Jean Genet wrote masterpieces,this autobiography is a masterpiece in itself !

Jean Genet wrote masterpieces...this autobiography is a masterpiece too !!!

Jean Genet's major works are considered masterpieces. His plays, The Screen and The Blacks are performed worldwide. During his lifetime, he received the Grand Prix des Arts et Lettres and he is remembered for championing the causes of the oppressed. Yet, surprisingly, for many years, no biography of Genet had been attempted. Writers could have been intimidated by Sartre's huge psychological study, St. Genet, published in 1952, or perhaps by the elusive nature of Genet, himself, and his complex morality.

In 1987 Edmund White began what became a six-year study of Genet's life and works. The result of that work is this book, Genet, a shining and enduring biography that shares much in common with Starkie's excellent biography of Rimbaud and Ellman's Oscar Wilde.

White read Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers for the first time in 1964. He responded to Genet's "deeper, more extravagant prose," and, in doing so, he experienced a self-liberation as the gay world was presented without apology or explanation and gay men were afforded the experience of seeing their world, not as tacky but as glamorous and poetic. In addition, Genet's affectionate rendering of drag queens helped to elevate their view in the eyes of all.

White, who had tested HIV-positive in 1985, was grateful for the chance to work on the biography as it also afforded him the opportunity to reflect on his own homosexuality, art and literature in a world not yet affected by the AIDS virus, for Genet had inhabited a world and culture prior to the outbreak of AIDS.

In this sensitive biography, White takes us on a journey through the French welfare and prison systems; high society led by Cocteau; café society led by Sartre; and revolutionary movements as well.

In Genet: A Biography, White shows us that Genet's work, like Genet, himself, is a terrain of contradictions, and he spells out both the kindnesses and the cruelty with sincere and translucent clarity.

Genet began life in 1911 as a ward of the state. Raised as an outcast, by a young age he was attempting to come to terms with his sensitive and convulsive nature. At the age of thirteen he began lying and stealing; by fourteen, he was branded a thief, something he accepted with arrogance rather than shame. At fifteen, he was arrested and led, in handcuffs, into the Penitentiary Colony of Mettray.

At Mettray, he worked in the fields and performed naval drills on landlocked ships. By night, however, the prisoners lived by their own code. The handsome, sadistic heterosexual was king, and someone, like Genet, passive and adoring, not only served, but blossomed as a princess and a scribe.

As brutal as life was for Genet in Mettray, he cherished his time there, for he experienced many awakenings within its walls. The time in Mettray also afforded Genet a chance to look inward. What he saw caused him tremendous anguish, for he had to face the realization that he did, indeed, possess all the evil that others had attributed to him. His suffering, however, only made him strong.

Destitute, but free at nineteen, Genet began a decade of wandering through Europe and Africa, passing from one prison to another for one petty crime or another. In 1939, in a prison cell in Fresnes, Genet began his masterpiece, Our Lady of the Flowers. Figuratively, he wrote in martyr's blood, for the book represented a reopening of all his adolescent wounds.

As Genet wrote of his early loves in his cell at Mattray, modern literature found society's most marginal men portrayed, for the first time, without shame or remorse. White clearly points out that Genet never used his writing as a political or psychological forum, yet his books sparked furious debates over censorship in the courts of Europe. What Genet did do was open the door for future writers and, most importantly, confer dignity and understanding on society's least understood and most estranged.

Genet had not set out to do so, but he had created a kind of miracle. Social change began to take place, and the president of France, at Sartre's urging, pardoned Genet of all his crimes. However, as White theorizes, this pardon also stripped Genet of his sacred individuality, his uniqueness, and he fell into a deep depression and ceased all writing.

A relationship with the sculptor, Alberto Giacometti, however, conferred on Genet new meaning and purpose and he said, "every man is every other man, as am I."

Resuming his life as a vagabond, Genet discovered untapped inner resources and a wealth of creative ideas. His importance as a poet emerged.

Genet's last years were filled with suffering, when, addicted to drugs and suffering from cancer, he dedicated himself to the plight of the Palestinians; rootless warriors lacking a champion, much like himself. His final work, Prisoner of Love, is dedicated to these people and to life, itself, and the power of the creative imagination. This was Genet's final miracle: the realization that we are all holy, that we all contain, both the whole and the part, of the divine.

Genet died at the age of seventy-five, on 15 April 1986 in a hotel room in the thirteenth arrondissement of Paris. He is buried in Larache, Morocco and his grave bears only two sun-washed, sparkling white stones. Although Genet's body may lie beneath the Moroccan sand, his spirit still soars, crowned with the blood of his youth and the thorn-studded roses of old age.

