Ms. Flanner mentions in her introduction that it took a while, through discussions with Harold Ross, to develop her style for these dispatches from Paris. A few of the longer pieces were published in Vanity Fair and Harper's Bazaar but as the years pass a distinctive style emerges - the 'New Yorker Style' that we still enjoy today. So, they begin to have a freshness, despite the passage of 85 years. The pieces on the approaching war are very interesting. ( )

This is different. Some of the entries are very entertaining.. others not so much. Still an interesting look at the time and the mindset of the author. I picked this up at a library sale, definitely worth the dime! ( )

Mixed bag -- but generally good -- selection of pieces written by The New Yorker's correspondent in Paris from 1925 to 1939. The first batch read like a necrology, discussing recent deaths and death-anniversaries. The real meat comes later, with analyses of things like the Stavisky Affair. As one can imagine, lots of discussions of the arts, and American ex-pats. Flanner herself pops up discreetly as a witness in a few cases. Recommended, more for art mavens and those interested in the runup to World War II. ( )

Per my fascination with 20s Paris I picked this up and found it fun. Flanner has a great sense of history and the fact that she was bisexual got her in with the truly *in* crowd (Stein et al.) hanging out in Paris back prior to WW2. Her book almost reads like a who's who of the pack of expats and assorted significant others gathered there. Writing as Genet, she wrote all the dirt that was to be had and could get by the editors of _The New Yorker_. ( )

5299. Paris Was Yesterday 1925-1939, by Janet Flanner (Genet) Edited by Irving Drutman (read 6 Aug 2015) This book draws from letters the author sent to The New Yorker beginning in 1925 and ending on Sep 3, 1939. Thus there are contemporaneous accounts of exciting things like Lindbergh's arrival in Paris on 21 May 1927, and the riot on Feb 6, 1934, connected to the Stavisky scandal. She has incisive comments on prominent people who died in Paris such as Clemenceau in 1929 and Marshall Foch that same year, and of Edith Wharton in 1937. The comments are very readable and pertinent and sometimes funny. It was a fantastic time, made more poignant by what we know came after it. ( )

Reading Janet Flanner's unique journal is addictive. The material in Paris Was Yesterday includes selections from Janet Flanner's fortnightly "Letter from Paris" in The New Yorker, which she started transmitting in 1925, signed with her nom de correspondance, Genet. This is a book you must read if you have any interest in art, literature, music, French culture, European history of the late nineteen-twenties and thirties. Here is an excerpt from her notes on one of the greatest musicians of the century:
"With the death of Maurice Ravel, France has lost its greatest petit maitre of modern music. He was still a prodigy pupil at the Conservatoire when he composed two of the three works for which he was most famous--the "Pavane pour une Infante Defunte" and "Jeaux d'Euax," regarded as the most perfectly pianistic piece since Liszt. The hypnotic Iberian quality of "Bolero" is partially expained by his having been born at Ciboure, near the Spanish border."(p 181)
Reading the brief items I was continually impressed with the literary and philosophical references embedded in her prose. For example her note on Jean Cocteau's Les Enfants Terribles:
"Cocteau has always been a writer in the tradition of the great medieval mountebanks who worked with the charlatans of the Pont Neuf: as tightrope walker he gathers his crowd, and as soothsayer-dentist he pulls teeth and illusions, he dazzles and delights, and sells moon-powder guaranteed to cure any human ill--and truly cheap at the price."(p 60) ( )

Somwe of this is fascinating about French life and American expatriates in Paris. Interesting comparison with Hemingway's Movable Feast on roughly the same period and people. ( )

I very much liked reading these snippets of Parisian life and meeting up with old friends such as Sylvia Beach, Alice B Toklas and so on. There were some interesting current affairs which since have been made into films (such as La Banquière), others that have sunk into obscurity, the first performances of Josephine Baker, a meeting with Picasso, all quite fascinating. Flanner's change in style as she gained more confidence is striking.