Customer Reviews

Janet, My Mother, and Me: A Memoir of Growing Up with Janet Flanner and Natalia Danesi Murray

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As warm as the Italy he loves,William Murray has written an incredibly beautiful tribute to his mother, Natalia Danesi Murray and her long-time companion, Janet Flanner. He explores their deep relationship with great care, keeping the focus on them as he adds his own experiences growing up and growing older with them. What a triumvirate this must have been! Murray succeeds where many authors fail in noble attempts at "family" biography....he keeps just the right perspective in telling their story as well as his own. He relates the anguish of both women who experienced long separations from each other over their 38-year relationship but tempers it with the joy that Natalia and Janet felt during their many months, then finally years, together. I am impressed that Murray doesn't get carried away with general philosophizing about Lesbian working women, especially at a time when homosexuality was at its nadir...he rather simply, elegantly, and with several dashes of humor, becomes the camera lens through which we are able to view their personal and professional sides, especially through Janet's many letters to Natalia. In the end, I feel as if I have known all three for a long time.

It's probably not fair as in not being 'entirely impartial' of me to submit a review of this book, about my grandmother and written by my father but this is the internet so maybe all those rules can be broken. I think that this is the best book that my father has ever written. He has truly 'opened a vein' and allowed such deep emotion to flow in language that is beautifully written. I am sure that Janet and my grandmother would have been proud of him and very impressed with the accomplishment. I personally know what it cost him to create this work, the hours (writing still in longhand, mind you) to recreate the lives of those two amazing women. This book is truly a testament to the power of the love he has for them and the depth of emotion so expressed in the quality of the writing. My grandmother was an incredibly complex person. She was stern and critical yet also deeply loving, kind and generous. As a child sometimes she scared me but I always looked forward with excitment to her visits, she was never boring. Janet I remember as a wonderful, funny and warm, always correcting your grammer. At the end of my grandmother's life when she came to California, knowing that her life was nearly over, she tried one last time to 'protect' my father. This time it was his wife, Alice, scarcely mentioned in the book, that my grandmother attempted to save him from. The reader wonders (as noted in the NYTimes book review) between the lines what went on in that time period and that was basically it. My father was completely torn emotionally in that situation and was forced to choose. This book is a tribute to the way he really feels about his mother and about Janet. He misses them more than life itself and this is his special offering to their memory.

As a New Englander of mixed Italian and English ancestry, I feel I can relate easily to William Murray's experience, even though the Italian ladies in my background were houswives and factory workers, and not the brilliant and accomplished sort of person his mother was. Natalia's relationship with Janet Flanner is interesting and shows her (Natalia's) deep sense of humanity and commitment as well as her strong nurturing capacities. Italian mothers always think they are right, and my own opinion is that they always are right. Murray emphasizes Flanner's virtues and other good points, but I wonder about why she was so incapable of sacrificing a little of her time, her career, her work for the woman who loved her and whom she said she loved.

By the time I finished reading this book, which is a very lovely memoir, I had really taken a strong liking to Natalia with her patience, tenderness, humanity, character, and love.

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.

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.

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.

Murray's father was a powerful agent in the golden era of the great Hollywood studios, his mother, Natalia, was a powerful and popular agent in the literary/celebrity circles of Europe and America, and his other "father" was Natalia's lover, the enormously admired and influential columnist of The New Yorker magazine, again in its most brilliant period, who filed insider news from Europe under the pseudonym "Genet", but who was in reality Janet Flanner, American lesbian, Paris

resident, and a sharp observer of her own eccentric circle, and of Europe in it most turbu- lent decades.By a happy miracle this extraordinary scene, at once intimate, comic, despairing, and even inspiring finds a brilliant Boswell in Natalia's son. On his own Murray became a writer notable for his fiction and espe- cially for his New Yorker letters from Rome, whichcontinued that magazine's tradition of superb contemporary journalism. How he did this, and the world he came to know so well, make one of the most orginal and fascinating memoirs of our times. We are all lucky that his unique adventures as a child of three unusual (to say the least) "parents" has such a happy ending.

