The Flight Portfolio

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The book paints Varian as a buffoon. He is always sitting in various cafés drinking coffee and eating biscuits and complaining about how they taste bad. He's complaining about how other people are revealing his methods for smuggling people out of France while writing whiny detailed letters to his wife explaining exactly how he's doing it. He constantly complains that America isn't sending enough money while throwing lavish parties with other rich people and bragging about how expensive it was while people are starving in the streets. He pines after Grant constantly. He is absolutely obsessed with clothes and appearance and his days at Harvard. Occasionally the book mentions that Varian is a journalist, but at no point does he ever do anything a journalist does. The actual Varian Fry had a very interesting life leading up to the year 1940, but you wouldn't know about it from the book - according to the book he graduated Harvard, then sailed around the world crying because Grant dumped him, kept crying that Grant dumped him, then somehow ended up smuggling Jews????? It's absolutely silly. Let me speak to my friend at the consulate,” Varian said. “Ask him to start a file for you, at least. If you do decide to leave, it might take months.” The painter removed his hat and set it on his knee. “The Emer­gency Rescue Committee mustn’t concern itself further with our wel­fare,” he said. “Save your resources for those who truly need help. Max Ernst, for example—he’s rumored to be in a concentration camp at Gurs. Or Jacques Lipchitz, my friend from Montparnasse. Who knows where he’s fled to now? Or Lev Zilberman, who painted those massive murals in Berlin.” Meticulous, bighearted, gorgeous, historical, suspenseful, everything you want a novel to be.”—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Less

in another moment I’m melting in a different way -incredibly moved/ *thankful* to the great man: **Varian Fry**.... and his bigger- than-life gifts of freedom to others. The question often led Fry and his associates to desperate measures. Sometimes they would send potential clients down to [Marseille’s] Vieux Port and ask them to make a few sketches. Then Fry’s associate, Miriam Davenport, trained in art history at the Sorbonne, would look at these sketches and determine whether the artist had talent — whether, in effect, they deserved to be helped, according to the committee’s mandate. What would it have been like to be that artist, forced to produce work that might mean the difference between life or death? And what would it be like to be the person who had to look at those hasty sketches and determine whether their creator should receive life-saving help? Was it right to help certain artists and not others? Was it right to privilege artists at all? That felt to me like an unanswerable question, and I think as novelists we often look for questions like that — the kind that can be argued infinitely from either side. From the bestselling, award-winningauthor of The Invisible Bridge comes a gripping tale of forbiddenlove, high-stakes adventure, and unimaginable courage filled with "suspense and tragedy, unexpected twists and deliverance” ( The Seattle Times). • THE INSPIRATION FOR THE NETFLIX SERIES TRANSATLANTIC There are many real people interspersed among some fictional characters. All are so well portrayed that at times you don’t know who is real and who is fictional. I actually googled one character, only to find out that he was not a real person. Ha!The grapevines and olive trees and rows of skyward-pointing cypresses p resented themselves,as expected, but often they appeared against hillsf urred with ugly An elegant, meditative novelistic reconstruction of critical years in the life of Varian Fry… The central point of intrigue, providing a fine plot twist, is also expertly handled, evidence of an accomplished storyteller at work. Altogether satisfying. Mix Alan Furst and André Aciman, and you’ll have a feel for the territory in which this well-plotted book falls.”

Varian admits happy to see Grant these 12 years later though (who became a professor of English at Columbia and is now on sabbatical). They will be working together. In addition to telling the story of how Fry & his team managed to save so many Jewish artists, the book also delves into Fry’s personal life. Fry was in fact a closet homosexual. In the book, you will read about Fry’s love affair with another man. Fry was in fact ‘happily’ married to a woman in the States. Varian Fry, a young American journalist, arrives in Marseille armed only with three thousand dollars and a list of writers, thinkers and artists he hopes to rescue – so long as the Nazis don’t get to them first. Gorgeous. . . . Classic storytelling through a transgressive lens. The Flight Portfolio offers a testament to . . . the enduringtransformative power of art, and love, in any form.”— Entertainment Weekly Orringer details in her book how the US consul general, Hugh Fullerton, tried thwarting the mission’s efforts from saving Jews. Fortunately, Hiram Bingham, the vice consul, ignored his boss and the US administration. Bingham secretly issued hundreds of visas to the United States, saving hundreds of Jewish artists & intellectuals. Eleanor Roosevelt & Her Involvement with the Emergency Rescue CommissionAs the reader -I was already so involved with the dialogue- feelings and thoughts that Varian had for Grant ( some envious feelings - some distrust- and complex feelings ). After discovering the Villa has been bugged, Varian has 24 hours to fill DuBois' ship with refugees. Varian convinces Bingham to rapidly forge the necessary visas. Albert and Paul witness the Nazis deporting prisoners out of Marseille. Patterson discovers Paul's resistance cell. He informs the police and Paul is swiftly arrested. Patterson's secretary, Lorene Letoret, is a spy for the Gestapo, who bugged the Villa. 257 refugees escape to Martinique thanks to the ERC's hard work. Mary Jayne and Albert plan to marry and travel to the US. The rescue team needed to pay forgers to make counterfeit travel documents stamped with exit visas. In addition, they needed to find people who could smuggle these people out of France, either by foot or by boat. Incredibly, Fry and his devoted team succeed in saving more than 2,500 people. If Not for Varian Fry – The Nazis would have killed Marc Chagall

