Reviews

Genet by Edmund White

piercedkl's review

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informative medium-paced

5.0

Brilliant biography of the iconic Jean Genet. 

angelbeat's review

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challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

austindoherty's review

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5.0

Meticulously researched, full of choice anecdotes. White is unsentimental, a biographer, not a hagiographer. (He can't stop negging Genet for being bad at writing letters.) White is also a powerful exegete himself.

In a book full of ongoing encounters with notable persons, nothing hit me quite like this story from 1968: Genet, in Chicago to cover the Democratic Convention, wants to see the American countryside. But his driver gets lost and instead Genet spends the day "touring the industrial wasteland of Gary, Indiana." A wonderful premise for a terrible play.
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