Jean Genet: Great writer, complete a-hole.

It’s not to say that the playwright and novelist Jean Genet was an utter poseur when it came to being an outlaw, but it’s difficult to untangle what of his biography was real and what was his own creation. Genet identified himself as an orphan, a child neglected by foster parents, a homeless thief, a hustler and a jailbird–but it seems like a fair amount of the “facts” were fiction.

Regardless, the 53-year-old writer was an international sensation for his novel, The Thief’s Journal, and for his plays, including The Balcony and The Blacks, by the time he sat down for an interview with Playboy in April 1964. Genet discussed his life and antisocial attitude. And he was asked a bizarre line of questioning about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which had occurred the previous November. He unsurprisingly provided an equally bizarre answer. An excerpt:

“Playboy: How do you feel about crimes such as that of which Lee Harvey Oswald has been accused? Did you find him boring–or subtle and sensitive?

Jean Genet: I have a feeling of fellowship with Oswald. Not that I was hostile to President Kennedy. I simply wasn’t interested in him. But I feel that I’m with the lone individual who opposes such a highly organized society as American society or Western society or any society in the world that damns evil. I sympathize with him–just as I do with a great artist who takes a stand against a whole society: neither more nor less. I’m with any lone man. But even though I’m—how shall I put it?—morally with a man who is alone, men who are alone remain alone. Even though I may be with Oswald when he commits his crime—if he did commit it—he was alone. Even though I’m with Rembrandt when he paints his pictures, he, too, is alone.”