell. The exceptional value of the work lies in its ambiguity. It appears at first to have only one subject, Fatality: the characters are puppets of destiny. But we quickly discover that this pitiless Providence is really the counterpart of a soveriegn-indeed divinefreedom, that of the author. Our lady of the flowers is the most pessimistic of books. With fiendish application it leads human creatures to downfall and death. And yet, in its strange language it presents this downfall as a triumph. The rogues and wretches of whom it speaks all seem to be heroes, to be of the elect. But what is far more astonishing, the book itself is an act of the rashest optimism."
"French prison authorities, convinced that work is freedom, give the inmates paper from which they are required to make bags. It was on this brown paper that Genet wrote, in pencil, our lady of the flowers. One day, while the prisoners were marching in the yard, a turnkey entered the cell, noticed the manuscript, took it away, and burned it. Genet began again. Why? For whom? There was small chance of his keeping the work until his release, and even less of getting it printed. If, against all likelihood, he succeeded, the book was bound to be banned; it would be confiscated and scrapped. Yet he wrote on, he persisted in writing. Nothing in the world mattered to him except those sheets of brown paper which a match could reduce to ashes.