Put on some cool white linens, open an excellent bottle of red wine and lounge on your chez in the garden, or in your conservatory: This and 4 hours time are the ingredients you need to read or re-read this jewel of a novelette. Seldom has a book so resembled a piece of music, as this does. Clear your mind and let it in - this epic poem - this little night music. I have never stopped thanking Edmund White in my prayers for giving the world this piece of beauty. Enjoy!

This book, in order to be fully experienced, should be read very slowly. White is a master of sensual description. You should visualize the images and forget about plot and character.If you let your mind linger over the words you can experience the novel with all of your senses. The atmosphere is almost tangible. The variations are stunning.I must say that reading this book after having read 4 other White novels I was prepared. If you jump right in you can easily become lost or disoriented. Maybe that is part of the author's wishes. I read an interview where he commented that unlike the 19th Century novel where the reader is given a roadmap and a clear view, this book requires the reader to work and make connections. If you do persevere you will be rewarded with a haunting series of visions that will not readily be forgotten.

When I asked Ed White what his favorite output was I hoped that he would say "Nocturnes For The King Of Naples." He did. When I asked Ed White what he regretted about his career, he did not mention this book. It is short and easily readable in a single patient sitting: I read it on a flight from Boston to Salt Lake City that was ten hours from start to finish. I was mesmerized and I wept as I read: because these words meant so much to my own life, because I thought to myself that I would never have the godsend inspiration to produce a novel with so much self examination, so much poetry, so much questioning of God. Along with "The Little Prince" it is among my most favorite books.

Edmund White writes novels that tell of the world he lives in in New York and in Paris, and he has been heralded world wide for his talent. He advocates an unbridled sexuality. We have fought over this point and I love his writing despite his stance. Despite all his free love manifestos, he wrote a book that details that passion he felt for his past, for his past lovers and for his father. This is it and you wil never find a more engaging, moving tale of the search for love and affection.

Of Edmund White's novels, Caracole may be the most accessible to the reading public at large. It has a clear and impressive plot and a set of characters as arresting as Dickens'. But as in every White novel, the words and the images they create are foremost.

The author deserves the reader's closest attention. White is the consummate master of language. Much of the imagery is exotic, dreamlike and even nightmarish. Every sense is evoked with startling specificity. You need no cyber-gadgets to experience virtual reality if you absorb this book and let it unfold in your imagination.

White commands the broad range of moods, shifting them with disturbing abruptness or lingering within one to delve into its deepest recesses. Most strikingly conveyed are the wonders, terrors, mysteries and curiosities of youth, the overpowering initiations of body and mind that shatter the realm of childhood. White invents a vocabulary for the inarticulate that is all the more powerful for its metaphorical exactness.

Unlike White's other novels, Caracole is not a first-person narrative. By using the omniscient third person, White is able to probe deeper into the interiors of his characters. This device also allows him more scope for apt epigrammatic observations, particularly about youth, middle age and the relations across that divide.

Those who appreciate the power of the word should experience Caracole and indeed all of White's novels.

It has taken me two months to read Caracole. It deserves every minute. The book deserves the reader¹s closest attention. White is the consummate master of language. Much of the imagery is exotic, dreamlike and even nightmarish. Every sense is evoked with startling specificity. You need no cyber-gadgets to experience virtual reality if you absorb this book and let it unfold in your imagination.Of Edmund White¹s novels, Caracole may be the most accessible to the reading public at large. It has a clear and impressive plot and a set of characters as arresting as Dickens¹. But as in every White novel, the words and the images they create are foremost. The language is hypnotic in its power. White commands the broad range of moods, shifting them with disturbing abruptness or lingering within one to delve into its deepest recesses. Most strikingly conveyed are the wonders, terrors, mysteries and curiosities of youth, the overpowering initiations of body and mind that shatter the realm of childhood. White invents a vocabulary for the inarticulate that is all the more powerful for its metaphorical exactness.Unlike White¹s other novels, Caracole is not a first-person narrative. By using the omniscient third person, White is able to probe deeper into the interiors of his characters. This device also allows him more scope for apt epigrammatic observations, particularly about youth, middle age and the relations across that divide. Caracole has been called White¹s "cross-over" novel. The characters are heterosexual and the plot evolves in large part out of the consequences of their appetites. White describes the female body and the male and female experience as exquisitely as any writer of his stature. Reading Caracole after having read The Farewell Symphony, the last novel of his autobiographical trilogy, however, gives one an entirely different perspective. Some situations and characterizations are virtually identical in each novel though appropriately translated in time, place and gender. This juxtaposition enhances Caracole¹s intrinsic humor and correspondingly deepens its pathos. It also underscores our common humanity, regardless of our orientations.Those who appreciate the power of the word should experience Caracole and try all of Edmund White¹s novels.

