Living Well is the Best RevengeIn this enchanting memoir, New Yorker writer Calvin Tomkins re-creates the privileged world of Gerald and Sara Murphy, two American originals who found themselves at the center of a charmed circle of artists and expatriate writers in France in the 1920s. Their home in Antibes, Villa America, served as a gathering place for Picasso and L ger as well as Hemingway and Fitzgerald, who used the glamorous couple as models for Dick and Nicole Diver in Tender Is the Night. A bestseller when it first appeared in 1971, Living Well Is the Best Revenge features sixty-nine intimate photographs collected from the Murphys' family album, along with reproductions of several of Gerald Murphy's remarkable paintings--canvases that predate Pop Art by forty years. "Living Well Is the Best Revenge is a superb little study, alive with an elegance very much the Murphys'," said Nancy Mitford. Critic Russell Lynes found the book to be "at once a sharp and charming evocation of an era and a cast, mostly delightful, surely famous, and usually talented, written with an elegant balance between tongue in cheek and sympathy." This Modern Library edition includes Calvin Tomkins's new Introduction and a rewritten last chapter. |
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abstract American Antibes Archibald MacLeish artists asked ballet Baoth beach beautiful Bernheim Jeune Cap d'Antibes Chanler Cole Porter color Contemporary Arts Dallas Museum dance Diaghilev Dick Diver Donald Ogden Stewart Dorothy Parker Ernest everything Exhibited fascinated father feel felt French friends garden Garoupe Gerald and Sara Gerald Murphy going guests Hemingway Hôtel du Cap Indépendants Juan-les-Pins knew later Léger living look MacAgy Mark Cross Montana-Vermala Montparnasse Murphy's painting Murphys gave Museum for Contemporary Natalia Goncharova never Night Noces novel Olga once wrote Paris party Passos Patrick Murphy Philip Barry piano Picasso picture portrait Prangins première Princesse Razor Riviera Sara and Gerald Sara Murphy Sara's saying Scott and Zelda Scott Fitzgerald seemed somehow songs sort spring stayed Stravinsky style summer Tender things thought took Villa America Vladimir Orloff wanted Wasp and Pear watch weak animals Weatherbird wife Yale young Zelda Fitzgerald