I first got this book because I was curious about it from the obituary. I read it today in it's entirety. I think the author does deserve a superb job in allowing us to understand each of the real people with flaws and talents. I was led to believe that Natalia and Janet were always together but as I read. They were separated and torn apart for other reasons. Natalia never really comes out to acknowledge her sexual orientation. Bill never doubts his own. He reveals a lot about himself like losing his virginity to a prostitute. Bill's childhood was not entirely spent at home but at boarding schools in New England. I think Janet served as a father figure. When she was 83 years old, she had to retire to New York and live the last 3 years with Natalia. Why she kept coming and going to and from is puzzling to me? Janet was a complicated woman and these two women truly loved each other. Maybe the separations allowed them to love each other more apart. Will never really know? We weren't truly there ourselves. Bill allows us to see his childhood was normal. I was surprised that his mother would worry about his sexual orientation. I wondered what would have happened if he turned out gay himself. Would she blame herself? Who knows? I read about Alice, his second wife. I don't think Natalia understood their relationship. Now that all 3 members of that unique family is gone, I think Alice deserves some mention. Bill wasn't the best husband or father. They did live together for 5 years before their marriage. I say give Alice a break. They were together for 30 years. At the end of Natalia's life, she was unbearable probably because she was ill physically and medication often can contribute to a person's mental state. Bill and Alice stayed together for 30 years. I admire Alice and his first wife Doris who managed to deal with an overbearing mother-in-law. I also think Natalia had trouble letting go of Bill all his life and that's why there is so much trouble. Since Bill is gone, my condolences to Alice, Doris, Natalia, Julia, and Bill III over your more recent loss.
After reading this book, I became fascinated with Janet Flanner. I bought other books which educated me more about this situation. Sadly, this book is only a part of an amazing woman's story. I won't say that Janet didn't love Natalia but she had two other lovers, Solita Solano and Noel Haskins Murphy in France. Janet did not belong to anybody much less Natalia. Janet belonged to the world. She was larger than life. In fact, Noel and Solita did share a negative reception of Natalia's part of Janet's relationships. The reason that Natalia did not move to Paris was because Janet's partner Solita and Noel did not care too much for Natalia. They found her possessive and overbearing. Janet was not always happy in New York City with Natalia. She was happiest in Paris where she belonged. I won't say that they didn't love each other but it was not an ideal relationship. Natalia wanted Janet all to herself and Janet was torn between Noel, Solita, and Natalia. Janet was an amazing woman. This book only tells part of the story from Bill Murray's point of view. The book asks more questions than provides answers. I don't think Bill wanted to know about the true nature of Janet's relationships. She was not monogamous and she didn't belong to NAtalia but she did love her to spend time with her. Regardless, they're all in heaven having a ball.

This merits a deeper look in the future, perhaps. But for now - good God, this also could have been the title of the memoir I might have written (referring, instead, to only two people - my mother, also named Janet, & myself).

A witticism, perhaps...but hardly that alone, for the personality traits & physical appearances of both his mother & his father in many respects were very similar to those of my parents (& my mother's career in publishing to some extent resembled that of William's mother).

I had read his The Wrong Horse (1992) many years ago. I loved it. I still do. But his The Right Horse (1997) was a pedantic, humorless bore (due for a re-reading, to find out if it was the reader & not the author who was at fault).

And then his stock really went into the toilet after I read one of his novels (title forgotten), in which his protagonist lectured at interminable length about liberal, "progressive" values (while the gang was busy screwing around at a race track in Italy, which is all I can remember about the plot). This was about as much fun as it would be to have lunch with Dick Cheney.

Bill died, five years ago, this week. His obituary, re-read recently, mentioned the existence of JM&M. Intrigued, what he had written badly or unwisely was forgotten. "This memoir could be a wonderfully decent discovery."

It was.

The "eccentric" duplex apartment in which Bill, his mother, his grandmother & Janet Flanner lived during World War II - described in the chapter, "Love On A Rooftop" - is no longer there, replaced at some point by Just Another Manhattan Office Building.

We unwittingly passed the site on March 6, 2010, during a pleasant walk down Madison Avenue in unseasonable, delightful weather. Everything seemed alive; winter on that one day had graciously impersonated the aura & warmth of its successor, spring.

That night, I picked up JM&M again & resumed reading - & it was the "Rooftop" chapter, which is when I realized we had walked past the one-time site of the residential building that had sheltered at its apex such a combustible & fascinating family, in the year 1944.