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The Thief's Journal

by Jean Genet, Bernard Frechtman (Translator), Jean-Paul Sartre (Foreward)

4.03 of 5 stars 4.03 · rating details · 1,256 ratings · 86 reviews

The Thief's Journal is perhaps Jean Genet's most authentically autobiographical novel, personifying his quest for spiritual glory through the pursuit of evil. Writing in the intensely lyrical prose style that is his trademark, the man Jean Cocteau dubbed France's "Black Prince of Letters" here reconstructs his early adult years - time he spent as a petty criminal and vagab...more

Paperback, 268 pages

Published February 2nd 1994 by Grove Press (first published 1949)

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Apr 07, 2008 Tosh rated it 5 of 5 stars

Without a doubt one in a proper life needs to be obsessed with the early Kinks, a love of Howlin' Wolf, read the entire works of Oscar Wilde, to know that there is a big difference between Brian Jones era Rolling Stones to the current Ron Wood years, the love of Charles Shaw brand of wine, and this novel by Jean Genet.

It's a must for every young man and woman to read as a teenager. For old men like me it brings a tear to my eye. And why is it that?

There is something so incredibly romantic about...more

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Mar 23, 2011 Mariel rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: I am hated for loving

Recommended to Mariel by: pretty little angel

"I dared not even notice the beauty of this part of the world- unless it were to look for the secret of this beauty, the imposture behind it, of which one will be a victim if he trusts it. By refusing it, I discovered poetry."

I'm saddened (embarrassed, too) by my two previous attempts to "review" Jean Genet. I don't feel as finger twisted (hah! My hands will never move in harmony with my thoughts) as those other times. So I don't have his poetry. The Thief's Journal spoke to me. Not urgently. I'...more "I dared not even notice the beauty of this part of the world- unless it were to look for the secret of this beauty, the imposture behind it, of which one will be a victim if he trusts it. By refusing it, I discovered poetry."

I'm saddened (embarrassed, too) by my two previous attempts to "review" Jean Genet. I don't feel as finger twisted (hah! My hands will never move in harmony with my thoughts) as those other times. So I don't have his poetry. The Thief's Journal spoke to me. Not urgently. I'm still inarticulate but it doesn't feel like I'll get the answers to something if I can just put my finger on the pulse of what is beating within me about this. I have felt that bereftness of my "place" in society, as it is (whatever the hell that is). But I feel it was there in his world just the same as that of those who had two pennies to rub together. So it's really all kind of a lie, isn't it?

Everything that happened to Jean Genet... This is totally fucking obvious. I'm gonna say it anyway. "Yeah, Mariel?" Shut-up, Mariel. All of it happened as he was himself. His tenderness, disgust, shame... The meanings of all those words as they were... What the hell was the meaning, anyway? It wouldn't have been that way through the eyes of others. This is a story of his poetic soul. I know I wouldn't have had that. Did anyone else in his life? I wouldn't take his word... (Damnit. Why did it make that no more Fred Savage rule? I'd do that thing about Kevin Arnold's voice overs. "And we both knew that..." "How did you know they knew that? This girl doesn't look like she gives a shit!")

Our Lady of the Flowers kinda tortured me for what I don't have in me anymore. I have this feeling about 'Flowers' and 'Querelle' that they'll grow in my goose-bumps meter of story love and book relevance as I attach them to other things (life experience not needed. His experience was DEFINITELY enhanced by his romances). That's the thing, right? Maybe giving it yourself is a lot harder than doing it for someone else. I don't know. (Kevin? Does Paul still have that sex book he stole under his shirt? Let's consult it.)

I'm more moved by those painful times. His gift was the poetry. But I felt moved out of "You say" and into looking out of perspectives of (yup, surroundings of beauty and romance) into more than what he was trying to convince himself of. That he chose to be gay to stick it to the man? Lack of "taste"? Hard edges? Softness?

I'm repeating myself all of the time on goodreads. I feel like John Frusciante with his hundreds of songs about regret (I'd listen to them all)... Timelessness. Genet wanted to be all things to all men. The father, preacher, teacher, put your tiny hand in mine. Like moving without stopping. Who would WANT to open their eyes in that life?

