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 Leger 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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American Antibes Archibald MacLeish artists asked ballet Baoth beach beautiful Calvin Tomkins Cap d'Antibes Chanler Cocktail Cole Porter color Cubist Diaghilev Dick Diver Dorothy Parker Ernest Europe everything exhibition father feel felt French friends garden Garoupe Gerald and Sara Gerald Murphy going Goncharova Hemingway Honoria Hôtel du Cap Juan-les-Pins later Léger living look MacAgy MacAgy's Marcel Mark Cross Modern Art Montana-Vermala Monty Woolley Murphy's painting Natalia Goncharova never Night novel oil on canvas Olga Paris party Passos Patrick Philip Barry phys piano Picasso picture portrait première Razor Riviera Salon des Indépendants Sara and Gerald Sara Murphy Sara Sherman Sara's saying Scott and Zelda Scott Fitzgerald seemed Snedens Landing songs spent Stravinsky style summer Tender things tion Tomkins's took Villa America Vladimir Orloff wanted Wasp and Pear watch Weatherbird Wiborg girls wife write Yale York Yorker Zelda Fitzgerald