The Thief's Journal

by adminFrench Literature

The Thief's Journal

Jean Genet, Bernard Frechtman

Language: English

Pages: 272

ISBN: 0802130143

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


The Thief's Journal is perhaps Jean Genet's most authentically autobiographical novel, personifying his quest for spiritual glory through the pursuit of evil. Writing in the intensely lyrical prose style that is his trademark, the man Jean Cocteau dubbed France's "Black Prince of Letters" here reconstructs his early adult years -- time he spent as a petty criminal and vagabond, traveling through Spain and Antwerp, occasionally border hopping across the rest of Europe, always one step ahead of the authorities. "Only a handful of twentieth-century writers, such as Kafka and Proust, have as important, as authoritative, as irrevocable a voice and style." -- Susan Sontag; "One of the strongest and most vital accounts of a life ever set down on paper. . . . Genet has dramatized the story of his own life with a power and vision which take the breath away. The Thief's Journal will undoubtedly establish Genet as one of the most daring literary figures of all time." -- The New York Post

La chamade

Simone de Beauvoir

Nana (Les Rougon-Macquart, Book 9)

Selected Writings (Penguin Classics)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of his belongings, a suitcase containing some linen, and he left. For a few days I felt lighter, I no longer carried the weight of fear. Stilitano and I went out together several times. Had he not spat into his hands to turn a crank, I would not have noticed a boy of my own age. This typical workman's gesture made me so dizzy that I thought I was falling straight down to a period—or region of myself—long since forgotten. My heart awoke, and at once my body thawed. With wild speed and precision.

Do you know what they wanted? Eh, do you know? Well, I'll tell you. The moment they saw it was all up, they wanted to give themselves a treat that they never in their lives had time for: getting cold feet. You get it? It was a treat for them to surrender to the police. It gives them a rest.” Stilitano didn't turn a hair. I thought I could tell by his wry smile that he was familiar with the meaning of Armand's answer. Not in that assertive, heroic, insolent form, but in a more diffuse style.

A mirror and seem to see in my face something of his severe kindness. Then I feel proud of myself and of my dull, pushed-in mug. I don't know in what pauper's grave he lies buried, or whether he's still up and about, strolling around with his strong supple body. He is the only one whose real name I want to transcribe. To betray him even so little would be too much. When he got up from his chair, he reigned over the world. Had he been slapped, insulted in his body, he would not have flinched. He.

Work produced with a pair of scissors and folded paper. “I've seen Armand at it. I've seen him do his act,” he said. The idea of my calm and hulking master doing woman's work moved me. No ridicule could touch him. I don't know which prison he had been to, whether he had been released or had escaped, but what I did learn about him pointed to that school of all delicacies: the shores of the Maroni River in Guiana or the penitentiaries of France. As he listened to the docker, Stilitano smiled.

Unfolds in full earthly pomp: when it is not the brief walk to the scaffold, it is the elaboration of that expedition which takes to the sea and continues throughout life in a fabulous region. I do hot dwell on Guiana's special characteristics which make it appear, at the end, sombre and splendid; its nights, palms, suns and gold are to be found in abundance on altars. If I had to live—perhaps I shall, though the idea is untenable—in your world, which, nevertheless, does welcome me, it would be.

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