Janet Flanner - Infinite Women

Born: 13 March 1892, United States
Died: 7 November 1978
Country most active: France
Also known as: Janet Rehm

The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).

Perennial columnist for The New Yorker magazine, Janet Flanner (1892-1978) produced trenchant commentary on European politics and culture. In her mid twenties, Flanner left the United States for Paris, quickly becoming part of the group of American writers and artists who lived in the city between the world wars. In October 1925 Flanner published her first “Letter from Paris” in the then brand-new magazine, The New Yorker, launching a professional association destined to last for five decades.

Flanner’s work during World War II included not only her famous “Letter from Paris” (disrupted for a period) and seminal pieces on Hitler’s rise (1936) and the Nuremburg trials (1945), but a series of little-known weekly radio broadcasts for the NBC Blue Network during the months following the liberation of Paris in late 1944.

Like fellow American expatriate Therese Bonney, Indiana-born Flanner was deeply disturbed by the war’s implications for the future of European civilization. In both her private correspondence and New Yorker column, Flanner often expressed concern over the long-term damage to Europe, noting with despair that “with the material destruction collapsed invisible things that lived within it. . . .”

A master of the printed word, Flanner was less in her element when she crossed the line into broadcast journalism. The need to pursue stories aggressively to justify precious airtime was unsettling to a writer accustomed to mulling over the “big picture.” The ten-minute weekly broadcasts from locations throughout Europe filled Flanner with such anxiety that she relinquished her radio assignment with relief at the end of the war.

This bio has been republished from Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde. See below for full attribution.

Janet Flanner, who decried the personal “I,” was a technically skilled writer who found diagramming sentences and Parisian newspapers influential. Her writing was apolitical and aloof, but also witty and knowledgeable (Whitman). Nonetheless, she was frequently dissatisfied; Flanner felt she lacked original ideas, wrote slowly, and wasted time on unfinished projects. However, her friends amongst the Lost Generation appreciated her work, and she was asked by many of them for reviews, blurbs, and introductions for their own books. Moreover, she and her work serve as a role model for younger generations of queer women (Friedman).
Flanner was born to an upper middle-class family of Indianapolis on 13 March 1892. After two years at the University of Chicago, she married William Rehm in 1918 and moved to New York City. Here she discovered a literary scene, lesbian desire, and met the love of her life, Solita Solano, for whom Flanner left Rehm in 1921 (Friedman). In 1922, Flanner and Solano settled in Paris.
In 1925, Flanner’s lifelong career began as the Paris correspondent for The New Yorker under Harold Ross until 1975. She adopted the pseudonym Genet and focused her “Letters from Paris” on observations of Parisian art, life, and culture (Boomhower, Wolfe). Flanner also wrote profiles on notable figures like Bette Davis, Adolf Hitler, and Pablo Picasso. In 1948, she was made a Knight of the Legion d’Honneur for her work as Genet (Friedman).
A member of the Lost Generation, Flanner cultivated friendships with Margaret Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein (Boomhower). These new Parisians frequented the Café de deux Magot and Sylvia Beach’s bookstore Shakespeare and Company, talking art and culture. It was during a party at Ford Maddox Ford’s that Flanner met fellow expatriate Mina Loy, whose work Flanner found “Gertrude Steinish” (Burke 329). Flanner and Loy, who frequented the same cafés, moved in similar literary and artistic circles, and even had the same friends—such as Stein, Alice Toklas, Djuna Barnes, and Natalie Barney—likely encountered one another frequently, although their relationship never developed beyond acquaintances. This was not true of Flanner’s other relationships; while she and Solita remained devoted to one another (Boomhower), Flanner began a romance with Noel Murphy in 1932, and in 1940 she fell in love with Natalia Danesi Murray. Flanner’s later life was often an act of juggling her three lovers (Wineapple).
Despite personal struggles, Flanner achieved professional success after WWII. While she bemoaned the change the war wrought in her beloved Paris, her books Petain: The Old Man of France (1944) and Men and Monuments (1957) received positive reviews. As Flanner travelled across Europe for The New Yorker, she gained acclaim and enjoyment. Her “Letters from Paris” were published in three collections: Paris Journal: 1944-1964 (1965), Paris Journal: 1965-1971 (1971), and Paris Was Yesterday, 1925-1939 (1972) (Wolfe). She was awarded the National Book Award for the first Paris Journal in 1965. This was the pinnacle of Flanner’s career; she finally achieved the recognition she desired. Flanner died of a heart attack, aged 86, on 7 November 1978 in New York City (Smith).