262 Derrida 1963–1983
to read; she had been severe, judging the text to be ‘unfi nished’,
‘too hastily written’, and above all ‘less cunning than Genet’.^12
Shortly after the book’s publication, Derrida heard from several
quarters the rumour that she was leading a ‘real campaign of deni-
gration’ against Glas. He sadly rebuked her for this; she replied very
aggressively:
So you want to pick a quarrel with me. I’ve known that for
a long time. And believe you me, it goes back much further
than Glas. Or rather, and it’s perhaps this which has made me
react to the reading of this book, Glas tolls the bell for many
friendships, as I’ve read in it. And the web you have woven
leaves little room for manoeuvre to anyone who wants to try to
defend themselves. [.. .]
Basically, you’ve taken your break with Philippe Sollers very
badly. And, to resolve the matter, you had to make a clean slate
of everything that might remind you of the privileged relation-
ship that linked the two of you together. There were stooges
involved. Never mind them. They never mattered. In order to
get rid of the very memory of that period, you had to unbur-
den yourself of everything that had mattered to some extent:
Antonin Artaud, me. Through Genet, in Glas, that’s what I
read. You won’t get me to believe that with the sword [glaive] of
the gladiolus, you didn’t want to decapitate the gli* of Sollers’
glottis.^13Thévenin claimed that she had abstained from talking about the
book, except as regards its material aspect, which she felt was too
unrefi ned. She did, however, admit that she had broken her silence
on the matter on two occasions, notably at a dinner with the ‘people
from Digraphe’. In reality, if she found this book diffi cult to take, it
was probably because she had the impression that Derrida wanted
to steal Genet from her, just as others had tried to take over Artaud,
when she would have liked both writers to belong to her alone.
Between Thévenin and Derrida, relations would be chilly for over
two years, during which time they avoided seeing one another. And
their relationship would never be as free and easy as in its fi rst years.
One reaction counted for much more in Derrida’s eyes: that of
Genet himself. He knew better than anyone that Sartre’s analysis,
in Saint Genet: Actor and Martyr, had left Genet with writer’s block
for over ten years. As Derrida explained in a late interview, there
had been on Sartre’s part ‘a project of explanatory mastery that
- The word gli, not found in ‘standard’ French, occurs in Michaux’s poem ‘Glu et
gli’ (‘Glue and gli’), a gleeful piece of verbal jazz which riff s, as does Glas, on ‘gl-’.
- Tr.