ject, perhaps it is a mark of progress that they present the subject at all. At least the door is open for a rational consideration, certainly an advance over the situation when no consideration is permitted by complete silence.

T.M.M.

THE THIEF'S JOURNAL, by 'Jean Genet. Translated from the French by Bernard Frechtman. The Olympia Olympia Press, Paris, 1954. (The Traveller's Companion Series No. 78, paperback.)

This work takes its place as a classic in the world of homophile literature. It explains Genet's tremendous literary reputation, something the English version of Gutter In The Sky authorized for open sale in this country (which version, I feel sure now, was horribly emasculated) certainly did not do for

me.

Superficially, this is a rambling first-person account of some periods from the life of a man unabashedly in love with evil: (italics added.)

Treachery, theft and homosexuality are the basic subjects of this book. There is a relationship among them which, though not always apparent, at least, so it seems to me, recognizes a kind of vascular exchange between my taste for betrayal and theft and my loves.

Whether we like it or not, to him homosexuality is evil. Homophile moralists and value-makers will abhor this book (but will read it for the pornography)!

I am not so sure this is an immoral book. Andre Gide called Faulkner a protestant writer, using it in its original sense, that is, one who protests. When Faulkner wrote about "degenerates," as, for instance, when he wrote of the impotent Popeye raping Temple with a corncob in Sanctuary, he was, in the Gidean sense, protesting against a world that had made his

characters what they were, and he was not merely wallowing in sex and crime. And, as it turned out, Gide was right, though few agreed with him at the time.

I think Genet is also a protestant writer. He may not be protesting against exactly the same things. Faulkner is a conventionally born and raised Southern Aristocrat (and evidently uninterested in homosexuality, for he has never even touched on it). Genet was an abandoned child, raised in poverty, and survived by his wits in orphanages, reformatories, prisons and slums (and is homosexual with a vengeance). But their literary worlds are amazingly similar the style, the violent and vicious lower class characters, the use of sex to shock, the macabre humor in grotesque situations, the weird religious sense conveyed. All this is found, as an example, in the following scene, at the end of which Genet wishes to join in the swish's protest against the world's contempt: (italics added.)

Those whom one of their numbers called the Carolinas paraded to the site of a demolished street urinal. During the 1933 riots, the insurgents tore out one of the dirtiest, but most beloved pissoirs. It was near the harbor and the barracks, and its sheet-iron had been corroded by the hot urine of thousands of soldiers. When its ultimate death was certified, the Carolinas-not all but a solemnly chosen delegation -in shawls, mantillas, silk dresses and fitted jackets, went to the site to place a bunch of red roses tied together with a crape veil. The procession started from the Parallelo, crossed the Calle Sao Paolo and went down the Ramblas de Las Flores until it reached the statue of Columbus. The faggots were perhaps thirty in number, at eight o'clock, sunrise. I saw them going by. I ac-

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