Of Edmund White1s novels, Caracole may be the most accessible to the reading public at large. It has a clear and impressive plot and a set of characters as arresting as Dickens. But as in every White novel, the words and the images they create are foremost. I cannot do better than to quote Cynthia Ozick in calling his technique "seduction through language." It has taken me two months to read Caracole. It deserves every minute. The author deserves the reader's closest attention. White is the consummate master of language. Much of the imagery is exotic, dreamlike and even nightmarish. Every sense is evoked with startling specificity. You need no cyber-gadgets to experience virtual reality if you absorb this book and let it unfold in your imagination.White commands the broad range of moods, shifting them with disturbing abruptness or lingering within one to delve into its deepest recesses. Most strikingly conveyed are the wonders, terrors, mysteries and curiosities of youth, the overpowering initiations of body and mind that shatter the realm of childhood. White invents a vocabulary for the inarticulate that is all the more powerful for its metaphorical exactness.Unlike White's other novels, Caracole is not a first-person narrative. By using the omniscient third person, White is able to probe deeper into the interiors of his characters. This device also allows him more scope for apt epigrammatic observations, particularly about youth, middle age and the relations across that divide. Caracole has been called White's "cross-over" novel. The characters are heterosexual and the plot evolves in large part out of the consequences of their appetites. White describes the female body and the male and female experience of straight sex as exquisitely as any writer of his stature. Reading Caracole after having read The Farewell Symphony, the last novel of his autobiographical trilogy, however, gives one a different perspective. Some situations and characterizations are virtually identical in each novel though appropriately translated in time, place and gender. This juxtaposition enhances Caracole's intrinsic humor and correspondingly deepens its pathos. It also underscores our common humanity, regardless of our sexual orientations.I have had the intoxicating adventure of reading all of Edmund White's novels in the past twelve months. (My next stop is his collection of essays and interviews, The Burning Library).Those who appreciate the power of the word should experience Caracole and indeed all of White's novels.

With more than three hundred photographs, Herbert List: The Monograph documents for the first time all phases of List's creativity: the Fotografia Metafisica (as List's early work, with its affinity with the work of de Chirico and Magritte, has come to be known); his photographs of Classical Greek ruins and postwar Munich; his sensitive homoerotic photographs; the artist portraits spanning the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s; and his subtle and touching human-interest photo-essays. Authoritative texts by noted critics and scholars provide historical contexts and influences and detail the development of List's oeuvre. A selection of List's own writings, a comprehensive chronology, a bibliography, and records of exhibitions, collections, and published photographs and essays complete the book. The photographs and essays collected in this volume comprise the definitive presentation of this modern master.

Herbert List is one of the most impressive photographers of the 20th century. This book is a masterpiece and offers a wonderful overview of List's work. It gives the opportunity to discover a classical and refreshing approach of the world-which escapes however from classicism.

Herbert List belongs to the most impressive photographers of the 20th century, showing a simple but wonderful vision of the world while escaping from classicism... A wonderful publication for "amateurs" and a masterpiece in arts book!

LOSS WITHIN LOSS is a major collection of biographical short stories: tributes to friends, lovers and colleagues who have died from AIDS.

Several of the contributing writers are quite famous: the lecturer/poet/teacher Maya Angelou, the playwright/screenwriter Craig Lucas ("Prelude To A Kiss," "Longtime Companion"), the novelist Allan Gurganus ("Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All"), the writer Andrew Solomon ("The Noonday Demon") et. al. Several of the dedicatees lived the lives of celebrities: the poet James Merrill, the film makers Derek Jarman and Howard Brookner, the writer Paul Monette. But it is not their fame which is celebrated in this book: it is their love and friendship and, most importantly, their art which is now lost to the world forever because of a disease, the deadly power of which, was and still is, underestimated. The styles of the stories are as diverse as the styles of the individual writers: some read like the poetry they are; some like straight-forward fiction and some like excruciatingly honest, almost farcical diary entries.

