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Article: Genet: Up From the Depths to High Art
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- October 10, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1993 Chicago Sun-Times. (Hide copyright information)
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Genet A Biography. By Edmund White.
Knopf. $10.
In a recent talk here, Arnold Rampersad told how he collaborated
with Arthur Ashe on the late tennis great's memoir, published
posthumously as Days of Grace. "I suggested to Arthur that to
succeed as a book it must be personal, confessional," Rampersad said.
"And I said to him, too, that it must be optimistic, because that is
what defines literature."
There is a strong pedigree for Rampersad's sentiments. But
where in this grand idea of moral and optimistic literature do we
find a place for Jean Genet, perhaps the greatest confessional writer
of our century and certainly - at least on the surface appearances -
one of its most amoral and ...