It was beautiful when there was no other choice. Like a broken heart. This might grow in my goosebump stable of hos too, if I can forget the lies. I'm interested in this kind of immortality of times that feel like they are gonna be forever. And grief.

"Erotic play discloses a nameless world which is revealed by the nocturnal language of lovers. Such language is not written down. It is whispered into the ear at night in a hoarse voice. At dawn it is forgotten."

"Later on , when, without refusing to get excited about a handsome boy, I applied the same detachment, when I allowed myself to be aroused, and when, refusing the emotion the right to rule me, I examined it with the same lucidity, I realized what my love was; on the basis of this awareness I established relationships with the world; this was the birth of intelligence."
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Aug 01, 2012 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars

Fictionalized autobiography of Jean Genet's career as a petty thief in the 1930s, part of a series of works that self-analyze Genet's life and his impressions of who he is/was and what he did to meet the exigent requirements of survival and find "meaning" in living as an outlaw. The life depicted is strikingly at odds with the startlingly lucid and vibrant prose, calling into question all assumptions generally made about those we normally judge as ignominious.

Samuel R. Delany has in his works ma...more

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Jan 20, 2011 Marri rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: queer, autobiographic, underworld, europe

I started out enthusiastic, enticed, and indeed won over by Jean Genet's prose. But the prose only gets more convoluted, and without a clear narrative to boulster it, this collapses under my expectations and hopes for it. I wonder if to read it again in the future would be to take more from it, but I find myself looking forward to the end of it and generally disappointed by my reading. I wanted the nitty-gritty details of the criminal life with the autobiographical clarity of 'Down and Out in Pa...more

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Mar 25, 2013 Mimonni rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ebook, kindle

Un libro di contrapposizioni. Il Genet narrante e la sua “ascesa” verso il delitto e la dissoluzione, un percorso quasi spirituale verso il basso cercando in questo una sorta di elevazione .

E noi che lo leggiamo, lo giudichiamo.

Emergono così il suo io e il nostro voi. Il suo appartenere a questa popolazione nascosta di ladri e omosessuali che forma un noi che si alimenta di ogni tipo di sentimenti e degrado, e voi che leggete, quel voi fatto di perbenismo, morale, condanna del peccato. Dalla pro...more

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Jul 30, 2011 Alex Hogan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: gay, classic

This book opened my eyes to how the world is viewed by different classes. It made me realise I was viewing the world from my comfortable middle class home. Jean Genet talks of his childhood and his life of crime and how differently he viewed it to the way we did. He showed how the laws of a country are made by the middle classes to protect the middle classes and so are only observed by the middle classes. If you live outside that middle class world the laws no longer are relevant to you and so t...more

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Sep 11, 2012 Masamitsu rated it 4 of 5 stars

Words are superfluous, stories go back and forth---it is not easy to follow the author's minds.But there are interesting elements. Psychlogy of committing crimes,vivid descriptions of men and friends he had loved.
Since it is a highly self-centered story-telling, it was not easy to digest the story fully.I had to skip many paragraphs,just not to be confused.
Some stories do not have an ending. For example, readers would like to learn pesicely how his relationship with a one-armed beau had ended...more

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Oct 15, 2012 Brian rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: reviewed

I couldn't help but love Genet's bloody dark queer heart after reading this. Such fine prose, beauty and unflinching literary bravery/vulnerability are rare in combination. I think it might be easy to forget, in 2012, that there was a time when tell-all literary autobiographies replete with ghastly admissions were almost unheard of, but this book obviously blew open a very wide doorway through which some of my favorite writers emerged. Given the ambition and successful execution of this memoir -...more

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May 11, 2013 Sam rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Les Genêts du mal

Jouer avec la matière du passé, la modeler avec lyrisme, l'héroisant presque. Un exercice autobiographique des plus sincères. Cri et murmure, vérité et mensonge, Jean Genet vole ses souvenirs, pour la beauté du mal, et de l'amour.

