Genet and His Press

THE PAGES ANNOUNCING WORKS TO COME in Jean Genet's published texts from about the 1950s onwards warrant more than passing notice. Should one in 1954 have opened the Jean-Jacques Pauvert edition of L£s Bonnes in which for the first time the two versions of the play appear side by side, one would have read "En preparation chez le meme editeur: L'Enfer (un vo­ lume)." Assuming a developing taste for Genet's works, in 1960 the curious Genet fan might have purchased the Barbezat editions of either L£ Balcon or L£s Negres and, in the list of works announced "a paraitre," have read: l£s Paravents, "Elle,"1 and l£s Fous. No doubt having hurried out and purchased the Barbezat edition of L£s Paravents as soon as it appeared in 1961, the same person might have felt comforted to notice that "Elle" and l£s Fous are still announced as "a paraitre." Compensating, perhaps, for Pauvert's fail­ ure to produce the promised one volume of L'Enfer, the addition in 1962 by Barbezat of another work by Genet might have been a consolation of sorts, for by this year the list has grown and includes: L£ Bagne, "Elle," and Les Fous. 1963 might be considered a slower year, but still the increasingly curious Genet reader might have smiled at the change in Barbezat's list of promised texts, for in Barbezat's edition of L£s Bonnes that year the titles of "Elle" and l£s Fous apparently have not changed, but that of L£ Bagne is suddenly followed by a parenthesis in which one reads Sante Forlano. Later that same year the addition of yet another play to the list announced by Barbezat increases the likelihood of this budding, albeit imagined, Genet enthusiast having to create, or at the very least clear, a separate shelf at home for the collected works of Genet; the 1963 edition of L£s Negres offers the promise of L£ Bagne (Sante Forlano), La Fee, "Elle," and l£s Fous. In 1966 Barbezat's edition of Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs pledges L£ Bagne (now minus its