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2009-12-27

Only some criminals have cachet

SEATTLE, Washington - The biographical page* of the Bantam paperback version of Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers states the following:

One of the most provocative literary figures of the twentieth century, Jean Genet - like Villon and Rimbaud - is in the great French tradition of the writer-criminal.
Should the writer be the only criminal that we romanticize in this way? I guess combining writer and criminal results in something interesting to us. I've tried to think of another example:

Milkman-criminal
(milkman)
The chef-criminal
The secretary-criminal
The therapist-criminal**
The engineer-criminal
The barista-criminal
The endocrinologist-criminal
The sculptor-criminal
The seamstress-criminal

Nothing seems to be working.

* I'm trying to find out what the biographical page of a book is called, without success.

** This one has potential, if you include Freudian psychoanalysis, which was one of the great frauds of the 20th century. I don't know if "therapist" instead of "analyst" is a correct term for those charlatans.

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