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GENET, JEAN. The Declared Enemy: Texts and Interviews. Albert Dichy, Werner Harnacher, David E. Wellbery, eds. Jeff Fort, trans. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. 384 pp. $24.95.
First Genet was a poet. Then he was a novelist. After that he became a playwright. And finally he wrote political essays and articles for newspapers. This is the Genet whom we are just beginning to become familiar with, due to the publication in English of three posthumous books of nonfiction in the last fifteen years: Prisoner of Love (1989), Fragments of the Artwork (2003), and now Jeff Fort's impeccable translation of L'Ennemi déclaré ( 1991 ).
With this collection of editorials, in-depth interviews, and articulations on artists and art (supported by over 100 pages of incredibly thorough notes), Genet reinforces his reputation as the influential activist Sartre stated he could never be in Saint Genet (1952), the seminal critical text that introduced Genet to France (and therefore the world).1 Through lectures on the Black Panthers (whom Genet became the spokesman for), portraits of the Palestinians (whom Genet was commissioned by Yasar Arafat to live with and observe), and attacks...