Jean Genet was a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist.
30 Facts About Jean Genet
2.
Thereafter Jean Genet was raised in the provincial town of Alligny-en-Morvan, in the Nievre department of central France.
3.
In prison, Jean Genet wrote his first poem, "Le condamne a mort", which he had printed at his own cost, and the novel Our Lady of the Flowers.
4.
Cocteau used his contacts to get Genet's novel published, and in 1949, when Genet was threatened with a life sentence after ten convictions, Cocteau and other prominent figures, including Jean-Paul Sartre and Pablo Picasso, successfully petitioned the French President to have the sentence set aside.
5.
Jean Genet was strongly affected by Sartre's analysis and did not write for the next five years.
6.
Between 1955 and 1961, Jean Genet wrote three more plays as well as an essay called "What Remains of a Rembrandt Torn into Four Equal Pieces and Flushed Down the Toilet", on which hinged Jacques Derrida's analysis of Jean Genet in his seminal work Glas.
7.
However, following a number of accidents and his suicide in 1964, Jean Genet entered a period of depression, and even attempted suicide himself.
8.
Jean Genet participated in demonstrations drawing attention to the living conditions of immigrants in France.
9.
Jean Genet was censored in the United States in 1968 and later expelled when they refused him a visa.
10.
Jean Genet entered without a visa and left with no issues.
11.
Profoundly moved by his experiences in the United States and Jordan, Jean Genet wrote a final lengthy memoir about his experiences, Prisoner of Love, which would be published posthumously.
12.
Jean Genet supported Angela Davis and George Jackson, as well as Michel Foucault and Daniel Defert's Prison Information Group.
13.
Jean Genet worked with Foucault and Sartre to protest police brutality against Algerians in Paris, a problem persisting since the Algerian War of Independence, when beaten bodies were to be found floating in the Seine.
14.
Jean Genet expresses his solidarity with the Red Army Faction of Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, in the article "Violence et brutalite", published in Le Monde, 1977.
15.
In September 1982, Jean Genet was in Beirut when the massacres took place in the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila.
16.
Jean Genet developed throat cancer and was found dead at Jack's Hotel in Paris on 15 April 1986 where his photograph and books remain.
17.
Jean Genet is buried in the Larache Christian Cemetery in Larache, Morocco.
18.
Jean Genet celebrates a beauty in evil, emphasizes his singularity, raises violent criminals to icons, and enjoys the specificity of homosexual gesture and coding and the depiction of scenes of betrayal.
19.
Funeral Rites is a story of love and betrayal across political divides, written for the narrator's lover, Jean Genet Decarnin, killed by the Germans in WWII.
20.
Prisoner of Love, published in 1986 after Jean Genet's death, is a memoir of his encounters with Palestinian fighters and Black Panthers.
21.
Jean Genet wrote an essay on the work of the Swiss sculptor and artist Alberto Giacometti titled L'Atelier d'Alberto Giacometti.
22.
Jean Genet wrote in an informal style, incorporating excerpts of conversations between himself and Giacometti.
23.
Jean Genet's plays present highly stylized depictions of ritualistic struggles between outcasts of various kinds and their oppressors.
24.
Jean Genet wrote another full-length drama, Splendid's, in 1948 and a one-act play, Her, in 1955, though neither was published or produced during Genet's lifetime.
25.
The Maids was the first of Jean Genet's plays to be staged in New York, produced by Julie Bovasso at Tempo Playhouse in New York City in 1955.
26.
The Blacks was, after The Balcony, the third of Jean Genet's plays to be staged in New York.
27.
In 1950, Jean Genet directed Un Chant d'Amour, a 26-minute black-and-white film depicting the fantasies of a homosexual male prisoner and his prison warden.
28.
Jean Genet is credited as co-director of the West German television documentary Am Anfang war der Dieb, along with his co-stars Hans Neuenfels and Francois Bondy.
29.
Jean Genet's work has been adapted for film and produced by other filmmakers.
30.
Jean Genet is mentioned twice in the lyrics to the song "A Cocaine Christmas and an Alcoholic's New Year" by the English band Money on their 2016 studio album Suicide Songs.