Genet, a Biography of Janet Flanner

by Brenda Wineapple

Book Overview

The daughter of an Indianapolis mortician, Janet Flanner really began to live at the age of thirty, when she fled to Paris with her female lover. That was in 1921, a few years before she signed on as... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0899194427
• ISBN13: 9780899194424
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Ticknor & Fields
• Length: 361 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

I learned a lot more about Janet Flanner in this book than the other two!

I have to say my interest in Janet Flanner's life came only by accident. Her lesbian lover Natalia Danesi Murray's son and author, William Murray, died just recently. I first got this book entitled "Janet, My Mother, and Me" about his life with his mother, her lover, and his own life in New York City and Fire Island and Italy. Then I got "Darlinghissima: Letters to a Friend" edited by his mother, Natalia Danesi Murray in 1986. Still I wanted to know more about Janet Flanner. First, nobody owned Janet not her lovers like Natalia Danesi Murray, Noel Murphy, or Solita Solano. Janet or Genet belonged to the world. She was one of God's greatest creations even though she didn't believe in Him. He certainly believed in her. Janet's Quaker upbringing, her father's suicide, and a failed marriage brought her to Solita Solano, they were lovers and friends for life. Solita gave Janet the freedom to be with other women like Noel Murphy in Orgeval, France. Janet still loved her freedom and until Natalia entered her life, it became complicated. She loved all three of these women in a certain way. I felt until I read Brenda Wineapple's biography on Janet, that I didn't get the whole picture because it was from Natalia and William's points of view. I learned that Janet's lovers Solita and Noel did not take kindly to Natalia's possessiveness of Janet. They are all gone now including William Murray, her stepson who she nurtured to be a writer. This book does justice in showing and depicting Janet's flaws as well as her brilliance. She was one of the greatest minds of the last century in journalism. I am sure that the New Yorker still misses her columns even though they came late. For 50 years, she wrote her letters from Paris, detailed, thorough, and truly observed the French and European culture during it's toughest centuries. Despite her sexual orientation, she despised the open affection of both hetero and homosexuality as vulgar. Still, she has been gone for almost 30 years and I never knew her but I miss her. I think she was irreplaceable. I just love the photo of her and Ernest Hemingway together in France. While I read the other books with tremendous interests, I didn't get the whole picture until now and I am glad that I did. I am shocked that i am the first person to review a book about such a enormous literary figure of the twentieth century.