Tony Duvert is
a French writer born in 1945. Polemist and champion of
the rights of the children to have a right to their own
body and sexuality, on which he’s published two controversial
books of essays, Good Sex Illustrated (1974), L'Enfant
au Masculin (1980), though these themes greatly shape
his novels. He received the Prix Médicis in 1973
for his novel Paysage du Fantasie (published in America
by Grove in 1976 as Strange Landscape). And in
1978, he published with the Éditions Fata Morgana,
two works of prose poetry and short texts: District and Les
Petits Métiers.
Written in the wake of May ’68 and Deleuze/Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus,
Duvert’s Bon sexe illustre partakes in
this miraculous moment when
sexuality could turn the world upside down, revealing
social hypocrisy
for what it is. Bitterly funny and unabashedly anarchistic,
Duvert
openly declares war on mothers, family, psychoanalysis,
morality, the
entire social construct through a close reading of sex
manuals for children.
Published in 1973, one year after Duvert won the prestigious
Prix Medicis,
it proved that accolades had not tempered his scathing
wit or his approach
to such taboo topics as pedophilia. This translation,
by award-winning
Bruce Benderson, will belatedly introduce English-speaking
audiences to
the most infamous gay writer from France since
Jean Gênet first hit the
scene in the 1940s. |
