Jean Genet (1910–1986)

This is a complicated book. It is non-linear and a blend of truth and fantasy. It can be confusing at times, but the writing is beautiful and I was satisfied by the ending: it did come together for me.

The story is, I think, largely a fantasy of the incarcerated narrator. That fantasy is populated by drag queens, pimps and murderers. The dullness of the narrator's prison life and the colour and vividness of the adventurers of his characters provided an intriguing contrast. I often wondered to show more what extent the narrator was the characters...to what extent he was using them to tell his own story.

Very well done. show less

Estava no meio de Nossa Senhora das Flores quando soube da notícia que a Todavia irá reeditar a obra do Jean Genet no Brasil a partir de agosto, como não vou dar mais meu dinheiro para o André Conti, vou continuar a ler as obras de Genet pela Nova Fronteira, mesmo o professor do curso que estou fazendo na USP sobre o autor dizer que a tradução não é lá essas coisas, que o original é muito mais cru.
Tradução à parte, Nossa Senhora das Flores é uma obra-prima da linguagem, queria show more eu poder escrever feito o Genet, é pulsão, id, metáfora, metonímia, gozo, real, simbólico, imaginário, tudo junto e misturado. Dá vontade de riscar o livro inteiro porque as construções das frases eram umas melhores do que as outras. Como dizia Sartre: Saint Genet, comédien et martyr, basicamente um místico da palavra. show less

"Poetry is willful. It is not an abandonment, a free and gratuitous entry by the senses; it is not to be confused with sensuality, but rather, opposing it, it was born, for example, on Saturdays, when, to clean the rooms, housewives put the red velvet chairs, gilded mirrors, and mahogany tables outside, in the nearby meadow."

Jean Genet wrote Our Lady of Flowers whilst in prison. This is an author's personal masturbatory material — shockingly voyeuristic and kinky. A self-objectification show more for pleasure against a place of biting boredom and limited freedom. More than its acts of perversity and explicit eroticism — a hundred words in place of the word 'penis' and farts appearing oddly ("But only the odor of my own farts delights me, and those of the handsomest boy repel me.") —it tells a story amidst its disjointed stream of thoughts. Exclusively homosexual, this book refreshingly spurs the male gaze onto different variants of men. Genet's set of characters, fashioned from his abyssal imagination opposite the four walls of his cell where he makes them wear the clothes and personalities he wants, wanders in a world of pimps and criminals. They blend themselves then create a murky intersection of Genet and his characters; Genet is his characters; these characters are Genet: "[...] the story of Divine, whom I knew only slightly, the story of Our Lady of the Flowers, and, never fear, my own story."

His words harden, but in rare moments they unexpectedly soften. And when they do, Our Lady of the Flowers touches the underground tunnel of vulnerable existence ("She will go on living only to hasten toward Death." and "I wanted to swallow myself by opening my mouth very wide and turning it over my head so that it would take in my whole body, and then the Universe, until all that would remain of me would be a ball of eaten thing which little by little would be annihilated: that is how I see the end of the world."). It can be devastating and painful too. This is very different than most and I might as well say, perhaps, groundbreaking with its structure and content. But I don't think I would have appreciated it better if I did not read Sartre's brilliant introduction. His deep insight about the book's significance and the linear sentiments in its non-linearity makes it shine into another kind of light. But this is not something I would say I find totally stimulating and arousing nor can I say this has moved and seduced me.

Stumbling upon it in a list of books Susan Sontag recommended I can't help but wonder if I dealt with it as best as I could without the preconceived notions I shaped for myself after merely reading the synopsis. A more piercing question, did John Waters sculpt his own notorious Divine from Genet's?

"I let myself drift, as to the depth of an ocean, to the depths of dismal neighborhood of hard and opaque but rather light houses, to the inner gaze of memory, for the matter of memory is porous." show less

The world of Querelle is immoral, erotic, and steeped in secrets. The prose is consistently poetic and sensual, alternately directed by characters lost to immoral behaviors and characters hiding from their own desires. And then, of course, the characters are all surrounded by sex and murder, if not directly engaging in both.

The back of the edition I own notes that the word "deals in a startling way with the Dostoevskian theme of murder as an act of total liberation", and the reference to show more Dostoevsky may be why I bought this book in the first place (I no longer remember)...but either way, Genet's treatment of murder is too similar to his treatment of sex to be taken as a totally separate conversation: both are incredibly personal acts, and sensual because of the hand-to-hand connection between bodies, and both are revelations of power carrying or denying their own unique brands of shame and guilt. One of the fascinating things about Querelle, though, is the shame that he (and others around him) feel regarding their homosexual acts even as he feels no shame about violence and general immorality (unrelated to sexuality). Some of the horror of the novel comes from the outright violence, but some also comes from the fact that all of this rings true: it isn't hard to imagine how contemporary society could leave someone feeling absolute guilt about their sexuality, and none for their violence, though (in my eyes) it should be something nearly unimaginable.

In the end, Genet's writing is intoxicating, and his descriptions luxurious and believable. At times, his style reminded me of both Dostoevsky and James, but the story of Querelle is something else entirely. Yes, this graphically violent and sexual...but then, maybe there's all the more wonder in that since it is also a beautiful novel that seems, unlikely as it is, to still reveal what is good. show less