Description
Book SynopsisNow in paperback,The Crime of Jean Genetis a powerful personal account of the influence of one writer on anotherandone of the most penetrating explorations yet of Genet's work and achievement. Dominique Eddé met novelist and playwright Jean Genet in the 1970s. And she never forgot him. His presence, she writes, gave me the sensation of icy fire. Like his words, his gestures were full, calculated, and precise. . . . Genet's movements mimicked the movement of time, accumulating rather than passing. This book is Eddé's account of that meeting and its ripples through her years of engaging with Genet's life and work. Rooted in personal reminiscences, it is nonetheless much broader, offering a subtle analysis of Genet's work and teasing out largely unconsidered themes, like the absence of the father, which becomes a metaphor for Genet's perpetual attack on the law. Tying Genet to Dostoevsky through their shared fascination with crime, Eddé helps us more clearly understand Genet's relation
Trade Review“Eddé’s book is an intelligent but not reverential account of the way in which Jean Genet fascinated and intimidated her.” * Times Literary Supplement *
“For an American reader (or writer) currently agonizing over the degradation of civic values,
The Crime of Jean Genet insists on a bracing distinction between literary art that assumes its anger exerts a force for change versus writing that ‘never seeks to resolve or explain but, rather, to dissolve and destroy.’” * On the Seawall *
Table of ContentsDominique Eddé
The Crime of Jean Genet
Translated by Andrew Rubens and Ros Schwartz
