Jean Genet was a French novelist and playwright known for works such as The Maids and The Thief's Journal. Following ten convictions for theft and other offenses, he was pardoned by the President of France in 1949 after an appeal by Jean Cocteau and Jean-Paul Sartre. His writing transformed his experiences in prison into significant literature.
Jean Genet: The Thief Who Wrote His Way Out of a Life Sentence
Jean Genet learned to steal before he learned a trade, and he never really learned a trade. Abandoned as a baby, raised as a ward of the French state and locked up as a teenager, he deserted the army, drifted across Europe and came home to a revolving door of Paris prisons. By the late 1940s he had ten convictions and faced prison for life as a repeat offender. What saved him was a novel he had written in a cell. Jean Cocteau told a court he was "the greatest writer of the modern era." Jean-Paul Sartre agreed. In 1949 the President of France pardoned him.
A Ward of the State
Genet was born in Paris on 19 December 1910 and given up by his mother before he was a year old. The public welfare service placed him with a foster family in Alligny-en-Morvan, a village in the Nièvre. His first theft came at about ten. In 1924, after he earned his primary-school certificate, the authorities sent him to Paris to train as a typesetter. He lasted two weeks, ran away to Nice and was arrested within days.
The Colony at Mettray
At fifteen, charged with vagrancy, he was held at the Petite-Roquette youth prison and then sent to the agricultural penal colony at Mettray. He stayed until 1929. The colony, founded in 1840, closed in 1939; he later made it the setting of his novel *Miracle of the Rose* (1946). He left the only way open to him: he enlisted in the army.
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He spent seven years in uniform and deserted in 1936. He crossed Europe as a vagrant, a petty thief and a male prostitute. Back in France in 1937, he was arrested again and again: for theft, for false papers, for vagrancy, for lewd acts. Between 1937 and 1944 he spent about four years behind bars, mostly in the Paris prisons of La Santé and Fresnes. The thefts were small and constant, and each one had a victim. He would later build a literature on them.
A Novel Written Twice
In a cell in 1942 he began *Our Lady of the Flowers*, a novel set among the outcasts of Paris. When the manuscript was confiscated, he wrote it again from memory. A small private edition followed. In prison he also wrote poems, among them *Le Condamné à mort*, and the novel *Miracle of the Rose*. At his 1943 trial, Cocteau stood up in court for a barely published author and put his own reputation behind the prisoner's talent. It was the first time the literary world went to bat for Genet. It would not be the last.
The Writers' Petition
By the late 1940s the law had caught up with the legend. With ten convictions behind him, Genet faced a life sentence under France's laws on habitual offenders. Cocteau and Sartre took his case to President Vincent Auriol, with Pablo Picasso among the other supporters. In 1949 Auriol granted a full pardon. Genet never went back to prison. That same year he published *The Thief's Journal*, a first-person reckoning with his years of wandering and theft.
The Theatre of Masks
The stage made him famous a second time. *The Maids* was first performed in Paris in 1947. *Deathwatch* followed in 1949, *The Balcony* in 1956 and *The Blacks*, first staged in Paris in 1959. *The Screens* was published in 1961. In 1950 he wrote and directed *Un chant d'amour*, a 26-minute silent film about prisoners in isolation. In 1952 Sartre published *Saint Genet*, a book-length philosophical study that turned the thief into a case for existentialism. Genet published little new work for several years afterward.
The Outlaw's Causes
In his last decades Genet gave his loyalty to movements he saw as outcasts like himself. In 1970 he traveled to the United States at the invitation of the Black Panthers and spoke on their behalf. In the 1970s he took up the Palestinian cause. In September 1982 he was in Beirut during the Sabra and Shatila massacre, and he wrote *Four Hours in Shatila* about what he saw. His final book, *Prisoner of Love*, drew on those years.
The Last Room
Genet returned to Paris, ill with throat cancer, to correct the proofs of *Prisoner of Love*. He died on 15 April 1986 at Jack's Hotel, a small hotel in the city, aged 75. The book appeared after his death. He is buried in Larache, Morocco.
On Screen and in Print
- Un chant d'amour (1950), short silent film, written and directed by Jean Genet, produced by Nikos Papatakis.
- Saint Genet, comédien et martyr (1952), Gallimard, by Jean-Paul Sartre; a book-length philosophical study of Genet, published in English as *Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr*.
- Querelle (1982), feature film, directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder from Genet's novel *Querelle of Brest*; Brad Davis plays the title role. Genet himself is not portrayed.
Why Jean Genet Is Called a Genius
Because he did what almost no writer manages: he took the language of the church and the slang of the cell and made them one voice. *Our Lady of the Flowers* was written by a prisoner with a primary-school education, and it reads like scripture. His plays turned servants, prostitutes and the powerless into the most dangerous people on the stage, and they are still performed around the world. That is the genius. The crimes are the other half of the story. His thefts had victims, ordinary people who lost what he took, and a petition from famous friends erased a record that ordinary thieves serve out in full. His books turn criminals into saints. This page does not. The pardon honored the talent. It did not undo the thefts.
Achievements
- Wrote his first novel, Our Lady of the Flowers, in a prison cell in 1942; when the manuscript was confiscated, he wrote it again from memory.
- After ten convictions, for theft, false papers, vagrancy and other offenses, he faced a life sentence as a repeat offender; President Vincent Auriol pardoned him in 1949 after an appeal led by Jean Co
- At his 1943 trial, Jean Cocteau told the court Genet was the greatest writer of the modern era.
- His play The Maids was first performed in Paris in 1947, followed by Deathwatch (1949), The Balcony (1956) and The Blacks (staged 1959).
- Became the subject of Jean-Paul Sartre's book-length study Saint Genet (1952).
- Wrote and directed Un chant d'amour (1950), a 26-minute silent film.
- Traveled to the United States in 1970 at the invitation of the Black Panthers, and wrote Four Hours in Shatila after the September 1982 massacre in Beirut.
- Finished his last book, Prisoner of Love, while ill with throat cancer; it was published after his death in 1986.
