Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love StoryHMH, 2013 M05 2 - 468 pages New York Times Bestseller: “A marvelously readable biography” of the couple and their relationships with Picasso, Fitzgerald, and other icons of the era (The New York Times Book Review). Wealthy Americans with homes in Paris and on the French Riviera, Gerald and Sara Murphy were at the very center of expatriate cultural and social life during the modernist ferment of the 1920s. Gerald Murphy—witty, urbane, and elusive—was a giver of magical parties and an acclaimed painter. Sara Murphy, an enigmatic beauty who wore her pearls to the beach, enthralled and inspired Pablo Picasso (he painted her both clothed and nude), Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The models for Nicole and Dick Diver in Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, the Murphys also counted among their friends John Dos Passos, Dorothy Parker, Fernand Léger, Archibald MacLeish, Cole Porter, and a host of others. Far more than mere patrons, they were kindred spirits whose sustaining friendship released creative energy. Yet none of the artists who used the Murphys for their models fully captured the real story of their lives: their Edith Wharton childhoods, their unexpected youthful romance, their ten-year secret courtship, their complex and enduring marriage—and the tragedy that struck them, when the world they had created seemed most perfect. Drawing on a wealth of family diaries, photographs, letters and other papers, as well as on archival research and interviews on two continents, this “brilliantly rendered biography” documents the pivotal role of the Murphys in the story of the Lost Generation (Los Angeles Times). “Often considered minor Lost Generation celebrities, the Murphys were in fact much more than legendary party givers. Vaill’s compelling biography unveils their role in the European avant-garde movement of the 1920s; Gerald was a serious modernist painter. But Vaill also shows how their genius for friendship and for transforming daily life into art attracted the most creative minds of the time.” —Library Journal |
Contents
6 A relationship that so lets loose the imagination | |
7 Dont lets ever separate again | |
16 A dismantled house where people have once been gay | |
17 The invented part for me is what has meaning | |
18 The geodetic points of our lost topography | |
19 We try to be like what you want us to be | |
20 Life itself has stepped in now | |
Photos 1724 | |
21 Not on the same course nor for the same port | |
22 Enough to make the angels weep | |
8 The idea is thrilling to me | |
9 An entirely new orbit | |
10 A prince and a princess | |
Photos 116 | |
11 There is American elegance | |
12 Very serious over trivialities and rather wise about art and life | |
13 Our real home | |
14 The kind of man to whom men women children and dogs were attracted | |
15 How can a wise man have two countries? | |
23 Ones very Life seems at stake | |
24 Isnt it strange how life goes on? | |
25 Back there where they were | |
26 Only half a person without you | |
Back Matter | |
Back Flap | |
Back Cover | |
Spine | |
Other editions - View all
Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story Amanda Vaill Limited preview - 1999 |
Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story Amanda Vaill No preview available - 1999 |
Common terms and phrases
Ada MacLeish Adeline Alexander Woollcott American Antibes Archibald MacLeish Archie MacLeish artists Ballets Russes Baoth beautiful Benchley called dance Dawn Powell dinner Dorothy Parker dress East Hampton Ernest Hemingway Esther father feel felt Fernand Leger France Frank Wiborg Fred friends garden GCM to AMacL GCM to SWM GCM/CT interview Gerald and Sara Gerald Murphy girls Hadley HMD interview Honoria Hotel Hoytie Ibid John John Dos Passos King Vidor later Leger letter living look Mark Cross Myers never night notebook Olga painting Paris party Passos Patrick Murphy Pauline photograph Picasso picture play Sara and Gerald Sara's Scott Fitzgerald seemed Sept Stewart summer SWM to GCM things told trip Vidor Villa America Vladimir Orloff wrote Sara Yale York young Yvonne Roussel Zelda Zelda Fitzgerald