HemGrupperDiskuteraMerTidsandan
Sök igenom hela webbplatsen
Denna webbplats använder kakor för att fungera optimalt, analysera användarbeteende och för att visa reklam (om du inte är inloggad). Genom att använda LibraryThing intygar du att du har läst och förstått våra Regler och integritetspolicy. All användning av denna webbplats lyder under dessa regler.

Resultat från Google Book Search

Klicka på en bild för att gå till Google Book Search.

Laddar...

Living Well Is the Best Revenge (1971)

av Calvin Tomkins

MedlemmarRecensionerPopularitetGenomsnittligt betygOmnämnanden
265699,647 (4.04)45
First published in 1977, and now available for a younger generation with a new introduction by the author, Living Well Is the Best Revenge is Calvin Tomkins's now-classic account of the lives of Gerald and Sara Murphy, two American expatriates who formed an extraordinary circle of friends in France during the 1920s. First in Paris and then in the seaside town of Antibes, they played host to some of the most memorable artists and writers of the era, including Cole Porter, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Legér, Ernest Hemingway, and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Gerald Murphy was himself an accomplished painter, though he practiced for only eight years, from 1922 to 1929. Responding to the paintings he saw in Paris with an American sensibility, he produced fifteen works, seven of which survive and one of which is in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art. Illustrated with nearly seventy photographs from the Murphy family album and featuring a special section on Gerald Murphy's paintings, Living Well Is the Best Revenge is a Lost Generation chronicle as charming and fascinating as the couple themselves.… (mer)
Laddar...

Gå med i LibraryThing för att få reda på om du skulle tycka om den här boken.

Det finns inga diskussioner på LibraryThing om den här boken.

» Se även 45 omnämnanden

Visa 1-5 av 6 (nästa | visa alla)
What is it about Sara and Gerald Murphy? Was it their personalities that made them so attractive? Or was it just the era they were living in at the time? This was back in the day when people gave houses as wedding gifts and didn’t worry about the red tape and mountains of paperwork that went with it. Maybe it was the people they associated with that made their light glow a little brighter. For Sara and Gerald Murphy could call Cole Porter, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Igor Stravinsky, John Dos Passos, and, of course, F. Scott Fitzgerald as their friends. Maybe it was their talents. Gerald, encouraged and inspired by Picasso among others, spent nine years as an artist, creating breathtaking paintings. Sadly, he only produced ten works of art and many are either missing or have been destroyed. Together, Sara and Gerald knew how to throw an intimate, yet memorable party. They had personality and flair. Although this is a tiny book, Tomkins gives a succinct portrait of the captivating couple. ( )
  SeriousGrace | Sep 5, 2017 |
Delightful quick read. So much of recent novel villa America skeleton of story from these memoirs. Skimed the chapter regarding his surviving artwork. Much kinder to Fitzgerald than the novel but still portrayed as a jerk. His alcohol consumption glossed over. ( )
  Alphawoman | Oct 27, 2015 |
This is a short biography of the lives of Gerald and Sara Murphy, wealthy Americans who chose to spend the 1920s and early 1930s living in France. They became friends with Hemingway, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso and Fernand Leger among others. “Archibald MacLeish, another old and very close friend, remarked that from the beginning of the Murphys’ life in Europe, ‘person after person--English, French, American, everybody--met them and came away saying that these people really are masters in the art of living.’”

Although in many ways the Murphys lived a charmed life in the 1920s, things changed in the 30s. The love of painting that Gerald had discovered (and was very good at) was abandoned when he had to return to New York to take over the family business (Mark Cross, a leather goods store), and both of their sons succumbed to illnesses before they reached adulthood. The book contains almost 50 pages of photographs and the one I’ll remember is of the outlines of their new yacht that Gerald drew to scale in white lime on the lawn outside their son’s hospital window. It summed up for me the combination of fortune and misfortune in their lives.

This book seemed like a New Yorker magazine profile and it turned out that’s exactly how it started out. Calvin Tompkins was a staff writer at The New Yorker and their art critic for years as well as a friend of the Murphys. One of the best parts of the book is his discussion of Gerald’s paintings which were done in a “style that lay midway between realism and abstraction.” Gerald “once told a friend that he was never entirely happy until he began painting, and that he was never really happy again after he stopped.”

