Flanner (nom de plume: Genêt), a former New Yorker essayist and who lived in Paris for many years, describes the cultural and social life of Paris in the 50s and 60s. She pens wonderful glimpses into what Parisians were thinking, feeling, and doing -Paris' life, wine, art, literary insights, and ways of thinking. C'est magnifique.

Janet Flanner was amazing in her insights in her own words as well as quoting others. I think one would be hard pressed to find someone with greater perception of the France of that era. This work also is a great help in understanding the France of today.
For example, Flanner quotes Maurice Duverger, a professor at the Sorbonne in an interview in the magazine L'Express on pp. 281-282: "Nothing is stupider than stylish anti-Americanism. But at the base of it all there is, just the same, a real question. America is a very different society from ours. It was built by pioneers who for their cultural baggage had the bible and a sense of adventure." Duverger goes on to compare the Soviet Union and the U.S.A. as two evolving societies and concludes that in the long run the U.S.A. will be the greater threat to the French way of life.
Flanner concludes: "Painful as many of Professor Duverger's conclusions are for many Americans, he has academically touched on basic, alarming truths for many of the French, who, even in their awareness, seem unable to do anything about them except complain--while continuing their American way of life "à la française."
I find that to be true in Paris of 2001. I cannot recommend this book enough. Janet Flanner was truly remarkable.

Flanner (nom de plume: Genêt), a former New Yorker essayist and who lived in Paris for many years, describes the cultural and social life of Paris in the 40s and 50s. She pens wonderful glimpses into what Parisians were thinking, feeling, and doing -Paris' life, wine, art, and ways of thinking. C'est magnifique.

Flanner (nom de plume: Genêt), a former New Yorker essayist and who lived in Paris for many years, describes the cultural and social life of Paris in the 60s. She pens wonderful glimpses into what Parisians were thinking, feeling, and doing -Paris' life, wine, art, and ways of thinking. C'est magnifique.

I admit that my knowledge of Janet Flanner was hazy when I bought this book, my exposure to the "New Yorker" limited to a few issues per year only in the last ten years. That wasn't the selling point for me -- I had read good reviews that this was the memoir of a boy raised in a non-traditional home in the 1940s and that detail fascinated me.

This is a crisply written, completely fascinating account of William Murray's gypsy childhood in the literary circles of New York, Fire Island and Rome. It is a story of becoming a man, of weathering stormy relations with parents, and about his own struggles to make a life for himself as a writer.

There are two generations of literary lives detailed: I was fascinated to learn how much professional writers struggle even after achieving success. Janet Flanner lived in hotels across the world, constantly missing her deadlines; the author himself resorted throughout his 20s and 30s to gambling and part time jobs to scrape by. Even his first two years working as a writer for the New Yorker came and went without him getting an article published. This is the dark side of the artist's life, and one we hear too little of.

My only disappointment with this book -- and it's minor-- is that it is really the story of an artist's life, not the story of being the child of a lesbian. Janet Flanner's role in the author life could just as well be that of a step-father; the fact that she is a lesbian is superfluous. But, maybe that in and of itself makes a point.

A fascinating and well written memoir -- worth reading.

I just finished this book and enjoyed it tremendously. This book appealed to me on several levels. As an American ex-patriate living outside Paris, I could relate to many of the comments Janet made. Although I love France, I will always be an outsider. This book is not so much an homosexual story as it is a love story among these people. It is a testament to how love can endure long distances, different cultures and social constraints. I recommend this book highly to anyone who enjoys reading historically based biographies with a love story intertwined. Besides, I can't resist buying a good book with good photographs.

When I look back on the many books I've read over the past year (easily 50 or more), I can say emphatically that this was one of the best and most memorable. I can remember where I sat (by a fountain) when I began the book, and where I was (at a garden) when I closed its cover for the final time. Murray captured the essence of a very complex, yet loving relationship between two sophisticated, intelligent women. After I finished his book, I yearned to learn more about them, and read a biography of Flanner, Murray's mother's book of correspondence between herself and Flanner, and several of Flanner's New Yorker compilations. A heartfelt thanks, William Murray.

Like many other American tourists, when I visit Paris I am searching for the Paris of Hemmingway and Fitzgerald. Amazingly enough, even though over 50 years have passed, a lot of that Paris has survived and is just waiting to be rediscovered. A lot of what I can't find on my own I find in those columns that Janet Flanner wrote from 1925 to 1939 for the NEW YORKER and which have been collected for PARIS WAS YESTERDAY.