"Nous savons que notre langage est incapable de rappeler même le reflet de ces états défunts, étrangers. Il en serait de même pour tout ce journal s'il devait être la notation de qui je fus. Je préciserai donc qu'il doit renseigner sur qui je suis, aujo...more Les Genêts du mal

Jouer avec la matière du passé, la modeler avec lyrisme, l'héroisant presque. Un exercice autobiographique des plus sincères. Cri et murmure, vérité et mensonge, Jean Genet vole ses souvenirs, pour la beauté du mal, et de l'amour.

"Nous savons que notre langage est incapable de rappeler même le reflet de ces états défunts, étrangers. Il en serait de même pour tout ce journal s'il devait être la notation de qui je fus. Je préciserai donc qu'il doit renseigner sur qui je suis, aujourd'hui que je l'écris. Il n'est pas une recherche du temps passé, mais une œuvre d'art dont la matière-prétexte est ma vie d'autrefois. Il sera un présent fixé à l'aide du passé, non l'inverse. Qu'on sache donc que les faits furent ce que je les dis, mais l'interprétation que j'en tire c'est ce que je suis - devenu."

Ainsi est ce journal où les fragments d'une vie d'errance, de vol et d'amour se heurtent les uns aux autres, formant un alliage brut, étincelant. Il les répète (beaucoup), il les inverse, il les transcende, il les redéfinie. Poète, esthète, Genet taille les mots, ses mots pour livrer une déclaration d'âme, d'amour au vol et aux hommes beaux et forts. Il livre en vrac sa légende, non pas une vie, mais l'interprétation d'une vie où la trahison est magnifique et magnifiée, où les corps sont forts, une existence vers une sainteté, où l'âme est forgée dans la honte et dans l'orgueil. Le voleur trouve la beauté la plus divine dans les choses les plus veules, à l'envers de notre monde, nous à qui il s'adresse parfois comme si nous vivions dans deux univers différents, notre monde auquel il viendra se joindre, duquel il fait partie lorsqu'il noircit ces pages. Cependant, à la lecture de ce journal, on plonge dans le terrier, dans un pays des merveilles qui n'est pas supposé en être un, et pourtant. Oui, et pourtant. Le livre fermé, j'ai eu un sentiment viscéral d'avoir volé, trahi et aimé. Et ce monde de salauds que je réalise n'avoir fait que visiter l'espace et le temps de quelques pages, ce monde où les bagnards sont des fleurs, et le bagne, un paradis rêvé, idéalisé, ce monde me manque. Oui, l'Espagne me manque.

"Je parle de quelqu'un (...) mort depuis toujours, c'est-à-dire fixé, car je refuse de vivre pour une autre fin que celle même que je trouvais contenir le premier malheur: que ma vie doit être légende c'est-à-dire lisible et sa lecture donner naissance à quelque émotion nouvelle que je nomme poésie. Je ne suis plus rien, qu'un prétexte." (conclusion d'une merveilleuse tirade, un des moments forts du livre)(less)

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Jun 04, 2012 Isil rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

http://okudumdanoldu.blogspot.be/2011...

Kitabın ilk 3-4 sayfasında resmen ağladım. Sonra alıştım. O kadar edebi bir dil kullanmış ki yazar, fransızcası ağırdı yani. Uzun zamandır fransızca okumamamın da etkisi herhalde. Neyse sonraları alıştım okudum güzelce. Yazarın otobiyografisi gibi bu "Hırsızın Günlüğü" kitabı. İlgilenene Türkçesi Ayrıntı yayınlarından çıkmış. Peki nerden okudum bu kitabı? Sevgili Patti Smithçiğimin kitabında inanılmaz bir Genet hayranlığı var. Hatta Paris'e gittiğinde müze...more http://okudumdanoldu.blogspot.be/2011...

