Customer Reviews

The Thief's Journal

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

In Jean Genet's complex novel The Thief's Journal, the author has modeled his protagonist, Jean, on himself, and the loose, conversational plot after his own experiences as a young thief, drifter, and poet in thirties and forties Europe. 'Jean' is Genet's fictional recreation of himself; but readers should keep in mind that Jean's relationship to Genet is to some degree imaginative. The book provides an excellent illustration of how even when speaking or writing with as complete an honesty as believed possible, man is still caught in a process of creation, structuring, and discrimination---a process of fictionalization. Therefore, honesty, sincerity, and truthfulness always retain elements of artifice, and, as pure states, remain ideals only.

Abandoned by his family as a boy, sentenced to reform school at sixteen, as a young man, Jean is still "alone, rigorously so," he lives "with desolation in satanic solitude." Realizing early that he is, in status and nature, completely at odds with the social order, Jean learns through trial and error how to care and not to care, how to make all possible outcomes to his actions reasonably acceptable. "Rejecting the world that rejected me," Jean exacerbates his position: identifying with his rejectee status, he feels it appropriate that he should "aggravate this condition with a preference for boys." Thus his homosexuality is at least partially an act of self-creation, part of his perverse desire to transgress the rules of order as broadly as possible. Jean decides he will henceforth admit to guilt whenever accused, regardless of the truth or the nature of the crime, and thus rob his accusers of the ability to jeopardize his fate.

"Betrayal, theft, and homosexuality are the basic subject of this book," he says. For Jean, theft becomes a means of survival while simultaneously representing a daily blow against society. If caught and arrested, he readily throws himself into the homosexual life of the prison, making himself available to those in authority as well as to fellow inmates. Jean allows himself a somewhat desperate game of searching for a dominant male partner who is completely, impossibly powerful. Submitting physically and emotionally to men he believes meet this standard, Jean repeatedly proves himself the more powerful by betraying the men when he inevitably senses a definitive crack in his exaggerated conception of them. Once he has glimpsed some "inelegant," unforgivable portion of their imperfect humanity, his slavish masochism fades and sociopathic indifference replaces it: the abandonee becomes the abandoner and assassin. For Jean, a well-planned, keenly-felt personal betrayal is the ultimate show of toughness and "a handsome gesture, compounded with nervous force and grace."

As in Genet's other novels, homosexual love and physical interaction is a given between all of the male characters--pimps, prostitutes, gamblers, gangsters, and thugs--each of whom has a theoretical set of rules and limits concerning the degree of their own participation. But regardless of their speeches and proud macho denunciations, they loosen their belts for one another at a moment's notice if they feel so inclined. Genet cleverly has Jean reacting and reporting in the same indeterminate manner: Jean identifies Michaelis as wholly homosexual but then denies it; one-armed stud Stilitano, who wears a bunch of artificial grapes buttoned inside his fly to lure strangers and enhance his mystique, routinely denies Jean access to his body at night but coyly raises the subject repeatedly during daylight hours. Regardless, Stilitano and Jean live and share a bed together, affectionately plucking one another clean of head and body lice. Ugly Salvador strikes Jean on the street for kissing him in public while simultaneously whispering, "tonight, if you like," in his ear. When hairy Armand decides he respects Jean too much to be anything other than friends, Jean sleeps between his open legs, Armand's colossal sex organs resting nightly on his forehead.

Only gorilla-like, Paul Muni-faced Java is wholly unconcerned with the nature of his acts or words. He provocatively exposes himself to other men in saloons, daring them to hold and guess the weight of his genitals, and repeatedly forces himself on willing Jean, who, gloriously obliterated by Java's assault, finds it a blissful but inevitably temporary salvation. Java "cringes in fright" during a fight, and Jean sees even his cringing as beautiful. But then "yellow diarrhea flows down his monumental thighs," and--well, so much for Java. Clinging to his masochistic illusion, Jean continues drifting, his submissive position a seeming necessity. When discovered sleeping in a beachfront shack by a guard, Jean services him automatically and the guard accepts it automatically as a given in turn. These are the strange, all-encompassing rules of Genet's world. But free or imprisoned, single or partnered, masochist or sly sadist, Jean is ultimately self-fulfilling and independent.

