The White Paper (French: Le Livre blanc, alternatively The White Book) is a 1928 French novel by Jean Cocteau. It is a pederastic semi-autobiographical novel about Cocteau's life, and centers on an unnamed protagonist developing his sexual identity by having sex with men and watching men have sex with each other. Cocteau never placed his name on the book, but he provided illustrations for some of its editions.
Jean Cocteau, a French novelist, stayed with his pupil Jean Desbordes[fr] in the south of France for the latter part of 1927.[1] When staying in Chablis later that year, he probably finished writing White Paper, and Desbordes continued writing his debut novel, J'Adore.[1]
The details of the novel's writing process are unclear, and Cocteau never claimed the novel as his own.[1] He initially did not want it to be released, writing on his 1928 manuscript: "Not to be published. It should only be published after my death or anonymously in a deluxe edition limited to five copies".[2] It was published that year, 1928, in his friend's—Maurice Sachs's—literary press, Editions des Quatre Chemins, for a total printing of 21 copies: 10 for Cocteau, and 11 for the public.[1] In 1930, it was published in a new edition by Éditions du Signe,[upper-alpha 1] and received a run of 450 copies; where the first edition had no illustrations, the Éditions du Signe had 17 by Cocteau and colorist M.B. Armington.[1] By 2007, it was published at least 13 times, including two editions translated into English, all of which varied considerably: Some (such as in the first edition) had no illustrations at all, and some had 43 (such as in the 1983 Editions de Messine version, all of which were drawn by Cocteau himself and were largely sexually explicit).[3]
Frédéric Canovas, a scholar of French literature, wrote that Cocteau chose The White Paper as the novel's title because of the term's contemporary usage as an official document that addresses social issues.[4] According to Canovas, gay identity and experiences were seen as social problems by Cocteau's contemporaries.[4]
Plot
The book is a semi-autobiographical account of Cocteau's life.[5] An unnamed narrator grows up and develops his sexual identity. He recounts stories of having crushes in school in Toulon,[upper-alpha 2]one-night stands—including his first sexual encounter in a park near his father's house, and his gay identity being acknowledged after watching two boys have sex[7]—watching nude people masturbate through one-way mirrors,[8] and casual sex at bathhouses.[9] The narrator is never accepted by those around him, and he retreats from society as a whole.[10]
Reception
Frédéric Canovas wrote that Cocteau's choice not to change the novel's text over its several editions, but instead to update the text with illustrations, was a recognition by Cocteau that his ideas about gay identity dramatically changed over his lifetime, and that updating the novel to account for these changes would lead to "too many cuts in the text, too many drastic changes to the plot".[11] Canovas said there was a kind of irony about Cocteau's choice: He never signed the book, meaning he never accepted its history, but also changed its design, meaning he stayed in the process of "acknowledging" it.[11]
Harry Mulford of ONE Magazine, the magazine of gay rights organization ONE, Inc., wrote in 1953 that the book is both confessional and apologetic: It confesses the narrator's gay identity in an "amazingly frank, sharply effective" way, while it also defends the right to develop a gay identity in a "less effective" manner.[12] In contrast, the poet Gregory Woods said Cocteau's attempt at writing erotically failed in the scenes where the narrator watches people through mirrors, saying it was more pornographic, and was a "dishonest erotic mirror".[8]
Sears, James T. (2009) [1998]. "A generational and theoretical analysis of culture and male (homo)sexuality". In Pinar, William (ed.). Queer theory in education. Taylor & Francis. ISBN978-1410603760.
Williams, James S. (August 2006). "Resurrecting Cocteau: Gay (in)visibility and the clean-up of French culture". Modern & Contemporary France. 14 (3): 317–330. doi:10.1080/09639480600818441. S2CID144476755.
Williams, James S. (2008). Jean Cocteau. Critical Lives. Cromwell Press. ISBN9781861893543.
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, film director, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost artists of the surrealist, avant-garde, and Dadaist movements and an influential figure in early 20th-century art. The National Observer suggested that, "of the artistic generation whose daring gave birth to Twentieth Century Art, Cocteau came closest to being a Renaissance man.".
Societal attitudes towards same-sex relationships have varied over time and place. Attitudes to male homosexuality have varied from requiring males to engage in same-sex relationships to casual integration, through acceptance, to seeing the practice as a minor sin, repressing it through law enforcement and judicial mechanisms, and to proscribing it under penalty of death. In addition, it has varied as to whether any negative attitudes towards men who have sex with men have extended to all participants, as has been common in Abrahamic religions, or only to passive (penetrated) participants, as was common in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. Female homosexuality has historically been given less acknowledgment, explicit acceptance, and opposition.
Erotic art is a broad field of the visual arts that includes any artistic work intended to evoke arousal. It usually depicts human nudity or sexual activity, and has included works in various visual mediums, including drawings, engravings, films, paintings, photographs, and sculptures. Some of the earliest known works of art include erotic themes, which have recurred with varying prominence in different societies throughout history. However, it has also been widely considered taboo, with either social norms or laws restricting its creation, distribution, and possession. This is particularly the case when it is deemed pornographic, immoral, or obscene.
Erotic literature, or literotica, comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of eros intended to arouse similar feelings in readers. This contrasts erotica, which focuses more specifically on sexual feelings. Other common elements are satire and social criticism. Much erotic literature features erotic art, illustrating the text.
Henry Marie Joseph Frédéric Expedite Millon de Montherlant was a French essayist, novelist, and dramatist. He was elected to the Académie française in 1960.
Pierre Roger Peyrefitte was a French diplomat, writer of bestseller novels and non-fiction, and a defender of gay rights and pederasty.