Kitabın ilk 3-4 sayfasında resmen ağladım. Sonra alıştım. O kadar edebi bir dil kullanmış ki yazar, fransızcası ağırdı yani. Uzun zamandır fransızca okumamamın da etkisi herhalde. Neyse sonraları alıştım okudum güzelce. Yazarın otobiyografisi gibi bu "Hırsızın Günlüğü" kitabı. İlgilenene Türkçesi Ayrıntı yayınlarından çıkmış. Peki nerden okudum bu kitabı? Sevgili Patti Smithçiğimin kitabında inanılmaz bir Genet hayranlığı var. Hatta Paris'e gittiğinde müzesini de ziyaret ediyor. Neyse gelelim Genet'ye kimdir nedir.. Efendim kitap 1930lardan 2. Dünya Savaşı'na kadar olan dönemi içeriyor. Bir bakıma inanılmaz bir gezgin Genet, Avrupa'nın bir sürü yerinde yaşıyor. Ama nasıl yaşıyor? Kendisi bir homoseksüel, hırsız, fahişe, bir hain ve bir yazar. Avrupa'yı hapishane hapishane geziyorum diyor kendisi de. Aşık olduğu ve beraber olduğu veya olamadığı erkekleri öyle bir tarif etmiş ki, böyle bir şehveti ben ne bir kadının erkek için yazdığını ne de bir erkeğin kadın için yazdığını gördüm. Anlatılan sabit bir olay yok. Bir ileriden bir geriden sahneler var. Hayatında önemli erkeklerden bahsetmiş, Java, Stilitano, Armand, Lucien, Salvador vs.
Kitabı bitirdikten sonra benim aklıma gelen önemli birşey şu oldu. Gezgin insanlar, bütün hayatları boyunca ordan oraya gidenler, acaba bir noktada hırsızlığa başvurmak durumunda kalır mı? Hani bileyim de ona göre çıkacağım yola..

...L'expérience est douloureuse et je ne l'ai pas encore achevée.. sayfa243

...La trahison, le vol et l'homosexualité sont les sujets essentiels de ce livre. Un rapport existe entre eux, sinon apparent toujours, du moins me semble-t-il reconnaître une sorte d'échange vasculaire entre mon goût pour la trahison, le vol et mes amours... sayfa193

...Les Allemands seuls, à l'époque de Hitler réussirent à être à la fois la Police et la Crime. Cette magistrale synthèse des contraires d'un magnétisme qui nous affolera longtemps... sayfa214(less)

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Apr 17, 2010 Tyler rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Adults; Fans of Edgy Literature

Recommended to Tyler by: Various Reviews

This semi-autobiographical account of the time in the 1930's Jean Genet lived on the streets of Barcelona, Antwerp and Paris depicts his quest for psychic survival, helped by consciously embracing a set of anti-values. Rejecting a world that rejects him, Genet tells us ...the greater my guilt, the more totally assumed, the greater my freedom.

What's unusual, besides the whole book, is Genet's particular trinity of anti-values: treachery, theft and homosexuality. He doesn't just live them passivel...more This semi-autobiographical account of the time in the 1930's Jean Genet lived on the streets of Barcelona, Antwerp and Paris depicts his quest for psychic survival, helped by consciously embracing a set of anti-values. Rejecting a world that rejects him, Genet tells us ...the greater my guilt, the more totally assumed, the greater my freedom.

What's unusual, besides the whole book, is Genet's particular trinity of anti-values: treachery, theft and homosexuality. He doesn't just live them passively, he pursues them with masochistic relish. This means taking an erotic pride in his shame before other people, shame for stealing, for turning against a friend, or for sucking off a cop. His first person account of a waif's solitude has some weaknesses and many strengths.

The weak points of the story pertain to Genet's non-linear narrative, which jumps around a bit within a nine or ten year period. That's not a bad style; but it has the effect of narrowing the context in which events occur. The success of the book depends on our being able to relate to the main character, and the absence of context makes this hard to do. Other annoyances involve the use of too many parenthetical remarks and footnotes, and sometimes complicated sentences comprised of maddening nested phrases.

The strong points of the book are the tone and quality with which Genet tells his story. The author's first-person account of his willful isolation on the margins of society is told with well chosen, almost lyrical sentences and paragraphs that draw attention to pages of exquisite composition. This is in fact the striking attraction of the story. The high quality and thoughtful control of prose that characterizes this book more than make up for its more ragged aspects. Making his task easier are the exotic turns by which Genet's mind pursues its dark side. Genet uses his talented prose to make a special exhibit of his mental state.