Janet Flanner (pen name "Genet") was the resident Paris Correspondent for THE NEW YORKER. Her assignment was to write columns about "what the French thought was going on in France," Flanner became much more than a mere observer of the Parisian scene. she was an active participant. Be it a death, an opera premiere, a swindle, a political disaster, a bit of gossip about a celebrity, or nostalgia for an even earlier era, Flanner wrote about them, and wrote with wit and an occasional tongue-in-her-cheek.

The following example of her tongue-in-cheek approach, one among many, comes from a 1928 column entitled "The Italian Straw Hat." It seems that the French wanted parity with Hollywood when it came to Motion Pictures and wanted to pass a law requiring the acceptance in the U. S. of a French Film for every Hollywood made film shown in France. The first picture they wanted to export to the U. S. was a film entitled, in translation, THE ITALIAN STRAW HAT. Her comment about this film was, "While THE ITALIAN STRAW HAT is not, as touted, the funniest comedy in Europe today, it is the funniest comedy about a straw hat to be seen on the boulevards,"

In Flanner's columns you can read about Chevalier and Josephine Baker (not together), about the excitement when the Louvre got a new Berthe Morisot and a new Monet Painting donated the same day, about more excitement over the premiere performance of a Ravel Piano piece, about a mysterious murder and a new political pecadillo, and finally about more somber times when World World II and Hitler loomed just over the horizon.

If you'd like to feel that you are in LES DEUS MAGOTS, or CAFE FLEUR, and listening to Sartre or Cocteau wax elegant or if you'd like to hear the gossip about the gendarmerie asking Marlene Dietrich to leave Paris because she had the audacity to wear trousers in public or if you'd like to meet James Joyce in THE SHAKESPEAR AND COMPANY BOOK STORE, or if you'd like to attend one of Gertrude Stein's intellectual discussion and meet her companion, Alice B. Toklas, then this book is for you.

I highly recommend PARIS WAS YESTERDAY to anyone who is interested in a different view (not that of Hemingway or Fitzgerald) of the era of the "Lost Generation." I recommend it to anyone who likes a book for its wit and charm. If you're not interested in Paris, but just like a bit of celebrity gossip, there's still a lot here for you. There's a reason that Janet Flannery's column ran for so many years. She'sgood!

Flanner (nom de plume: Genêt), a former New Yorker essayist and who lived in Paris for many years, describes the cultural and social life of Paris in the 20s and 30s. She pens wonderful glimpses into what Parisians were thinking, feeling, and doing -Parisian ways of living, wine, and art. C'est magnifique.

The Pure and the Impure by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette with introduction by Judith Thurman (Literature/Gay Studies). Recommended.

Colette believed The Pure and the Impure was her best work. I can't judge, not having read anything of hers but a few short stories, but this collection of her observations about human attitudes toward relationships and sexuality is insightful and timeless. It is also difficult and obscure at times, perhaps because of the translation and because there is no real structure to such a collection.

Thanks to her milieu, her position in it, and her willingness to seek the story, Colette could draw upon the most interesting people of her time-the givers and the takers. From the older woman who publicly fakes an orgasm while self-pleasuring in an opium house to gladden the heart of her young, sickly lover to the roué who exclaims of women, "They allow us to be their master in the sex act, but never their equal. That is what I cannot forgive them" to the circle of prominent women who learn the ways of sex from servants, dress as men, and love horses (she calls the most notable of these women "La Chevalière) to the "happy," alcoholic, lesbian poet Renée Vivien to the gay men with whom she seems most comfortable, Colette covers a spectrum of sexuality and combinations-including those men and women who play their heterosexual and homosexual relations against one another.

"I'm devoted to that boy, with all my heart," the older woman tells Colette, a stranger to her. "But what is the heart, madame? It's worth less than people think. It's quite accommodating. It accepts anything. You give it whatever you have, it's not very particular. But the body . . . Ha! That's something else, again." Thurman believes this sums up Colette's view precisely, the heart as a slave to the body.

