Customer Reviews

Funeral Rites

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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.

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.

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.

Though not for the faint of heart (it's by far his most graphic and violent novel), this book has some of Genet's most poetic moments. Serving as both a bittersweet eulogy to Genet's dead lover and as an exploration of his own feelings regarding WWII France, the book's subject matter is explosive, keeping emotions at a fever pitch throughout the whole of the novel. While it lacks the range and coherancy of "The Thief's Journal" (his later novel) and is probably not the best choice if you've never read Genet before (try "Our Lady of the Flowers" or "The Thief's Journal" first), it is nonetheless well worth the read.

Jean Genet--orphan, thief, homosexual prostitute, renders his impressions of the occupation and liberation of Paris. His metaphors lead to the comparison of the city to a child who is submissive to rape by the Germans, and afraid of offending them as they perpetrate the act. The narraor's lover is killed at the barricades during the liberation of the city, implying parrallels between the decay of old philosophy and the rise of new (existential) philosophy during that apocalyptic period in the history of the world.

Funeral rites is jean genet's farewell to one of the great loves of his life.. such a great love, in fact, that the only way to come to terms with this death is to delve into fantasy.. so it comes about that he creates this character in his mind in a very ambiguous style.. the only thing he can rely on is to cherish the opposite of his lover.. to embrace the unthinkable.. the very man who put him to death.. Riton is the symbollic opposite of jean - he is the phallus to jean's anal qualities...
and in a sea of beautiful dreamlike prose we find at the end that genet is not trying to appeal to us so much as nurse his own demons..
This is one of Genet's strangest works of fiction.. but simply a deight to read.. It would be interesting to hear a psychologists reactions to these probing meditations on death..

It just didn't float my boat . . . probably because it had no deep thoughts or anything that kept me interested in reading it. Perhaps if reading about gay sex is your thing, you might enjoy it. Me? It was required reading for a literature class, otherwise I would never have managed to finish it . . .