Genêt: London before World War II

London Was Yesterday
by Janet Flanner

This book is a collection of essays, both short and long, that Janet Flanner wrote for The New Yorker magazine in the 1934-1939 which was the time of Edward VIII's abdication "for the woman that I love" and the run up to World War II.

When Miss Flanner's editor, Harold Ross, gave her the job of reporting on France and England in the late 1920s, he told her that he wanted to know what the natives were thinking about themselves and their cultures and their nations, not what she thought of them. And Miss Flanner produced that kind of viewpoint for the U.S. readers.

Miss Flanner reported from Europe for The New Yorker from the late 1920s to her retirement in the early 1970s.

Her essays range from three sentence paragraphs on the doings and dancings of Josephine Baker or the funeral of Anatole France (is he even read today in France?) to several long portraits of Wallis Simpson (that beloved woman) and the new Queen, Elizabeth the wife of George VI who was the father of the present Elizabeth II, after the abdication of Edward VIII. I know that this sentence reads like the boring genealogy of the Bible.

Miss Flanner was a writer with a dry and wry turn of phrase and wit and a detached (easy for her, she was a Yank), discerning view of her subjects and their concerns. She could also do slapstick:

When Lotte Lehmann, as the Marschallin, had a chill and walked out on the opening act of the first Rosenkavalier performance, a leg came off fat Baron Ochs' sofa. Furthermore, an anachronistic wirehaired fox terrier stole the eighteenth-century levee scene, and the lady spy's hoopskirt flew waist-high after the Presentation of the Rose episode.

It is the Marx Brothers all in one.

Jerome Robbins and Men Who Explain

Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins
by Amanda Vaill

I knew that George Balachine was a genius and that he was the Ballet Master and Maker of the New York City Ballet. I also knew that Jerome Robbins, a Broadway kind of dancer and choreographer, was considered to be the "other" Ballet Master of NYCB. I thought that Mr. Robbins was fortunate to be so well considered, as did he, I found out in this biography. But I did not realize just how talented (I have been cruising PBS and U Tube for videos) Mr. Robbins was, just not on Broadway, but in the ballet.

Mr. Robbins not only choreographed but developed (producing, writing, the music, the book, etc.) so many iconic and classic Broadway musicals of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, with West Side Story, Gypsy, and Fiddler on the Roof as just the most familiar to most musical comedy connoisseurs and high school theater departments.

There was a little too much of the Russian shtetl (the background of Mr. Robbins' parents early in the book and his own discovery of heritage late in life and look, Fiddler on the Roof look!) in some parts of this book. But the American talented boy makes good, very good in America! parts and the Broadway history and the NYCB were the chapters that interested me the most.

Men Explain Things to Me
by Rebecca Solnitz

All about Mansplaining in the Wide World of Boys.

Yeah, I get it. I got it from the Supreme Court just recently. There are things that Women just don't understand and they have to be taught by Wise Old Ugly Men. Ugh!

Reading List

1. Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
2. Area Code 212 by Tama Janowitz