The Holy Oils of Jean Genet
by Patrick Autréaux
« Thanks to a chance encounter with a friend’s bookshelves, I am led back to the infatuation those bushy burial mounds, Our Lady of the Flowers and Miracle of the Rose, brought on. Once again, I wander the escapee’s maze of Jean Genet, allowing myself to roam dreamily through an enclosure surrounded by the high walls of a language punctured with loopholes, meandering at the discretion of images raised by tramping the brush of those tales … »
My translation of Patrick Autréaux’s essay ‘The Holy Oils of Jean Genet: On Milk, Sperm and Smoke’ is now up at Black Herald Press. It first appeared in the NRF in 2018.
Read the full essay here.
Patrick Autréaux is a French writer, living between Paris and Cambridge (USA). The view of illness as an inner experience informs his first cycle of writing, ending with Se survivre (Verdier). He is the author of dozens of books and articles in French. His new novel, L’Epoux has just been published by Gallimard.