 "A wonderful biography of two people" | 2008-04-12 |
| - Reviewed By mtkennedy1 |
| I recently discovered this book so will try not to repeat the favorable reviews of others. I have visited most of the locations in this book and will try to search out the Murphy's history the next time I go. They lived magical lives in a period of tremendous artistic creativity. The 1920s in Paris were a unique period for American literature. That the Murphys were at the center of it makes this book required reading for anyone who wants to study the period. I have been in Sylvia's Beach's Shakespeare and Company, still there on the left bank, but the magic is gone. What must it have been like to be part of this generation of expatriates ? Read the book and find out. It is terrific. |
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| ""Making It New"" | 2007-09-06 |
| - Reviewed By deborah_k |
| I had to go out and buy this book after seeing "Making It New: The Art and Style of Sara and Gerald Murphy" at the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, MA. The book is terrific, but if you're interested in this period, its writers and artists than track down this exhibit. It's a wonderful and extraordinary show about the Murphys and those they were friends with. Paintings, theater pieces, diary entries, letters, amazing photographs, home movies and more illustrate that the Murphys were really an essential part of the 1920s and 1930s. An argument can be made that they were the center that everything spun out from. It is absolutely sensational. |
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| "The Murphys: maybe more interesting than their pal Fitzgerald" | 2007-04-01 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1725KPO7A5ULX |
Zelda Fitzgerald died on March 10, 2005. Hers was a terrible death --- she was a patient at the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, and the building caught fire, and because the patients were locked in, Zelda and eight others died. She was 48.
Her life had, effectively, ended years earlier, when she had the first of her breakdowns and was diagnosed as a schizophrenic. Or had it ended earlier than that? Perhaps with the death of her estranged husband, the once glamorous, then ruined F. Scott Fitzgerald, in 1940. Or maybe even earlier, on the Riviera, in 1924, when she had a dalliance with a French aviator that so enraged that her husband she tried to kill herself a few months later. Or even earlier, when Scott started appropriating her personality and her ideas for the characters in his novels.
Yes, but for a few years there, they had it all, didn't they? They were the Golden Couple, the personification of the '20s: young, beautiful, gifted. But not smart about fame, although, back then, almost no one understood how the flame of media draws you in, consumes you for the amusement of an uncaring public, and leaves you with ashes in your mouth and regret in your heart.
No, wait. Some people did grasp that. The Murphys did. And, as Amanda Vaill tells their story, they are considerably more interesting than their friends, the drunk and disorderly Fitzgeralds.
And can we talk about turning life into art?
Late each morning in the summer of 1922, Gerald went outside his home in Antibes and created something never seen before --- a beach! --- by raking the seaweed and stones. For this, he is said to have invented the idea of the Riviera as a summer destination.
Moments later, Sara would join him and, on a blanket, read or write. She wore a white linen dress or bathing suit. And, always, a long strand of pearls, which she looped around her back so she wouldn't mar her tan (and, she said, because the sun was good for them). For this, she became a style-setter and muse.
Gerald and Sara together were not two but one. They were "The Murphys," a young and rich American couple who used their youth and money to establish themselves at the center of a cultural elite in which everybody was young, talented, acclaimed. Cole Porter, Stravinsky, Picasso (who was in love with Sara), Cocteau --- though they were stars on their own, they orbited the Murphys. "There was a shine to life wherever they were," Archibald MacLeish said. "It was as though custom and habit had been wiped away and the thing itself was, for an instant, seen. Don't ask me how."
Then F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway showed up.
If you've read Tender Is the Night, you know that Fitzgerald took the Murphys as models for the Divers. Whatever its merits, the novel reduced the Murphys to "Beautiful People." In fact, Gerald was an accomplished painter, an American Leger. He and Sara were experts on African-American spiritual music. They financed theatrical productions and helped worthy friends (Hemingway, for just one).
And they were far from untouched by the troubles of ordinary mortals.
First their young son Patrick came down with tuberculosis. Then, suddenly, their younger son died of meningitis. "Fancy. There's no other word for it," John Dos Passos said. "They could have thought & thought for a million years and they wouldn't have been able to think of one like that." And then, "fancy" again, a few years later, when Patrick died, and the Murphys had to carry on for their one remaining child.