Nearly eighty years on, this plot strand still feels perfectly timely. Varian is married to Eileen and has been passing for straight, yet he doesn’t fit the stereotype of a homosexual hiding behind marriage to a woman. In fact, the novel makes it plain that Varian was bisexual; he truly loved Eileen, but Grant was the love of his life. Can he face the truth and find courage to live as he truly is? The same goes for Grant, who has an additional secret. Orringer’s Author’s Note, at the end of the book, explains how much of this is historical and how much is made up, and what happened next for Varian. I’ll let you discover it for yourself. An elegant, meditative novelistic reconstruction of critical years in the life of Varian Fry, the American classicist who is honored at Yad Vashem as “righteous among the nations” for his work rescuing victims of the Holocaust. Magnificent… As in 2010’s superb The Invisible Bridge, Orringer seamlessly combines compelling inventions with complex fact… Brilliantly conceived, impeccably crafted, and showcasing Orringer’s extraordinary gifts, this is destined to become a classic.” ORRINGER: Being at Radcliffe was transformative for this book. While I was there, my colleague Lewis Hyde put together a group of writers — people who were producing work in all different genres — to meet every month to talk about how our projects were progressing and the difficulties we were having. The group was fertile ground for new ideas, but we challenged each other too. It was especially exciting to hear about Lewis’s book, “A Primer for Forgetting,” which will be published this June by FSG. We were both thinking about history — what we remember, what we choose to forget, and what we bury because it’s too problematic. Those conversations with Lewis affected my thinking about the issues that lie at the heart of “The Flight Portfolio.” Ah, Monsieur Fry,” Chagall said, rising to meet him. The painter’s eyes were large and uncommonly sharp, his expression one of bemuse­ment. “You’ve come after all. I thought you might. You won’t forget our agreement, will you?”

An outstanding book for anyone who likes historical fiction, a gripping story, lyrical writing, or all three. It is one of those books that you never want to end.’ Goodreads Reviewer If you frequent progressive circles, you have likely encountered some form of this refrain: “If you ever wondered what you would have done during the Holocaust, now is the time to find out.”

If we could pin down the moments when our lives bifurcate into before and after—if we could pause the progression of millisecond, catch ourselves at the point before we slip over the precipice—if we could choose to remain suspended in time-amber, our lives intact, our hearts unbroken, our foreheads unlined, our nights full of undisturbed sleep—would we slip, or would we choose the amber?”

Police raids and deportation are constant threats, but there is still joy – and absurdity – to be found in daily life, especially thanks to Breton and the other Surrealists who soon share Varian’s new headquarters at Villa Air-Bel (which you can tour virtually here). They host dinner parties – one in the nude – based around games and spectacles, even when wartime food shortages mean there’s little besides foraged snails or the goldfish from the pond to eat. Goldbart, Max (22 March 2023). " 'Unorthodox' & 'Deutschland 83' Creator Anna Winger Says Her Netflix War Drama 'Transatlantic' Was Inspired By Comedy In 'Casablanca' ". Deadline . Retrieved 23 March 2023. But isn’t that her prerogative? Isn’t it the historical novelist’s right and privilege to decide what to omit, change, or invent for her narrative purposes? Maybe. But then, perhaps, we must turn to the reader. For it occurs to me that the novelistic right may produce something beyond the artistic creation itself: an invitation for the reader who seeks to be educated as well as entertained to investigate further.