Play Book Tag discussion

The Flight Portfolio - Orringer
Audio performance by Ballerini
5 stars

"An artist cannot bear witness if he's dead.”

This book begins with a meeting between Marc Chagall and Varian Fry. Fry is attempting, without success, to convince Chagall that he is in danger, that he must find a way out of France before Vichy arrests him. Before he can be handed over to the Nazis to an eventual death in a concentration camp. Even though I already knew the historical fact that Chagall and his wife do leave France safely, I could still feel the fear and tension that they would not.

Flight Portfolio is detailed historical fiction. Today, Chagall’s art is widely known. Varian Fry has international recognition for his part in saving the lives of Jewish artists, writers, and political dissidents. That’s the history. Recreating history, Orringer dropped other famous names into the conversation of her fictionalized characters; Jacques Lipchitz, Max Ernst. She also added one completely fictional Jewish artist, Lev Zilberman. Zilberman becomes a fractional, but morally important, part of a fictional plot that Orringer has inserted into the historical accomplishments of Varian Fry and the Emergency Rescue Committee.

The content of Orringer’s fictional plot line has been criticized and is a topic of some discussion.* She gives her fictional Varian Fry a fictional lover, Elliott Grant. Historically, it is clear that Fry was bisexual, or a closeted homosexual. Orringer isn’t guilty of outing the man with her fiction. But, is it important? And, why make it the focus of a novel? It is a major focus of this novel. The desperate activity and life threatening crisis of the rescue committee run parallel to a fraught love story and Fry’s psychological angst.

Orringer discusses her decision to highlight Fry’s sexual orientation in this book. “A novelist, free to extrapolate, may draw the veil aside. In these pages, I’ve portrayed a real history - Varian Fry’s heroic lifesaving mission in France - alongside an imagined one, his relationship with the entirely fictional Elliott Grant. …….I envision Varian Fry as a brave and brilliant person whose sexuality happened to resist easy categorization. My hope is that he’ll be celebrated that way in the twenty-first century and beyond”

I am usually unhappy with authors who mess with historical facts in their novels. It so often turns a good story into something that is awkwardly contrived. That didn’t happen with this book. It is not a step by step recounting of clandestine activities providing details of each refugee escape.There’s plenty of artistic name dropping although few of the artists become major characters. Orringer depicts the intense interactions of a diverse set of highly gifted individuals. I enjoyed the surrealist dinner party as stage managed by Andre Breton. The author’s inclusion of the homosexual, biracial, Elliott Grant, among the artists and writers housed at Villa Air Bel seemed entirely natural given the unnatural set of dangerous circumstances.

This book has all the tension of a spy thriller. That is not what made it a great book. Orringer makes her characters grapple with the moral consequences of their choices. It’s no accident that Elliott Grant is passing as white, while passing as straight. The author forces her fictional Varian Fry to confront the elitist bias of his priority listing of refugees. She forces him to question his personal choices along with his political choices. She allows him to be a vulnerable, flawed human being. Even if she does mess with historical accuracy, it can’t be too far out of line. It was definitely compelling and thought provoking for this reader. I did not feel that the sexual content of this book was exploitative or prurient. I never felt that the fictional content of this book was disrespectful of Varian Fry’s heroic accomplishments.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/bo...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/bo...

I'm so glad you liked it. She is a gifted writer.

It didn't quite make a 5 star with me, but I was riveted for the whole book.