Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
"A beautiful book, painting the dark side of Jean Genet: those moments that are the most fascinating about a writer."—Bernard-Henri Levy, Le Point
During the last eighteen years of his life (196886), Jean Genet was preoccupied with the struggles of the disenfranchised and displaced: among them the Black Panthers, the Baader-Meinhof, and the Palestinians. Hadrien Laroche's book is a careful philosophical and historical reading of acts and thoughts of various political movements in the seventies and the eighties all over the world, and of Genet's experiences and writings. It describes the adventures of a writer engaged with the "real world" as opposed to the world of letters or, as he called it, "the grammatical world."
This translation of Le Dernier Genet (Seuil) considers Genet's insights, failures, and critique of humanism, and examines the way in which his energetic prose forged a new political, aesthetic, and philosophical relation between literature and the world. This is also the first book to address the issues of Genet's relation to Israel, Jews, and anti-Semitism.
The Last Genet focuses on a critical moment in history, but also on questions of borders, language, and identity, offering an alternative to Jean-Paul Sartre's concept of engagement. As such, it will be critically relevant to readers interested in the questions surrounding ethical and political writing today.
Hadrien Laroche was born in Paris; he has written three French-language novels and completed his doctorate under Jacques Derrida, who considered him "one of the most talented and original thinkers of his generation."
Synopsis
"A beautiful book, painting the dark side of Jean Genet: those moments that are the most fascinating about a writer."--Bernard-Henri Levy, Le Point
During the last eighteen years of his life (1968-86), Jean Genet was preoccupied with the struggles of the disenfranchised and displaced: among them the Black Panthers, the Baader-Meinhof, and the Palestinians. Hadrien Laroche's book is a careful philosophical and historical reading of acts and thoughts of various political movements in the seventies and the eighties all over the world, and of Genet's experiences and writings. It describes the adventures of a writer engaged with the "real world" as opposed to the world of letters or, as he called it, "the grammatical world."
This translation of Le Dernier Genet (Seuil) considers Genet's insights, failures, and critique of humanism, and examines the way in which his energetic prose forged a new political, aesthetic, and philosophical relation between literature and the world. This is also the first book to address the issues of Genet's relation to Israel, Jews, and anti-Semitism.
The Last Genet focuses on a critical moment in history, but also on questions of borders, language, and identity, offering an alternative to Jean-Paul Sartre's concept of engagement. As such, it will be critically relevant to readers interested in the questions surrounding ethical and political writing today.
Hadrien Laroche was born in Paris; he has written three French-language novels and completed his doctorate under Jacques Derrida, who considered him "one of the most talented and original thinkers of his generation."
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Laroche's exhaustive research provides a historical framework for examining Jean Genet's later non-fiction work, particularly Prisoner of Love, and the ways in which his political ideals and experiences shaped his worldview. Laroche focuses specifically on Genet's involvement with Germany's Red Army Faction, the Black Panthers in the United States, and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The disenfranchisement of these three groups led Genet to ask difficult questions about philosophy and linguistics. Among these was the distinction between brutality and violence, the former representing attacks by the oppressors against the oppressed, and the latter being the necessary acts of retaliation taken by the disenfranchised. Genet makes a similar argument concerning murder and assassination. Speaking on behalf of Black Panther George Jackson in 1971, Genet wrote, "I have come to that part of my speech where, to help save the blacks, I am calling for crime, for the assassination of whites." Genet ties these groups together with language, noting, "The Black Panthers and the Palestinians...all have fought windmills: windmills of racist language and the fear that follows it." He discusses the difficulties of an oppressed minority when working within the same spoken language of its oppressors. Read alongside the primary texts, this book is a helpful supplement, but the point may be lost on less ardent fans.(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal
This book has a timely release as December 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jean Genet, the French writer most famous for such plays as The Maids and The Balcony. Genet died in 1986, with his last book, the autobiographical Captif Amoureux (Prisoner of Love), published posthumously. French novelist Laroche's book, published in French in 1997, concentrates on the last 18 years of Genet's life, a time when he became especially politically active, as Prisoner of Love showed, which Laroche analyzes and refers to here. He examines Genet's associations with groups considered "in revolt," including the Black Panthers, the PLO, and Germany's Red Army Faction. Laroche analyzes and connects Genet's writing to his involvement with these disenfranchised political groups. A former petty criminal and prisoner, Genet commiserated with these displaced groups and tried to give a voice to those who (he thought) had none. This English translation also has a new supplement not found in the original French edition. VERDICT Highly recommended for readers interested in Genet and his works and for libraries with French literature collections.—Erica Swenson Danowitz, Delaware Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Media, PAKirkus Reviews
A critical investigation of French writer and philosopher Jean Genet (1910–1986) in his later years, 1968 until his death.
Unfailingly controversial and provocative during his life, Genet is now known for novels like Our Lady of the Flowers (1943) and The Thief's Journal (1949), plays likeThe Blacks(1958) and numerous books of poetry includingThe Man Sentenced to Death(1945). Less studied but perhaps more contentious are his later works likeThe Prisoner of Love(1986), as well as his political activism among such disenfranchised groups as the Black Panthers in the United States and the Palestinians in the Middle East. In his first English-language translation (first published in France, this book was nominated for the Prix Fémina in 1997), essayist and novelist Laroche demonstrates how Genet's philosophy became increasingly unsettled as he delved deeper into the lives of people like George Jackson, Malcolm X, Bobby Seale and Yasser Arafat, as well as his own origin and identity. The trope of identity pervades this text as the author reveals Genet's struggles to come to terms with issues regarding race, homeland, origins, nation, borders and power. For example, Laroche examines the nuanced and tenuous difference between violence and brutality, ultimately suggesting that the violence by Black Americans during the civil-rights era was a valid response to the brutality and oppression perpetrated by whites. The key to understanding Genet, writes the author, is through language, which underlies identity, homeland and "the heart of the writer." Genet's discoveries and conclusions were consistently insightful and provocative, though not always desirable, moral or ethical. His last journey, as revealed by Laroche, is imbued with beauty, metamorphosis and emancipation on one hand, and monstrosity, nihilism and hopelessness on the other.
An indispensible study for readers interested in Genet, the Black Panthers, the Palestinian/Israeli conflict or, more generally, the philosophy of humanism.