Jean, who says "metamorphosis lies in wait for us," is an almost unknown quintessence, a mass of animal meat and instincts coupled with emerging homo sapien characteristics. Constantly in a liminal state of becoming, he atavistically prefers stepping sideways or backward instead of forward; for long periods his existence seems mere ostensible movement through time and space. But Jean, who in fact secretly enjoys and protects his isolation, really seeks only to fulfill himself "in the rarest of destinies," a kind of quest for "sainthood," one born of reducing himself to pure essence and thus becoming his own temple, savior, and deity. On this final road, which Jean sees reachable by both subjective and objective methods, including sacred betrayal, there is in truth no room for anyone but himself, as there will be none afterward when he has attained his goal of becoming a selfless but self-complete being, like Jung's psychological, alchemical, and hieratical hermaphrodite.

The Thief's Journal is a full-frontal, multi-layered book that should be read several times to be fully appreciated. One of the finest portrayals of the introverted character in literature, The Thief's Journal has a great many things to express about man's nature and psychology, most of which should be revelatory if somewhat jarring to the general reader.

I don't think I would categorize The Thief's Journal as Gay fiction. I would allign it more with existentialism/metaphysics in that Genet's sensibilities and motives lie in other areas than solely his own homosexuality. Genet seeks to travel deeper and deeper within himself in order to reject "your world" as well as its inherent value and morals systems. I think his own homosexuality is among one of the many plateaus or steps that he uses in his "journey". As he says, his life was open to his own interpretation; the signs were interpreted in his own way for his own purposes. Sometimes Genet's prose is heavy in that his lines are long and he uses run-ons separated by commas. He takes great care in his descriptions (necessarily so) such as the gob of white saliva in the corner of someone's mouth. The work is another bold gesture by a man who brings the reader as close to the author as is seemingly possible. Another reviewer here says to check out Celine. Make sure to read the editions translated by Ralph Mannheim, he's superb.

This book is mesmerising. The distinction between the beautiful and the obscene is folded inside out like a velvet glove. Abjection has never seemed so appealing.

Jean Genet suffers a lot, I think, due to popular culture...the fact that his works necessarily involve homosexual activities leads mainstream culture (including even university professors!) to marginalize him beyond all rational limits, and leads conversely, the gay community to celebrate him possibly a little too much...but that's just my opinion. The fact is that he's a master of language, and when he writes about almost anything, it's transformed into an incredible landscape of experience, thought, desire, motives. In most of his purely fictional works he acts as an omniscient narrator to describe exactly why the characters do as they do...and in a way that not only makes perfect sense, but also in a way that the reader probably never thought of. This work being mostly autobiographical differs, actually, not much. If all you asked of this book was to take you into the world of small-time crime and skid row activities of barely post world war II europe, you'll be more than happily surprised. If you demand more, direct transportation even, to the world he was living in, you won't be disappointed.

Genet's "the Thief's Journal" is to me his greatest novel-if that's whatyou want to categorize it as. The only reason I don't say its his greatest book is because of a wonderful book called "Prisoner of Love", and who knows what may turn up altho I doubt much of anything as he was so private and transient. Anyway, it clearly maps out the genesis of his artistic, sexual, and criminal life. For any gay male reader, it is essential, higher in priority than almost any other gay fiction. Of course, it is essential not just to gays but any serious reader. On a final note it is also quite accessible. so if you tried reading "Our Lady..." or others I think you will be pleasantly surprised and absorbed. If you like French novels of the forties you might also check out the writer Celine. He is quite caustic and brilliant and many of his novels are in English. For cultural referents, Todd Haynes film "Poison" wa in part inspired by Genet and John Waters named Glenn Milstead "DIVINE" from one of Genet's novels. So there you are

Genet, as this his first book aptly proves, is understood best when he has an interpreter: ideally the iconic Jean Paul Sartre (or as I later discovered in the review section as I was about to post this review, Mr. J.E. Barnes). Thus, I feel like I have cheated in having first read Sartre's "Saint Genet, in which all of Genet's works are put in a proper psychological context. I am not sure I could have gotten the full import of this book without Sartre's (and now Mr. Barnes') help.

Genet's dark, exquisite interior prose occupies a higher dimension in a universe on the plane above the heads of our normal understanding of the human condition. He treads on much forbidden terrain: thievery, homosexuality, treachery and betrayal, societally inspired structural and overt violence. His craft exists and extends far away from and on the outskirts of the normal socialized and socially adjusted human mental frame. Yet, because of this vantage point, he and his writings are more alive, more aware of the limitations of this (the external) world, more in tune with normal human weaknesses, more real than any normal mind could ever be, or ever even imagine.