These are not simply sad stories; they are beautifully written, funny, charming, intelligent, very candid rememberances of lives past passed. Besides the stories, there are some photographs of the artists and their works, biographies of the writers and their subjects, a wonderful photograph by John Dugdale on the cover and an introduction by Edmund White
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

LOSS WITHIN LOSS is a most appropriately titled reminiscence of the black hole AIDS blasted in our art community. Edmund White, always the sensitive observor and writer of tender memoirs, takes on the role of Editor here and has selected some very fine writers to personalize the contributions and deaths of their friends. He has also written minibiobraphies of not only the artists who have been lost but also of each of the biographers. Selecting artist/bigraphers to highlight in a review of a book of this total force seems almost incongruous, yet Chris DeBlasio is so beautifully defined by William Berger, and the polarities of the lives and deaths of Paul Monette and James Merrill who died within four days of each other are so adroitly observed by their mutual firend J.D. McClatchy, and Felice Picano's warm eulogy for Robert Ferro and all that surrounded the Violet Quill Club are all so fine that they shine especialy brightly.

The unexpected joyful aspect of spending time with this extraordinary book is discovering how much we didn't know about so many artists in every field - from poetry, to novels, to puppets, to architecture, to dance. Yes, the names ring distant bells, but when the artists are put into context with the time in which they were creating AND that they were creating knowing that their corporal time was limited, the effect is staggering. I do not find this book at all morose; if anything it is celebratory. And the method of presentation and quality of writing leaves the reader with one primary question: What if AIDS hadn't destroyed so many brilliant minds, so many unborn ideas? As a document on the effect of a devastating disease on the arts and as a resource book of what was happening in the forefront of culture in the 1980s and 1990s, this book will be the gold standard. Highly recommended reading - on so many levels.

This powerful, superb book is peopled with a sampling of the great and graceful artists who have been swept into eternity by AIDS. All of the essays are moving. Especially touching is the memoir which gathers together the angelic Paul Monette and the ferocious James Merrill. Brad Gooch contributes his best writing to date in his touching remembrances of his lovely partner Howard.

This book will break your heart and make you smile at the same time. It's truly a work of art.

I was in college when I first met Denver Butson (crazy man, Italy semester again- but maybe this time with hot water?). Great person, master poet, entertaining teacher -managed the Pisan Cantos steps from an Italian princess and literary heir.
Tryptich is self help for everyone who finds themselves burning.

Denver's mastery of exact word useage portrays volumes of meaning. Tiny rays of light in his darker works flirt with the reader. His good news? There is always hope!

Do you know what a "textual marriage" is? Are you familiar with the poetic form "ghazel"? Have you mused recently over crows? Have you considered the difference between drowning and dancing? With this first collection of poetry from Denver Butson, a challenging and forceful new voice has emerged in American poetry. A textual marriage is a poetic form Butson invented that alternates successive lines from two different texts--in one case, a sensational NEW YORK POST article and a poem by Kenneth Patchen--to create a startlingly orginal poem. A ghazel is a Persian poetic form as intricate as a sestina. "No one waves to the blackest birds." Crows. This image resonates throughout the collection: black wings, the darkness, the common-ness of the common crow (first introduced in association with a brother who did or did not commit suicide). And, curiously, in one poem it is the absence of the word "crow" that sustains the poem. And is it possible to read the verb "waves" as the noun to introduce another central image? That of drowning? Briefly, this collection teases and stimulates and excites the reader's mind. As Butson notes, "These broken syllables / we try to re-form." Language, imagination, image, meaning. Denver Butson is a poet of depth, complexity, and strangeness who has a brilliant career before him.

This book is large format (12" square) and comes supplied with a strong card case which protects the book and dust jacket from damage.

The photographs themselves are extremely well presented, many in colour or with colour surrounds or mounts. The range moves from formal portraits to some sex images to self-portraits to flowers and a couple of excellent still-life pieces. The book is simply sumptuous in its feel.

Most of this work is definitely towards the 'art' end of this photographer's spectrum. There is a very useful list of plates at the rear of the book with full details of the date, subject, photograph size, etc.

There is also a rather meandering essay by Edmund White which can safely be ignored or, if you enjoy pompous and meaningless written drivel, enjoyed depending on yourself.

A superb addition to the bookshelf of any Mapplethorpe fan, or indeed any lover of art photography.

One of the most beautiful collections of Mapplethorpe's work that I have seen; it is a very good overview of his photography and is a must-see for any art aficianado.

