Funeral Rites [Paperback]

Jean Genet (Author), Bernard Frechtman (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 18, 1994

Genet's sensual and brutal portrait of World War II unfolds between the poles of his grief for his lover Jean, killed in the Resistance during the liberation of Paris, and his perverse attraction to the collaborator Riton. Elegaic, macabre, chimerical, Funeral Rites is a dark meditation on the mirror images of love and hate, sex and death.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Funeral Rites is the most bizarre and the least authentic of Genet's novels. Ostensibly a memorial to the author's lover, Jean Decarnin, a young Resistance fighter murdered by the Germans or the Vichy-supported Milice during the liberation of Paris, the book is actually the "epic of masturbation" Sartre mistakenly saw in Our Lady of the Flowers. Amidst an apocalyptic coupling of soldiers and traitors, foaming metaphors and surrealist hymns, Genetian sex - huffing and puffing, burrowing and slurping - towers over all. It is an erotic fantasy, strangely acrid and sweet, a "documentary" of the closing months before the liberation, in which Genet, with his usual transvaluation of values, attempts to exorcise the memory of the brave Decarnin by recreating the nightmare world of the enemy camp. Thus the handsome Nazi, Lt. Seiler, formerly the lover of Decarnin's mother, meets and seduces Riton, a teenage Milicien (who may, after all, have killed Decarnin), while Paulo, Decarnin's younger brother (probably a collaborator), pulls off the coup de theatre when he's bedded and bamboozled by - of all people - the Fuehrer himself. These preposterous liaisons are full of melodramatic and pornographic effrontery of the most startling and personal sort. Still, it's a tribute to Genet's genius that even within a landscape so singularly extreme and ludicrous, the novel has moments of power, poetic subtlety, and beauty. Ironically, it is the portrait of Decarnin's mistress, the little maid Juliette, which is the most memorable - a characterization, in fact, worthy of Flaubert. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (January 18, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802130879
• ISBN-13: 978-0802130877
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #96,080 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Phallic Universe of Satyrs and Martyrs, October 17, 2002

By 

J. E. Barnes - See all my reviews

This review is from: Funeral Rites (Paperback)

Despite its title, Jean Genet's Funeral Rites is considerably less desperate and less grim a novel than his others; here, Genet's stand-in narrator (Jean) sounds more boastful and vainglorious than threatening or threatened. Taking place in Paris during the Nazi occupation and just after, this is Genet's most psychologically incestuous book, one in which almost every character is linked to the others by undiscussed or only infrequently acknowledged sexual affairs. Despite the violent emotions the characters feel for one another, when they actually speak, their words are banal, monosyllabic, and thus lacking in complex information; the only extensive dialogues are internal. Genet's philosophy is clearly stated: "Speech kills, poisons, mutilates, distorts, dirties."

As the book opens, Genet's love-object--a young resistance fighter also named Jean--has just been killed and buried. There are extended early passages about the dejection Genet feels; he states that "the book is completely devoted to the cult of a dead person with whom I am living on intimate terms." However, Genet questions whether the 'Jean' to whom the book is dedicated is the dead man or himself, and soon refers to him as "my poor Jean-in-the-box" and thinks of him as "changing into fertilizer." Eventually Jean becomes something of an afterthought, as Genet turns away from the dead towards his lust for the living.

The conversational, episodic plot concerns Genet's interactions with the remaining members of Jean's family, as well as with German Erik, former Hitler Youth member and current tank-driver for Hitler, and youthful French traitor Riton, a collaborator with the Reich. Genet presents an awesomely entwined branch of relationships: Genet and the dead Jean; Genet's casual friendship with Jean's brother Paulo, who is both Hitler's and Genet's lover in Genet's fantasies; Giselle, Jean's steadfastly bourgeois mother, is Erik's mistress and keeper regardless of his Nazism; Erik and Riton are physical and emotional lovers; Erik, who clearly gets around, is also the submissive lover of Hitler's massive, unnamed, ax-wielding executioner; unattractive Juliette, Giselle's despised housemaid, is Jean's former fiancé; and Genet and Erik also become sexual partners in time, and right under Giselle's roof.

Genet adds another layer of complexity by having character 'Genet' transform mid-scene into the characters he is describing. Genet briefly becomes Joan of Arc just before she is burned alive, and replaces Erik as the killer when Erik decides to murder an innocent country boy to establish his manhood. Genet also steps into other shoes during the erotic passages, metamorphosing into Hitler (who sends "his finest-looking men to death" because he can't bugger them all, Genet says) when the Fuhrer orders Paulo aside and rapes him, an act Paulo accepts flatteringly and actively responds to. The narrative also moves frequently backward and forward in time, and at least one murdered character (not Jean) shows up robustly alive after his death.