It gets, if possible, more intense. Gerald returned to America to run his family business, a posh New York leather store named Mark Cross. He sent money to the faltering Fitzgerald. He had some deep poetic attachments with young men. And then he died. Dorothy Parker sent his widow this telegram: "Dearest Sara Dearest Sara." The widow staged a funeral that was described as "courage disguised as taste." But that was his life. And hers.
It's easy to read a book like this for the anecdotes about the mighty. But Fitzgerald comes across here as an eternal college boy and a bit of a fool, Hemingway as cold and manipulative. In contrast, the Murphys seem like explorers of the rarest kind --- blessed with money, they set out to find beauty and harmony. That they also found tragedy only makes their story more fascinating.
College kids majoring in Gender Studies can find much in the life of Zelda Fitzgerald to ponder. I'm not knocking that --- there are lessons galore in that roller coaster of a life. But when you're further along the road, the Fitzgeralds start to be, at bottom, a lot of noise --- spoiled children breaking things.
The Murphys, in contrast, look more substantial, more worthy of a sustained view. The Murphys, for all their money and privilege, seem real. These days, I don't want to read about the Fitzgeralds; I want to read Fitzgerald. But the Murphys --- they're well worth 500 pages. |
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| "A beautiful story beautifully written" | 2005-12-27 |
| - Reviewed By gramslaton |
| The story of Gerald and Sara Murphy is sprawling and encompasses so much that was exciting about America's last period of innocence, and runs the gamut from being the golden-child chosen ones of their era to something approaching Greek tragedy in their private lives. But the real test of a good biography is in the writing, and Amanda Vaill stands beside David McCullough as one of the most engaging biographers in our time, doing the incredible job of keeping all the players and egos, all the locations and permutations straight, intriguing, and finally resulting in something most biographies never are: A real page-turner. Even if you've never read Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dos Passos, or MacLeish, their stories as interwoven with the Murphy's own will grab and hold your attention as brilliant, distinct, and all-too-human characters. Kudos for a masterwork that pulls all the disparate elements of the Lost Generation together so effortlessly to convey this important time in 20th century history. |
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 "some facts are not correct." | 2004-06-09 |
| - Reviewed By Anonymous |
| i'll admit i havent even read the book. perhaps i will in the future, but a few incorrect "facts" fly out while just gazing over the material available online. the most glaring is that "Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney was Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney's Aunt." get with it she was his mother, obvious she named her son after her father. anyone who has read either's biography would know that. and for other sources John Hay Whitney "JOCK" was his cousin not his brother. |
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| "Making social history breathe" | 2004-04-29 |
| - Reviewed By troutthouse |
| Few books deserve to be 'raved' about but mark this one as a definite 5 stars. Brilliantly researched and detailed, the author made these people 'real' to me, I felt I knew them. The Murphys, so very different yet so very much alike were 'The hostesses with the mostest' to all the upcoming glitterati of the 20's furnishing both emotional and monetary support at crucial times to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Cole Porter (and others) with a grace and charm that is as impressive now as it was then. It would have been so easy for Vaill just to cover that but she gives the lives behind the facade, the odd and distant relationships with both sets of parents and family, the heartbreak and sorrow of loss of their two sons that seemed to end all the lightness in theie lives. They and the world they had created were never the same after, as both they and their friends even at the time recognized. Its sometimes so easy to forget that the 20's were a brief flickering of a frantic time between a war and a depression. The Murphys lived before and after but somehow they both defined and were defined by that period. This book lets you know them for all they were. |
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 "Paris in the 20's revisited" | 2000-05-30 |
| - Reviewed By catherine_anne |
| Amanda Vaill has researched this book with admirable skill and diligence. She has given the reader more than adequate detail of the life of the privileged in Paris after WW I. By privileged I mean those with intellectual, artistic or personality advantages that allowed them to make a significant contribution to the life of that great society at the time. In the rich parade of her characters are Hemingway,Picasso and Scott Fitzgerald, warts and all. The main protagonists, Gerald and Sara Murphy are distinguished members of this illustrious group not so much for their academic achievements, but for their uncompromising and ingenuous humanism. Many books have been written about this exciting period of freedom and almost explosive creativity. So why read another, and why read this one? What is important about this book is not a chronicle of events. It is the wonderful revelation of the power of friendship and the passion of relationships within a family. Read this to understand yourself. Read this to feel alongside another human-being the deepest emotions of despair and intoxicating elation. Every human weakness is exposed without judgement. Amanda Vaill's triumph, in my opinion, is that theatre, ballet, literature and painting are laid bare for the reader. The creator and the creation are revealed for viewing in a very fresh way. You, the reader, will judge. But inevitably, you will not escape the excitement and vitality of the amazing life of expatriot Americans in Paris in the 20's trying to excape the strait jacket of their homeland. Not many books make me question my own values. This one did. Minor criticism: inaccurate Latin quotes. |
