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Living Well Is the Best Revenge (Modern Library) | 
 enlarge | Author: Calvin Tomkins
Publisher: Modern Library
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $11.91
You Save: $8.04 (40%)
New (6) Used (10) from $11.90
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 146262
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.6
ISBN: 0679603085
Dewey Decimal Number: 944.0041300922
EAN: 9780679603085
ASIN: 0679603085
Publication Date: November 17, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 4 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Few left in stock - order soon. Code: R20090106234421H
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Product Description
In 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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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Lovely little book October 31, 2008
Too bad the score for this book is skewed down by a couple of idiots. The Murphys were much more than "gracious hosts". They were catalysts. They were the Stein and Toklas of the Riviera, and probably lots more fun. And Gerald Murphy's paintings were as fine an achievement as Stein's scribblings. His works would fetch a fortune on the market, if they were ever available.
Tomkins writes a moving and, in the end, melancholy biography. The title is apt. The tragedy in the Murphy's life is almost unbearable to read about. Interesting how their life parallels that of their friend Cole Porter -- brilliant fortune met with sudden misfortune.
This book is about the arc of tragedy and one couple's effort to live through it. Anyone whose life has been touched by misfortune should read it.
Good Things Come in Small Packages August 17, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
As an avid and diehard Fitzgerald fan, I seek out any material that covers him, his circle, or the "Lost Generation" in general.
Though the book occupies less than two hundred pages, Tomkins does a fine job of making it feel warm and intimate. What's more, you get the privilege of learning about the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway, Cole Porter, Picasso and others. Gerald and Sara Murphy were a class act and lived life for no one but themselves. They seemed wonderfully down to earth and sympathetic to the situations of their friends and family. It seems they did indeed "write the book" on how to live right--The Fitzgeralds were said to have lived poorly on massive amounts of money while Gerald and Sara Murphy lived grandly on far less income; with them, it was not about appearances and pleasing society, but about family and togetherness.
This wonderful little biography spans the 1910's to the 1960's in a relatively short breath and perhaps my only complaint is that there is not more. I certainly turned the last page wanting for more. If you are interested at all in "The Lost Generation" or the modernist movement, you will adore this book. Theirs was an evanescent time, one worth reading about and dreaming about.
 Living Well is the Best Revenge February 7, 2003
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
This book had the subject matter worthy of a good book and I came away from this book feeling cheated. The author's research was very sketchy about Sara and Gerald Murphy -- I wanted to know so much more. I'm sure there is a better book out there on this interesting couple.
Nothing succeeds like success... January 9, 2002
0 out of 9 found this review helpful
This book truly proves that living well is really the best revenge.
Lives of Charm and Grace July 29, 2000
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
It's been nearly 30 years since I read this book and I remember it with delight. Sara and Gerald Murphy made living an art form. Sure, it's fun that they knew the famous writers and artist of the age, but it is their love for each other, their children, and their homes that make them the interesting people we would all like to know. Heck, that we would all like to be. Tomkins, too, is an excellent writer who lent much insight and charm to the story.
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