Jean Genet's intriguing legend assumes new but reduced dimensions when confronted with the revelations of acquaintances and official criminal, medical and military records, here published for the first time. The fiction of the disadvantaged early childhood contributes to the gulling of Sartre. The clever thief is found to be a vagrant bumbler, an associate of ne'er-do-wells. The intimate of celebrated criminals is but a distant fancier of their depravity. And this exceptional talent, this touted modern-day Villon, Verlaine and Rimbaud, received no presidential pardon for literary merit.
