Janet Flanner

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Janet Flanner : biography

March 13, 1892 – November 7, 1978

Her prose style has since come to epitomise the "New Yorker style" – its influence can be seen decades later in the prose of Bruce Chatwin. An example: "The late Jean De Koven was an average American tourist in Paris but for two exceptions: she never set foot in the Opéra, and she was murdered."

She was a frequent visitor to Los Angeles because her mother, Mary, lived at 530 E. Marigold St. in Altadena with her sister, poet Hildegarde Flanner, and brother-in-law, Frederick Monhoff.

Later life

Flanner lived in New York City during World War II with Natalia Danesi Murray and her son William B. Murray, still writing for The New Yorker. She returned to Paris in 1944.

Her New Yorker work during World War II included not only her famous "Letter from Paris" columns, but also included a seminal 3-part series profiling Hitler (1936), and coverage of the Nuremberg trials (1945). Additionally, she contributed a series of little-known weekly radio broadcasts for the NBC Blue Network during the months following the liberation of Paris in late 1944.

Flanner authored one novel, The Cubical City, which achieved little success.

In 1948 she was made a knight of Legion d’Honneur. In 1958 she was awarded an honorary doctorate by Smith College. She covered the Suez crisis, the Soviet invasion of Hungary, and the strife in Algeria which led to the rise of Charles de Gaulle. She was a leading member of the influential coterie of mostly lesbian women that included Natalie Clifford Barney and Djuna Barnes. Flanner lived in Paris with Solano, who put away her own literary aspirations to be Flanner’s personal secretary. Even though the relationship was not monogamous, they lived together for over 50 years.

For Paris Journal, 1944-1965 she won the 1966 U.S. National Book Award in category Arts and Letters. . National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-10. "Arts and Letters" was an award category from 1964 to 1976. Extracts of her Paris journal were turned into a piece for chorus and orchestra by composer Ned Rorem.

In 1971, she was the third guest during the infamous scuffle between Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer on the Dick Cavett Show, getting in between the two after a drunken Mailer started insulting his fellow guests and their host.

Four years later, she returned to New York City permanently to be cared for by Natalia Danesi Murray. Flanner died on November 7, 1978 due to unknown causes.

Flanner was cremated and her ashes were scattered with Murray’s over Cherry Grove in Fire Island where they met in 1940 according to Murray’s son in his book Janet, My Mother, and Me.