Our Lady of Flowers

by Jean Genet

Book Overview

Jean Genet's first, and arguably greatest, novel was written while he was in prison. As Sartre recounts in his introduction, Genet penned this work on the brown paper which inmates were supposed to use to fold bags as a form of occupational therapy. The masterpiece he managed to produce under those difficult conditions is a lyrical portrait of the criminal underground of Paris and the thieves, murderers and pimps who occupied it. Genet approached...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 039417903X
• ISBN13: 9780394179032
• Release Date: March 1976
• Publisher: Grove/Atlantic
• Length: 307 Pages
• Weight: 0.57 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A Most Beautiful Song of the Imagination

Jean Genet is surely one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century - not to mention one of the greatest dreamers. In this book he presents us with a web of characters that can only reach mythical preportions. And, interestingly enough, he reveals that the only reason for their creation is for his own pleasure. So the book becomes like a walk through Genet's subconcious, in which we meet different aspects of the total personality that is Jean Genet. The book is like a dream and throughout it we are confronted with monsters, saints, nuns, prison guards, and the most secret of desires. Genet is the only author I have read who is capable of opening himself so completely - and we do get the feeling that this is written for his own pleasure - this makes it all the more enjoyable for us to read!

"Crime Begins With A Carelessly Worn Beret"

Jean Genet's seminal Our Lady Of The Flowers (1943) is generally considered to be his finest fictional work. The first draft was written while Genet was incarcerated in a French prison; when the manuscript was discovered and destroyed by officials, Genet, still a prisoner, immediately set about writing it again. It isn't difficult to understand how and why Genet was able to reproduce the novel under such circumstances, because Our Lady Of The Flowers is nothing less than a mythic recreation of Genet's past and then - present history. Combining memories with facts, fantasies, speculations, irrational dreams, tender emotion, empathy, and philosophical insights, Genet probably made his isolation bearable by retreating into a world not only of his own making, but one over which he had total control. The imprisoned narrator "Jean," who may or may not be identical with the author, masturbates regularly; like a perpetual motion machine, his fantasies fuel his writing and his writing spurs on his fantasies in turn. Nothing illustrates this more than the brief scene in which self - sustaining "Jean" describes his Tiamat.... Legs thrown over shoulders, "Jean" is not only the serpent that eats its tail but becomes a small, circular, self - imbibing universe all his own. A motto attributed to the alchemists could be the narrator's own: "Every man his own wife." Though the narrative is not the primary focus of this or any of Genet's novels, most responsible critics have failed to remark on the fact that the narrative of Our Lady Of The Flowers is the least compelling of any found in his five major novels. Our Lady Of The Flowers, does, however, lay the basic groundwork for the novels to come: The Miracle Of The Rose, Funeral Rites, Querelle, and The Thief's Journal (all written between 1944 and 1948). While Our Lady Of The Flowers is Genet's only novel to feature a predominantly effeminate homosexual man (Divine, who is at least partially a transvestite) as its protagonist ("Our Lady Of The Flowers," a virile young thug, is a secondary character), most of the other elements of the book will be very familiar to those who have read the balance of his fiction. Transvestites and transvestite figures abound, as do handsome, amoral, and homosexual or bisexual "toughs," jokes and extended vignettes concerned with lice, flatulence, constipation, and feces, mordant examinations of manhood and the criminal's code of honor, obsession with personal power through emotional betrayal, the long vagabond road to "sainthood," theft, masochistic love, prostitution, and vivid examples of the way in which physical desire and sexuality secretly and subtly fuel, in Genet's view, almost every aspect of life. As in portions of his other novels, the characters here, even the swaggering, virile young men, are known among their friends by fey pet names like "Darling Daintyfoot," "Mimosa," and "Our Lady of the Flowers," which are intended to be simultaneously affectionate and m

An unparalleled literary masterpiece

Although I first came across Genet reading "The Thief's Journal", I believe this to be his greatest work (if not the greatest work of modern fiction, better than "Ulysses"). His writing lyrically flows and gives the work an organic unity. No other work, except "Swann's Way" by Proust, has the creative control and beautiful images Genet infuses in his work. A recommended read for all people. A shimmeringly beautiful work of fiction which makes the underworld and the sexual outlaw sublime. (Also, I'd recommend "City of Night" by John Rechy.)

beautiful and brilliantly translated

A truly great book. Simultaneously psychological and anti-psycholgical, Genet explores and sanctifies outlaw behaviours such as homosexuality (when it was truly outlawed), thievery and murder. Read this in French if you can, but don't hesitate to read the translation if you can't. Sartre's introduction is trash, however (what did you expect?).

one of the most brilliant...

one of the most brilliant layouts of the psychology of the criminal mind i have read... to actually understand the movements of thought of a boy gone bad and to see the inevitable run of the crime. and to share in the mental and emotional movement is undeniably shared in this first person narrative account.