The Thief's Journal
Encyclopedia
The Thief's Journal is perhaps Jean Genet
's most famous work. It is a part- fact, part-fiction autobiography that charts the author's progress through Europe
in a curiously depoliticized 1930s, wearing nothing but rags and enduring hunger, contempt, fatigue and vice. Spain, Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Nazi Germany, Belgium... everywhere is the same: bars, dives, flop-houses; robbery, prison and expulsion.
The novel is structured around a series of homosexual love affairs between the author / anti-hero
and various criminals, con artists, pimps, and even a detective.
A common theme is the inversion of ideals: betrayal is the ultimate form of devotion, petty delinquency is brazen heroism, and confinement is freedom.
Under inspiration of "Being and Nothingness", this work is affirmed to be "pursuit of the impossible nothingness" and it was dedicated to Jean-Paul Sartre
and "Castor", that means Simone de Beauvoir
.
Genet appropriates Christian language and concepts to pursue an alternative form of "sainthood" with its own trinity of "virtues" - homosexuality, theft and betrayal. Each burglary is set up as quasi-religious ritual, and the narrator describes his self-preparation for his crimes like that of a monk in a vigil of prayer, readying himself for a "holy" life. He establishes a "constructed reader," a fictional personification of the bourgeois values of the late 1940s, against which to measure his deviance from the "norms" of society.
The novel is a voyage of self-discovery, transcending moral laws; it is the philosophical expression of perverted vice; the working out of an aesthetic of degradation.
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
's most famous work. It is a part- fact, part-fiction autobiography that charts the author's progress through Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
in a curiously depoliticized 1930s, wearing nothing but rags and enduring hunger, contempt, fatigue and vice. Spain, Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Nazi Germany, Belgium... everywhere is the same: bars, dives, flop-houses; robbery, prison and expulsion.
The novel is structured around a series of homosexual love affairs between the author / anti-hero
Anti-hero
In fiction, an antihero is generally considered to be a protagonist whose character is at least in some regards conspicuously contrary to that of the archetypal hero, and is in some instances its antithesis in which the character is generally useless at being a hero or heroine when they're...
and various criminals, con artists, pimps, and even a detective.
A common theme is the inversion of ideals: betrayal is the ultimate form of devotion, petty delinquency is brazen heroism, and confinement is freedom.
Under inspiration of "Being and Nothingness", this work is affirmed to be "pursuit of the impossible nothingness" and it was dedicated to Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
and "Castor", that means Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...
.
Genet appropriates Christian language and concepts to pursue an alternative form of "sainthood" with its own trinity of "virtues" - homosexuality, theft and betrayal. Each burglary is set up as quasi-religious ritual, and the narrator describes his self-preparation for his crimes like that of a monk in a vigil of prayer, readying himself for a "holy" life. He establishes a "constructed reader," a fictional personification of the bourgeois values of the late 1940s, against which to measure his deviance from the "norms" of society.
The novel is a voyage of self-discovery, transcending moral laws; it is the philosophical expression of perverted vice; the working out of an aesthetic of degradation.