25 8 Reviews Genet. Ed. by Mairead Hanrahan. {^Paragraph, 27.2 (July 2004)) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 2004. 145 pp. ?24- ISBN 0-7486-2188-1. Genet: 'Journal du voleur'. By David Houston Jones. (Glasgow Introductory Guides to French Literature, 50) Glasgow: University of Glasgow French and German Publications. 2004. iv + 92pp. ?4.50. ISBN 0-85261-78i-x. Anyone with a scholarly interest in Genet should find something appealing in the special issue of Paragraph, which brings together long-established and newer critical voices on Genet in a highly thought-provoking collection of essays. True to the jour? nal's theoretical orientation, readings of Genet's dramatic, narrative, and discursive works draw on deconstructionist, Deleuzian, feminist, queer, or speech-act theo? ries. Whereas Genet might be considered a 'poetic' rather than a 'theoretical' writer, Mairead Hanrahan artfully shows in her introduction how unstable a dichotomy this is. Contributors also explore how theorists engage with Genet: Francois Bizet scrutinizes Bataille's responses to Genet; while Derrida's Glas resounds once more, having been revisited . . . by Derrida. In a typically rich, aporetic musing (surely one of the last before his death in October 2004), Derrida returns to the notion of the performa? tive countersignature: that which retrospectively validates a signature that pre-dates and announces it. 'Countersignature' therefore functions as an exposition and retrospective validation of ideas in Glas, among them the self's own inscription in the reading process. Thus the theme of death is strong here, lending this article some? thing of a beyond-the-grave quality. This volume is not without interest forthe less theoretically inclined reader. While Tom Conley's piece on the significance of the remainder {reste) in Genet privileges a Deleuzian perspective, as does Scott Durham's reading of the motifs of transforma? tion and free flow in Pompes funebres,this latter essay introduces a political note: one followed up by a series of discussions of the ideological import of Genet's writings (especially concerning Genet's relation to marginalized gay and black communities). An optimistic view of the Genetian text emerges from Elizabeth Stephens's assertion that Genet's depictions of the flaccid penis do not uphold, but problematize, he? terosexual masculine privilege; and from Clare Finburgh's argument that Le Balcon usefully attacks the notion of speech as act. However, in their interesting treatment of Les Negres, racial identity, and Bergson's theories on laughter, Benedicte Boisseron and Frieda Ekotto intriguingly leave open the question of what kind of contribution Genet as a white playwright makes to the black cause. Instead theoretical studies become cultural as they make a surely incontestable argument for seeing a latter-day Genet in that iconoclastic, contemporary, and postmodern cultural critic whose racial politics they contrast with Genet's: Eminem. Readers may well not endorse all the conclusions (or approaches) in this highquality set of articles. Many revisit familiar territoryin Genet criticism, but without being merely derivative. This well-edited and produced collection hangs together pleasingly: key themes in one article reappear from a differentperspective elsewhere (e.g. repetition, discussed in articles by Hanrahan and Durham). My only quibble is that no quotations appear in French. Anundergraduate-orientedstudy in English of Genet's narratives has been overdue for some time. The standard works of the late 1960s are now showing their age: they pre-date both important posthumous publications by Genet and evolutions in Genet scholarship, tending to be marked by an unapologetically heteronormative stance on homosexuality in Genet. Alongside theftand betrayal, homosexuality is discussed at some length in David Houston Jones's clearly written and accessible guide to Genet's Journal. This book succeeds in dealing with Genet's favoured thematic triad, while also paying close MLR, 101.1, 2006 259 attention to the Journal's poetic qualities. Jones excels in his close readings of the text, which he prioritizes over lengthy accounts of its critical reception, or its place in the Genetian corpus. Thus Jones is able to demonstrate the way Genet's language collapses under its own weight, the phenomenon inspiring many of the contributions to Hanrahan's volume. All this follows what may seem a circuitous consideration of theJournaVs uncertain relationship with autobiography, and...