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Letters from the Lost Generation: Gerald and Sara Murphy and Friends
"Excellent. This is a fine, and unusual, collection of literary Americana."-- Atlantic "Fine comic moments of truth."-- New York Times Book Review "An invaluable source of literary history."-- Publishers Weekly
This is the story of one of the most famous literary "sets" of the twentieth century. Gerald and Sara Murphy were at the center of a group including Ernest Hemingway and his wives, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Archibald MacLeish, Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Phillip Barry, and many others. They personified the jazz age and the lost generation. The Murphys have been viewed primarily as cult/pop figures. In this book Miller shows, through a sequential interweaving of letters from several correspondents, that they actually were the nucleus without which the group as we know it would not have stayed together. Miller allows the individual correspondents to tell their own stories, providing new insights into their lives and this era. It is the best sort of eavesdropping. Gerald and Sara Murphy married on December 30, 1915. Both families were moneyed and cosmopolitan. Their attraction to each other was in part based on their desire to escape the routine and predictable social rounds in which their families were immersed. Against their families' wishes, they and their three children left for Europe in 1921. They remained in France for over a decade, and quite naturally socialized with the expatriate set. They were, in part, models for Dick and Nicole Diver in Tender Is the Night . MacLeish wrote poems about them, their friends paid tribute to them and relied on them day to day and in correspondence, and their own letters are worth reading for their liveliness and because they so well preserve a record of the twenties and thirties. Miller provides nearly every extant letter between the Murphys and their friends during those decades. Most of them have not been published previously, and of course, they have never been presented collectively. Together, they constitute an epistolary "novel" of peculiar power and authenticity about a remarkable era.
This is the story of one of the most famous literary "sets" of the twentieth century. Gerald and Sara Murphy were at the center of a group including Ernest Hemingway and his wives, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Archibald MacLeish, Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Phillip Barry, and many others. They personified the jazz age and the lost generation. The Murphys have been viewed primarily as cult/pop figures. In this book Miller shows, through a sequential interweaving of letters from several correspondents, that they actually were the nucleus without which the group as we know it would not have stayed together. Miller allows the individual correspondents to tell their own stories, providing new insights into their lives and this era. It is the best sort of eavesdropping. Gerald and Sara Murphy married on December 30, 1915. Both families were moneyed and cosmopolitan. Their attraction to each other was in part based on their desire to escape the routine and predictable social rounds in which their families were immersed. Against their families' wishes, they and their three children left for Europe in 1921. They remained in France for over a decade, and quite naturally socialized with the expatriate set. They were, in part, models for Dick and Nicole Diver in Tender Is the Night . MacLeish wrote poems about them, their friends paid tribute to them and relied on them day to day and in correspondence, and their own letters are worth reading for their liveliness and because they so well preserve a record of the twenties and thirties. Miller provides nearly every extant letter between the Murphys and their friends during those decades. Most of them have not been published previously, and of course, they have never been presented collectively. Together, they constitute an epistolary "novel" of peculiar power and authenticity about a remarkable era.
- GenresNonfictionBiography
432 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 18, 2013
I have never read a book quite like this, an epistolary biography chronicling the lives of a group of people, in this case a group of Americans who met as ex-pats living in France connected through an avid interest in art and literature but also in the good life. And life was good on the French Riviera in the 1920s, especially if you were the guest of the charming, cultivated, and wealthy Murphys at their Villa American. Sara and Gerald Murphy are at the center of this book: The letters it contains are to and from them, with the other parties involved such literary luminaries as Ernest Hemingway and his second wife Pauline, F. Scott Fitzgerald and before she became ill and was institutionalized his wife Zelda, Archibald Macleish, Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, and John and Katy Dos Passos, among others.
The editor of the book has divided the letters into three sections, forming a chronology, with editor's notes before each section that explain the major events of each time period, events that are sometimes referred to in the letters but often are not. Indeed, the letters are interesting as much for what they reveal as well what they conceal about these people.
The book started out slowly for me, but I eventually got quite caught up in the personalities, alliances, misalliances, misunderstandings, love, loyalty, and shared grief over life's inevitable losses, though some of them are truly terrible and tragic.
