The Balcony [Paperback]

Jean Genet (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 21, 1994

“The Balcony is probably the most stunning subversive work of literature to be created since the writings of the famous Marquis.... A major dramatic achievement.” –– Robert Brustein, The New Republic

Editorial Reviews

Review

Play by Jean Genet, produced and published in 1956 as Le Balcon. Influenced by the Theater of Cruelty, The Balcony contains nine scenes, eight of which are set inside the Grand Balcony bordello. The brothel is a repository of illusion in a contemporary European city aflame with revolution. After the city's royal palace and rulers are destroyed, the bordello's costumed patrons impersonate the leaders of the city. As the masqueraders warm to their roles, they convince even the revolutionaries that the illusion created in the bordello is preferable to reality. -- The Merriam-Webster Encylopedia of Literature

About the Author

Jean Genet was born in Paris in 1910. An illegitimate child who never knew his parents, he was abandoned to the Public Assistance Authorities. He was ten when he was sent to a reformatory for stealing; thereafter he spent time in the prisons of nearly every country he visited in thirty years of prowling through the European underworld. With ten convictions for theft in France to his credit he was, the eleventh time, condemned to life imprisonment. Eventually he was granted a pardon by President Auriol as a result of appeals from France's leading artists and writers led by Jean Cocteau.$$$His first novel, Our Lady of the Flowers, was written while he was in prison, followed by Miracle of the Rose, the autobiographical The Thief's Journal, Querelle of Brest and Funeral Rites. He wrote six plays: The Balcony, The Blacks, The Screens, The Maids, Deathwatch and Splendid's (the manuscript of which was rediscovered only in 1993). Jean Genet died in 1986. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; Revised edition (January 21, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802150349
• ISBN-13: 978-0802150349
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #316,543 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thin line between the straight world and a brothel, March 14, 2002

By 

frumiousb "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Balcony (Paperback)

The madame of the famous Grand Balcony brothel provides a safe place where her clients can come to act out their fantasies and take on the identities of important government and religious figures in the real world. Outside the brothel, a revolution is raging, assisted by a former prostitute of the Grand Balcony who uses her voice to spur the rebels on to a greater victory. When the government finally topples, the whores and clients work together to take their impersonations out of the bedroom and restore order by assuming the identities of the great figures who they used to play in bed.

Sartre referred to Genet as the prototype of the existential man, whose past as a convicted felon and his subsequent literary career illustrated a life where personal choice drove the moral distinctions. I have read an been absorbed by a number of Genet's works, my favorites being _Our Lady of the Flowers_ and _The Maids_. While I don't believe that _The Balcony_ is up to the level of either of those works, it's an important piece of the history of the theater of the absurd.

Worth reading. Perhaps now more than ever in a world where actors regularly transition to politics.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Reality And The Mirror, March 2, 2010

By 

Alfred Johnson (boston, ma) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Balcony (Paperback)

Recently, in reviewing the text for the plays "The Maids" and "The Blacks' by French writer and playwright, Jean Genet, I wrote the following first two paragraphs that apply to an appreciation of the play under review, "The Balcony", as well:

"There was a time when I would read anything the playwright Jean Genet wrote, especially his plays. The reason? Well, for one thing, the political thing that has been the core of my existence since I was a kid, his relationship to the Black Panthers when they were being systematically lionized by the international white left as the "real" revolutionaries and systematically liquidated by the American state police apparatus that was hell-bend on putting every young black man with a black beret behind bars, or better, as with Fred Hampton, Mark Clark and long list of others, dead. Genet, as his somewhat autobiographical "Our Lady Of The Flowers" details came from deep within a white, French version of that same lumpen "street" milieu from which the Panthers were recruiting. Thus, kindred spirits.

That kindred "street" smart relationship, of course, was like catnip for a kid like me who came from that same societal intersection in America, the place where the white lumpen thug elements meet the working poor. I knew the American prototype of Jean Genet, up close and personal, except, perhaps, for his own well-publicized homosexuality and that of others among the dock-side toughs that he hung around with. So I was ready for a literary man who was no stranger to life's seamy side. His play ,"The Maids", was the first one I grabbed (and I believe the first of his plays that I saw performed)."

As I have mentioned elsewhere once I "discover" a writer I tend to read through everything else that he or she has written to see if there is anymore gold in store. That is the case here with "The Balcony" . If "The Maids' centers on the sexual fantasy and the social distortions that the class struggle accentuates, and "The Blacks" delves deeply into the "masks" worn to survive in the class and racial struggle, then "The Balcony" underscores the centrality of the real and illusionary in Genet's work. Here he tackles theme of revolution and counter-revolution as seen and felt through the characters who inhabit a brothel, clients and customers alike. That struggle, real enough in our world, is what drives the plot here. This is not, however, some quirky Marxist interpretation of revolutionary struggle, win or lose. It is not Leon Trotsky's theory of revolutionary tensions between the old and new societies and degeneration of the latter but it is a nice theatrical, stripped down look at those interpretations. If the play is acted and directed correctly it is well worth seeing. In the meantime read the text.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Ingtruiging, confusing, full of risky ideas, June 7, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Balcony (Paperback)

The ideas that life is an illusion and that we are all actors perpetuating our own illusions are fascinating. This book contains some intruiging Existential ideas. I did get confused at times over who was playing which role.