I thought I might like this book, and the foreword by Sartre is quite an endorsement. This is my first book by Genet and I'd like to read a couple of others. I recommend The Thief's Journal to anyone interested in society's outliers and castoffs.

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Jan 30, 2010 James rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: groovy, novels-novellas-etcetera, queer

“Poverty made us erect” writes Jean Genet in The Thief’s Journal. The novel sets about to describe what is evil by saying what it is not; or by what it should be; or possibly could be. Genet takes the Christian-bourgeois conception and inverts it to become virtue by which those of his disposition and societal deprecation strive to emulate: poverty and crime, sex and murder; all of which become the new miracles of an outsider hagiography.

With various sexual rendezvous with Dutch sailors, criminal...more

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Oct 06, 2008 Mr. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Jean Genet's absorbing work of literary autobiography traverses the boundaries of genre with stunning ingenuity and imagination. This work is in some ways similar to Capote's use of the so-called "non-fiction novel," in that it recalls apparently true events through the lens of fiction. This is the reflection of a petty thief, and vagabond. Genet is a young man wandering Europe and immersing himself in a world of crime and depravity. He fuses his homosexuality with nefarious hooliganism to play...more

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Dec 12, 2007 Ian rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Pope Benedict XVI

Shelves: literature

The Thief's Journal is, in a superficial way, a story of darkness, drudgery, and the appreciation of beauty that underlies the filth of society, told by a traveling thief and vagrant whose shadowy encounters would put Senator Larry Craig to shame. On a different level, it is an inversion of the morals and structures of Western society by which the scoundrels, pimps, homosexuals, murderers, trannies, and litterbugs of Europe are transformed into saints who reject the modern order and its boring w...more

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Feb 20, 2007 Katie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: lovers and fighters

The central tenet of this book is that being gay (and an impoverished orphan), our hero is consigned to a disrespected life. Rather than attempt to meet the demands of a society which rejects him, he clothes himself in an armor of utter depravity. If he cannot be the perfect prince he will be the perfect pauper and criminal. After the first 70 or so pages in which I struggled with the incredible egotism of the book (from Sartre’s introduction: “not all who would be are Narcissus;” as you might i...more

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Jun 06, 2009 Heather added it

Shelves: furrin, french, translated

Although I read it, I can't rate it. I read this in junior high, or possibly even elementary school. I didn't really understand what I was reading, of course. But I spent summers at my grandparents' house in Israel and I probably read every scrap of English print they owned. I suppose it says something about the writing that it managed to hold the attention of a little girl despite its subject matter. 'Course, it probably says something about the little girl as well...

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Jul 27, 2011 Darran Mclaughlin rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: french, existential, crime, lgbt

I gave up on this one. I loved Our Lady Of The Flowers but this was just dull. I'm tired of this French Avant Garde schtick. Abjection is noble, sinners are saintly, ugliness is beautiful etc..etc...etc.. ''I'm a writer and intellectual, but really I hate all that stuff and I'd rather be in the gutter or prison hanging out with authentic pimps and thieves and gangsters. For real'. Only the French seem to buy into this stuff.

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Oct 29, 2009 Alex rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: post_academic_2008_and_beyond

Easily the gayest book I've ever read, and that's after the first 20 pages. Set this aside while Genet easily manipulates your stream of consciousness; one minute he's musing on the trials of life and the next you're in close proximity to a depiction of Nirvana-Hell through the eyes of a beggar. He identifies with everybody he runs into, playing on your own ego the whole time. This one's worth a read.

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Jan 30, 2013 Johan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: criminology, deviance, sexuality

Great book! But stay away from the "New Traveller's Companion Series # 50" from Olympia Press, 2004 (the green cover). It's just a massive wall of text, missing characters here and there and the footnotes are mashed into the actual text, just a little bit further down. Perhaps this is what the original version of the book looked like, but as I checked the Grove Press edition on Google Books, that one looks a lot better and probably makes a big difference for the reading enjoyment.