Although Colette apparently wanted to remain an impartial observer, she cannot mask her own feelings and biases. One senses that she could not quite see a woman-woman partnership as "whole," as passionate, as capable of being the source of tragedy in the same way as other types of relationships. (Anaïs Nin will also hint at something similar in her diaries, at the "incompleteness" of female/female love.) "What woman would not blush to seek out her amie only for sensual pleasure? In no way is it passion that fosters the devotion of two women, but rather a feeling of kinship." She is fascinated by the story of Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby, the "Ladies of Llangollen," who elope and spend several decades living together. During this time, Butler will keep an extensive journal about her life with "My Beloved," while, to Colette's consternation and fascination, Ponsonby remains a silent partner. Colette so romanticizes the Ladies that she says they run off together as "young girls," when in fact Butler was 39 and Ponsonby in her 20s. While there is all kind of detail about their living arrangements, from gardening, sewing, hosting an array of distinguished visitors, and sharing a bedroom and bed, there is nothing known of their emotional or sexual intimacies other than their obvious devotion to one another. They remain a happy, content enigma to Colette and to the present day.

The book concludes on a more personal note-about jealousy, "the only suffering that we endure without ever becoming used to it." She maintains that "a man never belongs to us" and hints at the unique and not unfriendly relationship two female rivals may have-even rivals who wish to kill one another. When one rival tells Colette all the things that had prevented her from killing Colette in Rambouillet (missed train, stalled car, etc.), Colette says, "I was not in Rambouillet." The relationship between her and her rival becomes more interesting, more revealing, more important, and more affectionate than with the man over whom they duel.

Colette suffered what many turn-of-the-century female intellectuals must have-a society's fear of "masculine" women who are too intelligent, too outspoken, too knowing. When she offers to travel with the roué (apparently as a friend), he says in seriousness, "I only like to travel with women," which, a moment later, is softened by, "You, a woman? Why, try as you will . . ." Even today, there are women who have experienced this.

"This is a sad book," Colette said. "It doesn't warm itself at the fire of love, because the flesh doesn't cheer up its ardent servants." Thurman adds, "This great ode to emptiness was written by a woman who felt full."

The Pure and the Impure is a must read for anyone who enjoys Colette's other writings; it is the most autobiographical of her works. Recommended.

Diane L. Schirf, 1 January 2002.

Colette, perhaps best known to Americans as the author of "Gigi" (1945) was a prolific French novelist, critic, playwright, and performer. She also wrote the four "Claudine" novels (1900-1903), and became celebrated for "Cheri" (1920; followed by "The Last of Cheri" in 1926).

She regarded "The Pure and the Impure" as her best work; a mostly autobiographical treatise on Eros and love, particularly Sapphic love. She mixes a reporter's objectivity with deeply felt analysis psychological and philosophical observations. Sometimes she takes a dispassionate, almost distant look at passion; other times her emotional attachments to her subjects--primarily lesbian aristocrats and artistes--are candidly exposed.

She is an exquisite writer without being precious. Colette bends words and phrases perfectly, and one is struck by her vivid yet subtle prose, as evocative as Woolf but perhaps even more sensual. "The Pure and the Impure" contains memorable passages of keen observation and wit, and one feels drawn to her observations:

"...I delighted in the...empty gaiety of the chatter and the diverting and challenging exchange of glances, the cryptic reference to certain treasons, comprehended at once, and the sudden outbursts of ferocity. I reveled...in their half-spoken language, the exchange of threats, of promises, as if, once the slow-thinking male had been banished, every message from woman to woman became clear and overwhelming, restricted to a small but infallible number of signs..."

This is not to deny, however, that reading the book is sometimes difficult. Whether due to the translation, the era, or Colette's particular style, her writing can be challenging, particularly her last chapter, a very subjective, personal description of jealousy.

This is a beautifully written book about the erotic, about men and women, and about the natural history of love. I urge you to introduce yourself to her writings. Highly recommended.

In some ways, history must be easier to write than journalism, because the historian knows what happened; he or she knows what to emphasize. Perhaps most of today's journalism will turn out to be irrelevant; perhaps we are all focussed on the wrong issues. How interesting then to read journalism from the past that seems so valuable. In this collection, dating from 1932 to 1975, Janet Flanner proves to be a brilliant observer of the events of her day. She was a well known writer for the New Yorker who spent many of these years in Europe. Her account of "Mrs Jeffries" escape from Paris in 1943 gives the reader a vivid and unusual picture of life in occupied and Vichy France.

In general, she seems to be better with descriptions of events, narrative, atmosphere, politics, than with descriptions of people. Her account of Thomas Mann is odd and her profiles of Hollywood people are also a bit jarring. On the other hand, her descriptions of Alice Toklas, Margaret Anderson, and Sylvia Beach are all excellent.