Genet: A Biography was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1993. The book is the product of ten years of research, during which White conducted hundreds of interviews, gained access to Genet’s unpublished correspondence, and traveled to the locations of Genet’s life across France, North Africa, and the Middle East. At over seven hundred pages, it is the definitive biography of one of the most transgressive and brilliant writers of the twentieth century.
Jean Genet’s life was itself a work of art — or, perhaps more accurately, a deliberate affront to bourgeois society. Abandoned at birth, raised in foster care, he became a petty thief, male prostitute, and convicted criminal before writing novels (Our Lady of the Flowers, The Thief’s Journal) and plays (The Maids, The Balcony, The Blacks) of extraordinary poetic power. Sartre’s famous essay “Saint Genet” mythologized him as an existential hero; Cocteau and other French intellectuals championed him and secured his pardon from a life sentence.
White is ideally positioned to write this biography: as a gay American novelist living in Paris, he shares enough with Genet to understand him from inside while maintaining enough distance to see him clearly. His Genet is neither saint nor monster but a supremely intelligent man who made radical choices about how to live — choices whose consequences (for himself and others) White traces without either condemning or romanticizing.
The biography is particularly strong on Genet’s later years: his involvement with the Black Panthers, his support for Palestinian liberation, his final masterwork Prisoner of Love, and the complex relationship between his political commitments and his literary vision.
Collecting Genet: A Biography
First edition (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1993): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $20–$50
- Very good/very good: $8–$20
- Signed: $50–$120