The Criminal Child

September 30, 2019
An homage to a tightrope walker, Jean Cocteau’s elegant prose, and the “breathable” paintings of Leonor Fini that evoke “a swamp smell” are just a few of the subjects broached in this slim but topically vast collection from the late French novelist and playwright Genet (1910–1986). The entries are united by Genet’s signature probing, at times obscure, prose and his fascination with morality, misfits, and art. “The Criminal Child,” originally intended for radio broadcast, was censored because of Genet’s sympathy for the titular subject, with whom he identifies—having been incarcerated himself—and celebrates as a rebellious and beautiful outlaw resisting the powerful. Genet’s attraction to society’s marginal inhabitants continues throughout each of the following essays. In Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture he sees “an art of high-class tramps.” In “Fragments,” Genet reflects on how homosexuality has exiled him from conventional morality. Throughout, Genet is a deft, sensual, and outrageous critic—in regards to theater, he proclaims, “A performance that does not act on my soul is vain.” Fans will be pleased with this gathering of Genet’s inimitable reflections on art, life, and his muses.

October 1, 2019
Literary odds and ends from the controversial French writer. This brief collection of eight essays by Genet (1910-1986) were written from 1949 to 1958. All are deeply infused with his sexuality, philosophy, and bizarre, metaphysical writing style. In a footnote to one of them, he writes, "with my cold chisel, words, detached from language, neat blocks, are also tombs." The titular essay, from 1948, was originally written for radio broadcast but was never recorded. Genet was then facing a prison term, and the station wanted to avoid a scandal that his "deliberately provocative rhetoric" would have caused. Drawing on his experiences as a criminal child incarcerated in Mettray, a correctional facility, Genet proclaims his "love for these ruthless little kids" and his disdain for the society that punishes them: "I want to insult yet again the insulters." "Adame Miroir" is a short, surrealist ballet/screenplay "for the Grand-Guignol." In "Letter to Lenor Fini," Genet writes to a female painter with whom he worked. In a style exuberant in image and metaphor, he describes works "voluptuous and sprinkled with arsenic." They "seem to me comparable to the complex architecture of swamp odors." And that is a compliment! An admiring piece on Jean Cocteau praises the "goodness" of his heart. His work "lets anguish be discovered in the fissures." A lengthy, dazzling piece on Alberto Giacometti, which is part interview and part critique, reads like a magazine profile. In his work, Genet sees "sculptures standing up in their bones" with a "strange power to penetrate that realm of death." The final piece, sensitive and erotic, is "The Tightrope Walker," about Abdallah Bentaga, whom Genet was emotionally attached to. The author waxes lovingly euphoric about the performer's artistry on the wire and the "bulge accentuated in your bodysuit, where your balls are enclosed." An introduction with biographical and historical contexts would have been helpful. For fans.

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Starred review from January 10, 2020

Revolutionary, French poet, and playwright Genet (1910-86) sees the world slant in this new assemblage of essays, which includes the first English translation of the title piece from esteemed translators Mandell and Zuckerman. In this account of the author's youth in the penitentiary Mettray, commissioned for broadcast by a French radio station, provocateur Genet writes "not in complaint but in exultation," declaring that "from children's own passion for evil" the cruelties of incarceration develop. His argument (safeguard rebelliousness in children) demands readers to see that what is acutely reasoned coheres despite his radical storytelling. Genet's multifaceted and wildly original aesthetic is embodied in associative takes and close reads: He compares a friend's drawings to the "complex architecture of swamp odors" and keenly observes the anguish fellow poet Jean Cocteau hides in his work for readers to discover. Also enthralling are reflections on the inner void, queer life, disease, and death ("Get up! Go die!"); a lush conversational poem to his tightrope-walker lover; and a zigzag inquiry into sculptor Giacometti's oeuvre.

VERDICT Essential for followers of Genet, inquisitive general readers, and enthusiasts of 20th-century avant-garde French writing.--Diane Mehta, Library Journal

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