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Apr 10, 2013 Andrew added it

Shelves: french-language-fiction

It's always been rather modish to lavish approval on Jean Genet-- if you dig transgressive fiction, Genet's going to be your guy, as most flamingly gay, ex-con, ex-homeless, left-wing French writers who hobnobbed with Black Panthers are bound to be. But aside from the fact that it is a TRANSGRESSIVE FRENCH NOVEL almost to the point of parody, it's still a well-written account of a forgotten subterranean world. RIYL William S. Burroughs and Gus Van Sant.

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Aug 10, 2010 Richard C. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Amazed how modern and fresh the book is. Could have been written yesterday, not decades ago. I think that's because most literary themes are about the darkness lurking behind "the white picket fence." This was entirely the inverse - the poetry and salvation and "light" lurking behind the darkness of the underground. Some writers try this, and to my mind fail, but Genet pulls it off because he lived and profoundly believed in the "alternative" life style. In parts - particularly in the middle - i...more

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May 30, 2013 Cameron rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a marvelous piece of writing. The subject matter may defer honest appraisal, it may embarrass readers to admit that they actually read this wicked book, but Genet is a master of language who should never be ignored.

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Jan 16, 2009 Ania rated it 3 of 5 stars

arrgh..difficult!
the writing style is a challenge-sentences had to be read and re-read to try and understand the meaning. the insight into homosexuality was enlightening. quite an arousing and romantic book really.

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Apr 13, 2013 Neil Munday rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

AWESOME. like looking down the steps of Montmartre this book has opened my eyes to this land behind the mirrors of "normal", using words that were keys to my understanding. . a book who's claws have scraped my soul.

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Dec 08, 2012 Andrew rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read another of Genet's novels recently (Our Lady Of The Flowers) and found this a little more accessible. It's not a novel as such - there is no linear plot, and just when you think something is about to happen it seems that Genet gets distracted or just loses interest. Some of the semi-philosophical musings are interesting, some of the descriptions entertaining, but it was still a struggle to work my way through it; and in the end, I don't suppose I'm much better off having read it. However,...more

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Oct 28, 2012 icarus rated it 3 of 5 stars

..kitabın bir köşesinde oda(veya s.o)nın kan,ter ve sperm koktuğundan bahsediyordu..
belleğimin minik bir odacığına bunu hapsetmişim..
gerisi yok....ama yine de soran olsa 'iyi biliriz' diyebilirim...

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Mar 06, 2013 Mizuki Genshou rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: queer-writing

I give this book three stars because it's really difficult to read and understand. Yes, I admit I don't understand what the author is trying to say, but I'm not saying it's a bad book.

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May 22, 2013 clogsilk rated it 3 of 5 stars

Despite the fact that this seems to jump about all over the place and doesn't really have a narrative as such, I did enjoy it. I particularly enjoyed reading the descriptions of old Barcelona, which the author brings to life very well. I wish I could read it in the original language because I can't help feeling a few things were lost in translation with the version I was reading (which oddly has the footnotes interspliced at random points in the text.)

I warmed to the author greatly through readi...more

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Oct 27, 2010 Jordan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Just reread this for a class I am teaching. It is a wild fun introspective ride. It is almost an Ur-text on criminality. Overall, it is fun and beautiful.

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Nov 11, 2008 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars

Genet's masterpiece. Combined with Sarte's "Saint Genet", this book changed the way I understand art and how it works. This books is important for anyone who wants to understand evil and it's relationship to creativity, as well as the moral ambiguity of beauty.

Genet's writing is very dense and forces you into abstraction, I found myself rereading very often. It's not an immediately accessible book and I found it philosophically complex, but incredibly rewarding. I would recommend that anyone int...more

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About Jean Genet

Jean Genet was a prominent, controversial French writer and later political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing novels, plays, poems, and essays, including Querelle de Brest, The Thief's Journal, Our Lady of the Flowers, The Balcony, The Blacks and The Maids.

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“I could not take lightly the idea that people made love without me.” — 35 people liked it

“Betrayal is beautiful.” — 10 people liked it

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