This, the first of his many criminal's confessions, is not just a clinical baring of an interior soul, but a living reflection of how the soul is organized and lived from the inside out, and, more importantly, how it is incrementally corrupted as a result of normal societal rules. Yet, Genet does not claim a defense or an excuse for his societally produced criminal mind and behavior: Although he is the purest of a socially produced incorrigible, he revels in his station in life; he takes it and remakes it as his own. He refashions it so that he can own it fully: it is his choice to own it. He populates it with characters, including himself, as Jean, that reflect and alternative moral universe. This alternative criminal moral universe is his counter-cultural kingdom, his existential domain. It is his psychological, spiritual and physical home.

Yet, even though Genet owns the universe he creates and so vividly describes, and reports to us, curiously it is us too. It is our reflection as seen through a truly authentic mind. One cannot read this book without the voyeuristic understanding that Genet's soul is but a "stand-in" for the inner torment, violence and fear that lives hidden just beneath consciousness in each of our souls. Genet is our true psychological doppelganger. He exposes the myth that our moral ideals and standards are real, inviolable and pure.

His "slow-dance" towards his own interior oblivion, the criminal abyss; a slow walk down to nihilistic authenticity, is as exquisite a representation of who we are, as we are ever likely to see in printed form. He describes what we would see if we had the courage and strength to see, that is if we had the true courage and strength of true introspection; if we had the courage and strength to confront our deepest fears, our deepest inner selves; in short, if we had the courage to be authentic beings. His descriptions remind us of how deep our socially adjusted cowardliness really is. He reminds us of what a truly authentic existence really looks like from the inside out.

The world of the "existential thief" is inhabited by a slow dance between a quest for heroism, a quest for an easy route to spiritual glory (the same quest we all have), and a fear of the limitations of our inherent human weaknesses. It is an interior struggle that ordinary people do not normally get to see, because socially organized mental barriers carefully insulate, wall us off and protect us from, ourselves.

An absolutely exquisitely crafted Freudian and existential tour de force: Ten stars

Often you may hear people mention Genet's art casually, reducing it to homoerotic poetry penned by a French guy who happened to do some time in prison (at least I have more than once). Such a reduction is in my opinion even worse than if a person were to talk about Hemingway as if he were a columnist for Field and Stream magazine, or Paul Bowles as a "travel writer." Genet is one of western literature's greatest moral writers; he illuminates our moral world by willing himself (spurred on by early punishments and alienation from society) against it, by pursuing embracing a raison d'etre that he himself calls "evil." The Thief's Journal is my favorite book of his and a book I read yearly and travel with. It is at the pinnacle of the literary canon for those that think that serious writing should be in a large part transgressive, that great art should alter consciousness and pose itself fundamentally against normative society (if such a thing is even really possible today).

Well, the other review here is great. Often you may hear people mention Genet's art casually, reducing it to homoerotic poetry penned by a French guy who happened to do some time in prison (at least I have more than once). Such a reduction is in my opinion even worse than if a person were to talk about Hemingway as if he were a columnist for Field and Stream magazine, or Paul Bowles as a "travel writer." Genet is one of western literature's greatest moral writers; he illuminates our moral world by willing himself (spurred on by early punishments and alienation from society) against it, by pursuing embracing a raison d'etre that he himself calls "evil." The Thief's Journal is my favorite book of his and a book I read yearly and travel with. It is at the pinnacle of the literary canon for those that think that serious writing should be in a large part transgressive, that great art should alter consciousness and pose itself fundamentally against normative society (if such a thing is even really possible today).

Reading Jean Genet's books always makes me thrilled. He has the power of detailing stories after stories of sins. He also has the magic of transforming sins into beautified actions that everyone should have appreciated instead of detesting. His words are powerful and contain a seductive emotion. He also confess his love for male bodies in this kind of autobiography book. This work is one great masterpiece in my mind.

Genet was, without a doubt, one of the master prose stylists of the twentieth century. This "autofiction" memoir, based on the events of his life, follows the author/character Genet on his vagabond trip through 1930's Europe. While all of Genet's narratives are interesting, most do not follow a chronological sequence or have standard narration. This one does, and as such, I think it is the best introduction to his work.

In this "journal," Genet does more than detail the events of his everyday life--he describes the process by which he becomes a poet. In singing the praises of all that society rejects, Genet creates beauty from the abject, and puts all events and experiences on equal ground as inspirations and subjects of art. One of the great meditations on the creative process, and one of the great works of the 20th c.