Customer Reviews (2)

a beautiful prose
One of the rare books I could read in one breath.It is short, inspiring, and imaginative.Choukri's writing is very simple, like a dessin, in a diary style.Simple, yet it tells so much about so many things, mainly about Genet and how he relates to people, what he thinks about literature.It also tells a good deal about Morocco.The translation is excellent, I think.The beauty of the language is well preserved.
One will sense the respect Choukri has for Genet, and his compassion, sensitivity and warmth toward the society.There are a few pictures of the author with Genet and his friends also, which is a treat.
A great page turner.Couldn't put it down.One of the most beautiful proses I've ever read.Now I'm looking for more books by Choukri.

Delightfully crisp prose
This book details the encounters of Choukri with Jean Genet in Tangier over a short period of time. The prose describing the encounters and the selection of details to include in the description is masterful - in a slimvolume one gains both a feeling of Morocco's bureaucrats, of the author'srespect for Genet and of Genet himself.There is no hint of "gossipcolumn" or "me with a big shot"- both of which are dangersfor this type of writing.This is book is well worth your time. ... Read more

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'One evening,' wrote Jean Genet in a prefatory note to The Blacks, 'an actor asked me to write a play for an all-black cast. But what exactly is a black? First of all, what's his colour?' - which is, perhaps, as good an introduction as any to this immensely interesting and exciting play. Translated by Bernard Frechtman, The Blacks is another striking example of the intensity, the depth and the complete originality that was Genet's view of life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The Mask And its Mirror
Recently, in reviewing the text for the play "The Maids" by French writer and playwright, Jean Genet, I write the following first two paragraphs that apply to an appreciation of the play under review , The Blacks", as well:

"There was a time when I would read anything the playwright Jean Genet wrote, especially his plays. The reason? Well, for one thing, the political thing that has been the core of my existence since I was a kid, his relationship to the Black Panthers when they were being systematically lionized by the international white left as the "real" revolutionaries and systematically liquidated by the American state police apparatus that was hell-bend on putting every young black man with a black beret behind bars, or better, as with Fred Hampton, Mark Clark and long list of others, dead. Genet, as his autobiographical "Our Lady Of The Flowers" details came from deep within a white, French version of that same lumpen "street" milieu from which the Panthers were recruiting. Thus, kindred spirits.

That kindred "street" smart relationship, of course, was like catnip for a kid like me who came from that same American societal intersection, the place where the white lumpen thug elements meet the working poor. I knew the American prototype of Jean Genet, up close and personal, except, perhaps, for his own well-publicized homosexuality and that of others among the dock-side toughs that he hung around with. So I was ready for a literary man who was no stranger to life's seamy side. His play "The Maids" was the first one I grabbed (and I believe the first of his plays that I saw performed)."

As I have mentioned elsewhere once I "discover" a writer I tend to read through everything else that he or she has written to see if there is anymore gold in store. That is the case here. In a race-driven and obsessed society like America, notwithstanding a current black president, the question of the relationship, for good or evil but mainly evil, between blacks and whites necessarily has to dominate the central societal drama. Many black writers, including James Baldwin or Richard Wright, have been very sensitive to that need to blacks to "wear" a mask around whites. That a French writer, immersed in white waterfront and prison lumpen culture could capture that same idea in a sharply symbolic (read the direction instructions) play is another matter.

This play, unlike "The Maid", reaches way down to a place where most play-goings, black and white, do not want to go. And that tells the tale here. I will wonder out loud how today's audience, spoon-fed on the notion of a "post-racial" society, would react. More simply put, this is the difference between Malcolm X's racial truth and Martin Luther King's. Enough said.


Note: If you look at the above linked "Wikipedia" entry for "The Blacks" you will realize that the first performances of this play was a very important part of the acting careers of many black performers, including James Earl Jones. I have seen this play but without the star-studded cast of the original performances.

DON'T BUY THIS FAULTY EDITION!
The single star is for this edition, not the play itself, which is Genet's only true theatrical masterpiece--as his true masterpieces are otherwise his novels.PAGE 120 OF THE BOOK IS BLANK! That's right, so stay away from this one until a new printing comes out.I contacted the publisher personally, and all current copies share the defect.No date has been set for a reprint.I would commend the original French to able readers.The play contains notable amounts of prose poetry that translations tend to butcher--as they also, for some mysterious reason, tend to do the play's emotional impact; the French is much more touching.

Be Patient w/The Blacks: A Difficult Read But Worth It!
Let me start off by saying that Jean Genet's "The Blacks" isn't for everyone. It's a very abstract work that demands patience from the reader. It's a play within a play so there are lots of times when you arenot sure when the characters are addressing themselves or the audience.That being said Genet originally wrote the play (In French) as an assaultagainst French Colonialism in Africa in the 1950's.....However "TheBlacks" most famous production came in New York in 1961. Directed byGene Frankel and starring Roscoe Lee Browne, James Earl Jones, Lou GossettJr., Cicely Tyson, and Maya Angelou "The Blacks" ushered in awhole new era of black actors in America. This version of the play containsbetween 10 and 15 pictures of that New York production. The pictures aloneare more than worth the price of the book! ... Read more

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Jean Genet has emerged in recent years as a key figure in defining and understanding twentieth-century theatre. This timely book, the only introductory text to Genet in English, offers an overview of this influential and controversial writer whose work prefigured many recent postmodern and post-colonial developments in theatre and performance studies.

Reflecting not only on key plays and productions from the French playwright but on his early life and later political activism, David Bradby provides a comprehensive account of a playwright and theorist whose plays caused rioting in his native country, and whose writing both for and beyond the theatre demonstrated a new approach to the relationships between art and life.

Customer Reviews (1)

Genet's Hidden Gems
So you like Genet? If you haven't accidentally come across this book of his poetry in French and English, you might not have ever known his poems had been translated--or worse, you might not have ever known that his poems existed. This is not a minor work; it stands with his novels.

The symbols are so dense that it seems you are reading one of his novels. In fact, the hero of Miracle of the Rose is the protagonist of one of these poems!

This is a rare treat, and it is rare to find a copy. Get it. ... Read more

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No descriptive material is available for this title. ... Read more

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The Screens is the last of Genet's plays to be performed during his lifetime. Its subject is the Algerian War of Independence, and it is an intricately crafted, grandiose construction - beguiling and baffling in equal measure.While the most openly political of Genet's plays, the work is not revolutionary in intent. Rather, as the play progresses the radical direction of lighting and the use of folding canvases serve to segment and compartmentalise the drama, and in so doing they transform the extremities of war into a series of incantatory scenes, vital and ritualistic, that bring stability to an otherwise unbearable reality.Haunting, savage and grotesque, The Screens is none the less an emotionally invigorating work that demonstrates redemption through abjection. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Get the soundtrack please
I bought this book because I loved the Phillip Glass soundtrack cd for this title.I read about 1o pages, then quit.Go buy the cd!!! the music is the best sounds the third world has to offer you.Then get Kiss Originals."I'm 93, she's 16, and I think I'm goin' blind"!!!!! Wa ... Read more

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Set in the port of Brest, this book is the story of a young sailor and the evil and mysterious people whom he attracts. The author has also written "Our Lady of the Flowers" and "Funeral Rites" and was closely allied to the French intellectuals led by the late Jean Cocteau. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Type is very small -- warning
The type is exceedingly small in the edition I received -- I don't wear reading glasses, and I am using a magnifying glass.You might want to try another edition, although Streatham's translation is fine.

The content is explicit, but Genet was an important influence, and it is very well written.No great book is for everyone. ... Read more