Unlike the later novels, few defensive statements are made about the sexual interaction between the men, who alternately accept male and female lovers without question, as if this were the natural state of things worldwide (though other men seem to be the sexual partner of choice). The tough men of Funeral Rites do not constantly challenge and tease one another about standing, dominance, and submission; instead, they seem to take sexuality in all its manifestations pleasantly in their stride. Erik openly makes love to Riton in front of his soldier comrades, none of which bat an eye; when two grave diggers conspire to rape a maid (Juliette?), they fondle and caress her but also reach for one another's hands under her skirt. ...

Funeral Rites is humorously obsessed with scatology and flatulence, using both as none-too-subtle weapons against the despised French middle class. In one hilariously protracted episode, Giselle, tired of waiting on chisel-faced Erik, retires to her room to "release her wind," only to find she's let fly with something more than she intended and that impatient lover Erik is entering her small, temporarily unventilated room. In another, a prison chaplain, hurrying to give last rites to 28 falsely-accused boys, finding himself in the outhouse without toilet paper, imprudently decides to use his hand, and is then suddenly confronted by God. Hardly a character in the book escapes breaking wind, wiping themselves, or anxiously wondering about the state of their anal hygiene. Genet tells of finding dried feces lovingly sequestered in the doilied, oaken drawers of the bourgeoisie, and, taking up a favorite motif, has `Genet' hoping that he still genitally harbors some of dead Jean's crab lice. After having failed to crawl into Erik's sheltering and flower-bearing anal cavity, Genet uses his tongue to pinpoint the lice on Erik's back end which are bloated with his virile blood.

In addition, there are scenes of wanton cruelty that may disgust some readers, such as that in which starving Riton kills a cat with a hammer, but most of the material seems sensational and mischievous rather than offensive. ... More restrained and less indulgent that The Thief's Journal, if also less deeply felt, Funeral Rites is an excellent choice for new readers approaching Genet's work. Genet seems oddly more confident and hopeful about himself and mankind here, perhaps as a result of the emotional catharsis (as well as the victory) provided by the war. Highly recommended.

2.0 out of 5 stars A tough episodic book, funny and pornographic, poetic and disturbing, but perhaps with a few rewards, November 6, 2011

By 

HWilliams (NYC) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Funeral Rites (Paperback)

A fairly large number of The Book Discussion Group met at The LGBT Center in NYC in November to discuss "Funeral Rites" by Jean Genet. I'm constantly impressed at the smart and thoughtful commentary that the group was able to provide for such a disturbing book.

This is Genet's final novel before he moved on to drama. All of us found this to be one of hardest books we've read. While supposedly a loving eulogy of his late lover, Jean D., who was killed on the front lines during World War II, Genet created a meandering and episodic hell for readers. Genet shifts very suddenly from being the narrator to an active character in the story (including the eulogized Jean D., a Nazi soldier, and Jean of Arc).

The novel is full of gas and scatology, some of it rather funny. The language waivers between vivid hot sex and raunchy pornography.

The characters are generally unlikeable:
-- Giselle is the pretentious mother of Jean D, who is being eulogized.
-- Eric is a sexy German soldier on the lam, who is Giselle's lover and also has sex with fellow soldiers without any moralizing or restraint.
-- Juliette is Jean D's surviving fiancé, an unattractive orphan beggar who is raped at the funeral of Jean D's and her new-born daughter.
-- Paulo is Jean D's brother, who is depicted as having sex with Hitler at one point.
-- The Executioner (who also has sex with men) has a thick and beautiful neck but is responsible for cleaning up after Hitler's trysts with young boys. (Yes, this book is full of hallucinatory fantasy.)
-- Riton, however, is the most ambiguous and disturbing character. He is a handsome and repulsive soldier, who Genet loves as a French collaborator with the Nazis.

As disturbing as all this sounds, there are passages of amazing beauty and poetry. Genet raises important questions about the number French who collaborated with the invading Germans and French policemen who helped round up Jewish citizens. This is a tough read for general readers but offers some rewards once you get past the difficult narrative and characterizations.

4.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing novel set in occcupied Paris towards the end of WW2, November 1, 2010

By 

Kiwifunlad (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Funeral Rites (Paperback)

This is one of Genet's lesser known works and not his best but it has an interesting theme in the second half of the book which follows the life of imaginary Riton a Nazi collaborator in occupied Paris in 1944. Parallel to the account of Riton and his love for a German soldier is the grief of Genet the narrator over the death of French resistance fighter and lover Jean. It is Genet's sympathetic portrayal of Riton and rational explanation that for a young petty thief, a gun and food from the Germans was a better bet than the life of a patriotic resistance fighter which captured my interest. Genet's well documented struggles with authority gives authenticity to this novel as you become aware of the difference of patriotism within a nation and that the poor are less concerned who is ruling their country than those who have something to lose.