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| "A delightful account of the Murphys and their famous friends" | 1999-04-06 |
| - Reviewed By Anonymous |
| This is an enjoyable book about the lives of Gerald and Sara Murphy, a rich American couple who befriended (and occasionally subsidized) dozens of great writers, artists and performing arts people beginning in the early 1920's, in France and the U.S. Although I had heard of them before via biographies of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, etc., I never appreciated the extent of their influence, which this book explores in detail. The Murphys were highly creative people, especially in fashioning their own way of life. Vaill spends a lot of time describing their houses, furniture, clothes, jewelry, boats, parties, costumes and the like, as well as their enthusiastic but sometimes short-lived forays into creative fields as diverse as landscape architecture, painting, theater set design and boatbuilding. I would have liked a bit more attention to the practical side of the Murphys' lives. Two questions in particular often occurred to me as I read this book: (i) how exactly did they pay for it all, and (ii) how did they manage to raise three children amid frequent changes of residence, travel, parties, all-consuming artistic projects, guests and other distractions? Vaill doesn't say much about where their money came from, who managed and disbursed it, or how it was sent to Europe during the Murphys' long residence there. Similarly, although there are a few mentions of their children's activities and schools, there's little discussion of the Murphys' role as parents until their sons Baoth and Patrick become ill and die at tragically young ages. These minor complaints aside, "Everybody Was So Young" is a delightful portrait of a sparkling couple, the brilliant people who surrounded them, and an era for which it's hard not to feel nostalgic. Vaill's book makes a fine addition to the already crowded field of books on the artistic life of the 1920's, and it's well worth a read. |
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| "Fascinating account of Lost Generation love story" | |
| - Reviewed By Anonymous |
| If anyone could be said to have lived a charmed life, it would be Gerald and Sara Murphy. They were wealthy, artistic and talented, with three beautiful, loving children and a circle of friends who became famous and accomplished in their own right. They gave wonderful parties that are still remembered a half-century later, were generous to those in need, and best of all, Gerald and Sara loved each other deeply, with an affection that grew as they lived their lives to the inevitable, bitter end. Anyone who has read into the lives of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Picasso and the other expatirot residents of Paris in the 1920s will recognize Gerald and Sara, perhaps unfavorably as hanger-ons who supplied the money the others lived on. That unfair assessment is turned on its head in Amanda Vaill's dual biography of the couple. The Murphys were more than a bank account who gave parties; celebrity bottom feeders more interested in status than in accomplishments. They were something of an oddity. Both were from wealthy families, yet both wanted more than the family life they craved. Gerald had an eye for art, music and decorating; it was amazing to learn he was first to boost many artists who later became famous; "Grandchildren," he said as he showed them a copy of "Meet the Beatles." "Pay attention. These young men are going to be very, very important." From their village in the Antibes, which was a backwater when they discovered it, they befriended people like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Archibald Macleish, Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett as well, while Gerald became famous in his own right for his finely detailed studies of mechanical devices: a watch, a machine, of a boat deck and smokestacks. But if there's anything experience teaches us, it's that no one really leads a charmed life. It's all filled with day-to-day worries, irritations, tragedies and, with luck, some glory. But Gerald and Sara came close -- the 20s were their time -- and it's a fine thing to finish a biography of someone and find that you like them even more than before. |
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| "Eye- and mind-opening, and very moving" | |
| - Reviewed By Anonymous |
| If you thought you knew about the Murphys, thought you knew about American ex pats in the 20s ... think again. The amount of new material here is remarkable, and for the first time one gets the sense that the Murphys' role in cultural history was far more than that of passing hors d'oeuvres and mixing drinks. Gerald and Sara were major figures in the European avant garde--contributors in their own right--before Fitzgerald, Hemingway, etc, got there, for example. This is the also first time Gerald's painting has been given its due. Above all, though, this book reveals two people with an astonishing gift for friendship--far from self-absorbed, a term better applied to the American writers who used them, they were instead open, generous--whose lives turned from surface glamor to intense, and deeply moving, private agony, as tragedy befell their children. The glamorous surface we knew about: the far more beautiful full story is here. |
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