This is a well told, bittersweet story of some interesting people that is going into my “Good Quick Reads” collection. Recommended. ( )
  phebj | Apr 21, 2011 |
This was a perfect book. I sat down on the chaise and read this in one complete sitting. The Murphy's are magical. Writing doesn't get any better than this. ( )
  mgaulding | Jul 6, 2008 |
Okay. Not as good as the Vail book.

Book Description
Publication Date: December 31, 2013
First published in 1971 and now available for a younger generation with a new introduction by the author, Living Well Is the Best Revenge is Calvin Tomkins' now-classic account of the lives of Gerald and Sara Murphy, two American expatriates who formed an extraordinary circle of friends in France during the 1920s. First in Paris and then in the seaside town of Antibes, they played host to a cast of some of the most memorable artists and writers of the era, including Cole Porter, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Ernest Hemingway and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. It was in Paris that Gerald Murphy first encountered Cubist painting, which prompted him to embark on an all-too-brief career as a painter--roughly from 1922 to 1929--during which he produced 15 works, seven of which survive, and every one of which is a unique American modernist masterpiece. This dazzling phase of work was brought to a close in 1929, when one of the Murphys' sons, Patrick, was diagnosed with tuberculosis and the family returned to New York. When their second son, Boath, succumbed to meningitis in 1935, and Patrick's death followed shortly thereafter in 1937, Murphy hung up his brush. Despite the brevity of Murphy's oeuvre, the intensity of its conception and its recently acknowledged status as a crucial precedent to Pop art have elevated Murphy's reputation considerably. In 1974, The Museum of Modern Art mounted the first Gerald Murphy retrospective. Illustrated with nearly 70 photographs from the Murphys' family album and with a special section on Murphy's paintings, Living Well presents a fascinating Lost Generation chronicle as charming and enticing as the couple themselves.
Show more ( )
  Suzanne_Mitchell | Dec 29, 2013 |
Visa 1-5 av 6 (nästa | visa alla)
inga recensioner | lägg till en recension
Du måste logga in för att ändra Allmänna fakta.
Mer hjälp finns på hjälpsidan för Allmänna fakta.
Vedertagen titel
Information från den engelska sidan med allmänna fakta. Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
Originaltitel
Alternativa titlar
Första utgivningsdatum
Personer/gestalter
Information från den engelska sidan med allmänna fakta. Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
Viktiga platser
Information från den engelska sidan med allmänna fakta. Redigera om du vill anpassa till ditt språk.
Viktiga händelser
Relaterade filmer
Motto
Dedikation
Inledande ord
Citat
Avslutande ord
Särskiljningsnotis
Förlagets redaktörer
På omslaget citeras
Ursprungsspråk
Kanonisk DDC/MDS
Kanonisk LCC

Hänvisningar till detta verk hos externa resurser.

Wikipedia på engelska

Ingen/inga

First published in 1977, and now available for a younger generation with a new introduction by the author, Living Well Is the Best Revenge is Calvin Tomkins's now-classic account of the lives of Gerald and Sara Murphy, two American expatriates who formed an extraordinary circle of friends in France during the 1920s. First in Paris and then in the seaside town of Antibes, they played host to some of the most memorable artists and writers of the era, including Cole Porter, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Legér, Ernest Hemingway, and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Gerald Murphy was himself an accomplished painter, though he practiced for only eight years, from 1922 to 1929. Responding to the paintings he saw in Paris with an American sensibility, he produced fifteen works, seven of which survive and one of which is in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art. Illustrated with nearly seventy photographs from the Murphy family album and featuring a special section on Gerald Murphy's paintings, Living Well Is the Best Revenge is a Lost Generation chronicle as charming and fascinating as the couple themselves.

Inga biblioteksbeskrivningar kunde hittas.

Bokbeskrivning
Haiku-sammanfattning

Pågående diskussioner

Ingen/inga

Populära omslag

Snabblänkar

Betyg

Medelbetyg: (4.04)
0.5
1
1.5
2 1
2.5
3 9
3.5 1
4 12
4.5 2
5 12

Är det här du?

Bli LibraryThing-författare.

 

Om | Kontakt | LibraryThing.com | Sekretess/Villkor | Hjälp/Vanliga frågor | Blogg | Butik | APIs | TinyCat | Efterlämnade bibliotek | Förhandsrecensenter | Allmänna fakta | 203,205,106 böcker! | Topplisten: Alltid synlig