BOOKS

Notices and reviews of books, articles, plays and poetry dealing with homosexuality and the sex variant. Readers are invited to send in reviews or printed matter for review.

THE THIEF'S JOURNAL by Jean Genet, translated from the French by Bernard Frechtman, Grove Press, New York, 1964. Bantam N3046 paperback July 1965. Originally published in France by Libraire Gallimard 1949. Foreword by Jean-Paul Sartre.

(For review of hardback edition see ONE Magazine, April, 1961).

"There is a close relationship between flowers and convicts." from the opening page to the close of the book he proves well his knowledge of convicts. His knowledge of flowers is not limited to seduction (deflowering), but also to flowering words, bursting private philosophy, blooming prose, and budding poetry-all intraposed on the printed page for absorption. If you cannot take strong writing, blunt instruments, and base poetry if you cannot take queens stealing from queens, beautiful male phallics, broad daylight of the homosexual underworld of Europa, then this book is not

for you.

"Fairies are a pale and motley race that flowers in the minds of decent folk. Never will they be entitled to broad daylight, to real sun." Because of such a statement, he is alloting more mental sun to shine on us daily. His books have opened up the collegiate and literary circles of the globe to homosexuality, per se. Will it be for the

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next generation to activate freedom completely? Or is it in the "instant" future?

He speaks with fresh-worn words of experience at "putting down" a lover: "What would become of him without me?"

Being proud, he will refuse to return to his family. In my company he will acquire habits of laziness and luxury. Will he hang around bars? He will become mean and cruel out of revenge, out of defiance, out of hatred of all men. One misfortune in the world, among so many others, is a matter of indifference to me, but I suffer at the thought of this child's taking the path of shame... I see Lucien: his numb, purple, sluggish, sensitive fingers, frozen to the bone, painfully open to enter the stiff filthy pockets of his trousers; I see him standing and tapping his toes on the sidewalk, in the dry cold, in front of cafes he dares not enter; perhaps a new dance may be born from his aching feet, a parody. He turns up the collar of his jacket. Despite the wind that chaps his lips, he will smile at the old queens. Grief unfurls over me, but what happiness in my body and heart spreads its fragrance when, by the same thought which makes me abandon him, I save him from all the evil to which I doom him. He will not hate me . . .

He knows the immediate grief of degrading his sisters: "You dirty