As a struggling writer I find it difficult to consult my creativity in a nurturing yet properly instructive way. One of the main difficulties is finding the right literary setting to allow my ideas to flourish (or at least a place to plant them). Until I read The Burning Library I was only familiar with White's fiction. I was apprehensive about his essays; that the power of his imaginary voice would be subdued in the realm of non fiction. It is subdued but it is no less brilliant, no less insightful, and no less stimulating. White rules his world with a brutal and sensitive brain; he debunks "myth" as he creates it. When the essays turn to biography it helps to be familiar with who he's talking about (I reccomend a class in contemporary French Literary Criticism) but it isn't necessary. White is accessible, provocative and entertaining. After reading these essays it took me a long time to return to fiction--both reading and writing it. These are inspiring articles; intellectual, risque, humorous, and most importantly... still chic. I am--as with all White's writing--inspired to create but usually disappointed with how short I fall in my attempts to be similar. I highly reccomend this book to anyone interested in gay history or the contemporary gay culture.

Edmund White is one of the foremost novelists of our day. He is also a literary critic and social observer of the first order.This collection of essays and reviews spans the period of the late 60's through the mid 90's and charts the changing views and mores of the gay world of which White is an important member. In addition, White's literary analysis of both well known figures such as Nabokov and lesser known poets and authors from all over is acute and thoughtful. White's discussion of his own work is invaluable to those of us, like myself, who are devotés and places it within the greater context of literature. Reading these essays and reviews made me want to explore further the authors and poets favored by the author, and that is what literary criticism is all about.

Genet allows you to feel the immediacy of the Palestinian situation with particles from lives,from ill-defined fragments of lives disrupted with no future,he stayed with a family in 1980 a half-day and a whole night where the young son,Hamza a fedayee went off at night to fight. Genet hearing gun fire in the distance inhabited his bed and was brought Turkish coffee and water in the night as a replacement for the young man,by his mother. Genet is a writer/poet,a political thinker,but never a man of politics, a deeply sensitive man,a virtuoso of the sensual image, as the starry-night reflected against the curtain in his room with the small blue table. "Of course it's understood that the words,nights,forests,septet,jubilation desertion and despair are the same words that I have to use to describe the goings on at dawn in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris when the drag queens depart after celebrating their mystery,doing their accounts and smoothing banknotes out of the dew."

Genet was allowed with special permission to visit the massacre site at the camps at Sabra and Chantila,smelling the rotting flesh, "They happened I was affected by them. I talked about them. But while the act of writing came later, after a period of incubation,nevertheless in a moment like that or those when a single cell departs from its usual metabolism and the original link is created of a future,unsuspected cancer,or a piece of lace, so I decided to write this book."

Genet has an intense need for passion of any dimension,scouring the vigours of whatever parts of fragments of the lifeworld's complexity presents itself to him. I once thought of this book as a romantic means of portrayel a betrayel of a political situation,one, the only one that excited Genet.It means something that only encounterings lives in struggle,bent into a repressive state that Genet finds the only life worth encountering,sensing and feeling about. This book was completed in 1986 after suffering from throat cancer, he died on the night of 14-15th of April,1986,while correcting proofs.

This book is absolutely essential to any understanding of the Palestinian situation. It is also the mostimportant work of Genet's entire career.

Here is where Ginsberg's brilliance is perhaps best shown. In conversation, he revealed his passion and sharpness for all topics. His "poems" should probably not be called poems, but instead exercises in poetic freedom, which is ultimately a futile task, especially when approached for the mere sake of asserting more freedom. One is baffled at the mere badness of his poems, which are not in the Whitmanian vane at all, but in the vane of bloated mounds of words. Nonetheless, Ginsberg, the "excitable visionary Jewish Budhist," is beautifully and swiftly rendered in these interviews.

i am a ginsberg fan and so i am biased but this book of interviews is really an enjoyable read. sure some of the interviews are dated but they really show the great intuitive thinker and off the cuff debater the allen ginsberg really was.
especially fun is his debate with john lofton who attempts to bury ginsberg in his born-again brand of conservativism. also fun is allen's transcripts from the chicago seven trial. i actually found this a hoot.
also his discussion on poetics is quite enlightening.
we miss you allen; your shining mind, intelligent wit and your shaman boddisattvic spirit

David Carter edits this compilation of selected interviews with Allen Ginsburg from 1958-96, providing a chronological arrangement of material which in some cases has not appeared elsewhere. The extensive interviews from decades of changing experience result in an excellent survey of Ginsberg's changing life, works and times, and provides a fine commentary on his social and literary life.