Terms used to describe homosexuality have gone through many changes since the emergence of the first terms in the mid-19th century. In English, some terms in widespread use have been sodomite, Achillean, Sapphic, Uranian, homophile, lesbian, gay, effeminate, queer, homoaffective, and same-gender attracted. Some of these words are specific to women, some to men, and some can be used of either. Gay people may also be identified under the umbrella term LGBT.
In classical antiquity, writers such as Herodotus, Plato, Xenophon, Athenaeus and many others explored aspects of homosexuality in Greek society. The most widespread and socially significant form of same-sex sexual relations in ancient Greece amongst elite circles was between adult men and pubescent or adolescent boys, known as pederasty. Certain city-states allowed it while others were ambiguous or prohibited it. Though sexual relationships between adult men did exist, it is possible at least one member of each of these relationships flouted social conventions by assuming a passive sexual role according to Kenneth Dover, though this has been questioned by recent scholars. It is unclear how such relations between same-sex partners were regarded in the general society, especially for women, but examples do exist as far back as the time of Sappho.
Our Lady of the Flowers (Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs) is the debut novel of French writer Jean Genet, first published in 1943. The free-flowing, poetic novel is a largely autobiographical account of a man's journey through the Parisian underworld. The characters are drawn after their real-life counterparts, who are mostly homosexuals living on the fringes of society.
Gay literature is a collective term for literature produced by or for the gay community which involves characters, plot lines, and/or themes portraying male homosexual behavior.
Bruce Benderson is an American author, born to parents of Russian Jewish descent, who lives in New York. He attended William Nottingham High School (1964) in Syracuse, New York and then Binghamton University (1969). He is today a novelist, essayist, journalist and translator, widely published in France, less so in the United States.
Greek love is a term originally used by classicists to describe the primarily homoerotic customs, practices, and attitudes of the ancient Greeks. It was frequently used as a euphemism for both homosexuality and pederasty. The phrase is a product of the enormous impact of the reception of classical Greek culture on historical attitudes toward sexuality, and its influence on art and various intellectual movements.
Gengoroh Tagame is a pseudonymous Japanese manga artist. He is regarded as the most prolific and influential creator in the gay manga genre. Tagame began contributing manga and prose fiction to Japanese gay men's magazines in the 1980s, after making his debut as a manga artist in the yaoi manga magazine June while in high school. As a student he studied graphic design at Tama Art University, and worked as a commercial graphic designer and art director to support his career as a manga artist. His manga series The Toyed Man, originally serialized in the gay men's magazine Badi from 1992 to 1993, enjoyed breakout success after it was published as a book in 1994. After co-founding the gay men's magazine G-men in 1995, Tagame began working as a gay manga artist full-time.
The history of erotic depictions includes paintings, sculpture, photographs, dramatic arts, music and writings that show scenes of a sexual nature throughout time. They have been created by nearly every civilization, ancient and modern. Early cultures often associated the sexual act with supernatural forces and thus their religion is intertwined with such depictions. In Asian countries such as India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Japan, Korea, and China, representations of sex and erotic art have specific spiritual meanings within native religions. The ancient Greeks and Romans produced much art and decoration of an erotic nature, much of it integrated with their religious beliefs and cultural practices.
Carl Vernon Corley was an American author and illustrator. Beginning in the 1950s, he drew physique art for male beefcake magazines and for sale as posters. In the 1960s and 1970s, he wrote twenty-two novels of gay male pulp fiction. From the 1970s into the early 1990s, Corley continued to write stories for gay pornography magazines. Corley also has written and illustrated non-erotic projects, including Louisiana history and religious books. Gay historian John Howard, who rediscovered Corley's gay pulp novels in the 1990s, argues that Corley's work "complicates queer cultural studies by unsettling its urbanist roots." Corley's texts are not typical stories of gay young men from rural areas finding their ways to sexual liberation in cities, but instead describe "many complex nodes of circulation, not just aggregation".
Pederasty or paederasty is a sexual relationship between an adult man and a boy. It was a socially acknowledged practice in Ancient Greece and Rome and elsewhere in the world, such as Pre-Meiji Japan.
Bara is a colloquialism for a genre of Japanese art and media known within Japan as gay manga (ゲイ漫画) or gei komi. The genre focuses on male same-sex love, as created primarily by gay men for a gay male audience. Bara can vary in visual style and plot, but typically features masculine men with varying degrees of muscle, body fat, and body hair, akin to bear or bodybuilding culture. While bara is typically pornographic, the genre has also depicted romantic and autobiographical subject material, as it acknowledges the varied reactions to homosexuality in modern Japan.
Parents' Day is a 1951 novel by Paul Goodman. Written as autobiographical fiction based on the author's experiences teaching at the upstate New York progressive boarding school Manumit during the 1943–1944 year, the book's narrator grapples with his homosexuality and explores a series of sexual attractions and relationships that culminates in his being fired by the school. Goodman wrote the novel as part of a Reichian self-analysis begun in 1946 to better understand his own life. He struggled to find a publisher and ultimately self-published through a friend's small press. Reviewers remarked on unease in Goodman's sexual revelations, lack of self-awareness, and lack of coherence in the text. Parents' Day sold poorly and has been largely forgotten, save for some recognition as an early gay American novel.
Boychick is a novel by American writer Leo Skir, published in 1971 by Winter House. The book is pederastic and centers on 28-year-old Leo Tsalis falling in love with Leroy, a 16-year-old boy he calls Boychick, after a brief sexual encounter.
Street of Stairs is a 1968 novel by the American dramatist Ronald Tavel. It was published by Olympia Press in a seriously-abridged form—over half of the book was excised—but Tavel later released the original, unabridged version of the book online. It is a pederastic and polyphonic novel that follows the life of Mark, an expatriate in Tangier, Morocco, who falls in love with Hamid, a thief.
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