I am always sad after reading a biography. Biographies follow the trajectory of people's lives, and we know where the end lies. But living through these people's lives through their letters had an even greater immediacy and intensity than the usual digested biography. For me, among the letter-writers, the person who sparkled the most was Katy Dos Passos. Her descriptions of domestic life are so colorful, so funny, so alive. I had to put the book down for a while when I had come to her last letter. It was just too sad for a time to go on. It is a moving book.
The editor of the book has divided the letters into three sections, forming a chronology, with editor's notes before each section that explain the major events of each time period, events that are sometimes referred to in the letters but often are not. Indeed, the letters are interesting as much for what they reveal as well what they conceal about these people.
The book started out slowly for me, but I eventually got quite caught up in the personalities, alliances, misalliances, misunderstandings, love, loyalty, and shared grief over life's inevitable losses, though some of them are truly terrible and tragic.
I am always sad after reading a biography. Biographies follow the trajectory of people's lives, and we know where the end lies. But living through these people's lives through their letters had an even greater immediacy and intensity than the usual digested biography. For me, among the letter-writers, the person who sparkled the most was Katy Dos Passos. Her descriptions of domestic life are so colorful, so funny, so alive. I had to put the book down for a while when I had come to her last letter. It was just too sad for a time to go on. It is a moving book.
April 13, 2017
The things that struck me most: Fitzgerald's heartbreaking letters about his struggles in Hollywood, his health, and financial struggles. The Murphys' condescension toward him, as well as their malignant, passive-aggressive hints that Hemingway should dump Hadley for Pauline (without having the guts to come out and say it directly); Hemingway later grew to regard divorcing Hadley as the greatest mistake of his life. Katy Dos Passos' affected attempts to be gay and literary: "Aren't the Greeks a wonderful little people?" All the letters are full of atmosphere and are more evocative of the times than most of the biographies I've read on the Murphys and their circle. The most striking sentence of the entire book was from a letter Zelda wrote to the Murphys from Montgomery, Alabama, right after Scott's death: "Those tragically ecstatic years when the pockets of the world were filled with pleasant surprizes and people still thought of life in terms of their right to a good time are now about to wane."
The book is helpfully annotated and augmented with balanced passages that explain the circumstances of the subjects' lives and times.
I can't recall if any of the letters that Patrick Murphy (Gerald & Sara's son) wrote in the months before his tragic death are included here, but if not, they can be found in Honoria Murphy Donnelley's memoir "Sara and Gerald: Villa America and After." They are utterly poignant and heartrending.
The book is helpfully annotated and augmented with balanced passages that explain the circumstances of the subjects' lives and times.
I can't recall if any of the letters that Patrick Murphy (Gerald & Sara's son) wrote in the months before his tragic death are included here, but if not, they can be found in Honoria Murphy Donnelley's memoir "Sara and Gerald: Villa America and After." They are utterly poignant and heartrending.
June 18, 2016
Just like eavesdropping on old friends. This book made me wish with all my heart that people still wrote letters. I loved following the long friendships of the famous "lost" from their initial connections to their final goodbyes.
October 17, 2022
I actually took the class from Dr. Miller, back in about 1998 or 1999 (I graduated that year), and I remember enjoying the class more than I thought I would.
Sadly, I don't recall a lot of the details of the book, but I remember that I enjoyed the book nearly as much as I did the class.
Sadly, I don't recall a lot of the details of the book, but I remember that I enjoyed the book nearly as much as I did the class.
February 22, 2009
An incredible collection of letters from one of the most incredible literary circles of the 20th century. These letters are a treasure and there's such wealth in them about friendship and art and aging and life and death from the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley, Archibald McLeish, and John Dos Passos. You can hear their voices in the letters (particularly Dorothy Parker, for me).
June 8, 2015
Perhaps one of my favorite books that I have ever read. For someone that has read "Everyone was so Young", "A Moveable Feast", "Tender is the Night", etc; this compilation of personal letters really pulls everything together. Even reading biographies on Fitzgerald and Hemingway did not bring as much personal insight into these amazing people as this book achieved. It made me think about what friendship is really about and about pain, loss, and courage. It even made me tear up a few times.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews