Amanda VaillCritiques

My only issue with this well-researched book is the title. Hotel Florida seemed like a minor part of the narrative.

A gripping description of the Spanish Civil War and its implication for the rest of Europe as seen not through the eyes of the combatants, but through the eyes of three couples who wrote about it and photographed it. This felt more "up close and personal" and made sense out of a very confusing time period. Very readable. Pictures were included in the edition I read.

Gifted artist Gerald Murphy and his elegant wife, Sara, were icons of the most enchanting period of our time; handsome, talented, and wealthy expatriate Americans, they were at the very center of the literary scene in Paris in the 1920s. In Everybody Was So Young, Amanda Vaill brilliantly portrays both the times in which the Murphys lived and the fascinating friends who flocked around them. Whether summering with Picasso on the French Riviera or watching bullfights with Hemingway in Pamplona, Gerald and Sara inspired kindred creative spirits like Dorothy Parker, Cole Porter, and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Nicole and Dick Diver in Tender is the Night were modeled after the Murphys). The era of the Lost Generation has always fascinated me, and Vaill provides a delicious keyhole look at this period and the people who made it so colorful.

I am trying to wrap my brain around just how special Sara and Gerald Murphy's reputation was between post World War I and pre World War II. Just the who's who name dropping when describing their inner circle alone is spectacular. Even at an early age, both Sara and Gerald hobnobbed with notables (Sara was warned not to wear a long scarf while flying with the Wright brothers and Gerald was schoolmates with Dorothy (Rothschild) Parker). The Murphys vacation spot of choice was a rocky beach in the south of France. It was easy to rub elbows with the big names for Paris was a hotbed for creativity during the 1920s. Artists, photographers, writers, poets and fashionistas alike flocked to the city center and soon made their way to the French Riviera. Gerald and Sara knew how to entertain all ages. Their children were treated to elaborate parties including a scavenger hunt that took them by sailboat across the Mediterranean. It was a charmed life...until it wasn't. Interspersed with the good times are episodes of tragedy - illnesses, death, Fitzgerald's drinking and subsequent estrangements from longtime friends. But, it was probably the tragic deaths of their two sons, Baoth and Patrick that were the most devastating and marked the end of an era for Sara and Gerald.½

This book sparked a "Lost Generation" reading jag. Started with Fitzgerald, led to Dos Passos, Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. Wonderful story about an artistic couple with the wealth to explore their eccentricities. I thought it was slated to become a movie, but haven't seen any progress.

This is one of the best biographies I have read. Besides being well researched, it is elegantly and engagingly written. Heartbreaking at times, and at others enlightening. An example of its enlightening quality, who would have thought that Ernest Hemingway would have been such a devoted friend to Sara and Gerald Murphy's dying child.

This is one of the best biographies I have read. Besides being well researched, it is elegantly and engagingly written. Heartbreaking at times, and at others enlightening. An example of its enlightening quality, who would have thought that Ernest Hemingway would have been such a devoted friend to Sara and Gerald Murphy's dying child.

This is one of the best biographies I have read. Besides being well researched, it is elegantly and engagingly written. Heartbreaking at times, and at others enlightening. An example of its enlightening quality, who would have thought that Ernest Hemingway would have been such a devoted friend to Sara and Gerald Murphy's dying child.

a great story. not much detail at the end. a very good title.

Het relaas van de Spaanse burgeroorlog waarin Robert Capa, Ernest Hemingway en Arturo Barea, samen met hun vrouwelijke partners (Gerda Taro, Martha Gellhorn en Ilse Pollak-Kulcsar), de hoofdrol spelen.

I had a hard time getting through this book as I just did not find it that interesting as I had hoped for. Knowing little to begin with about the Spanish Civil War did not help. Not a great deal was given on it and I had a hard time keeping things straight between the Loyalists and the Nationalists. The book basically covers the lives and interactions of a group of people caught up in the conflict and the covering of it. Hemingway being the most famous and his affair with Martha Gelhorn. "For Whom the Bell Tolls", considered his seminal work came out of the experience of course. The book dragged for me with little of riveting action in my opinion. I am always amazed at the detail such authors go into in descriptions and conversations making one think they were actually there. I wonder often how much they interject themselves.

Correspondents, loyalists, insurgents, spies, adventurers, tourists, and even a few genuine patriots; war stories and love stories; true stories and damned lies--it's hard to tell which is which. Excellent!

Hubo una vez en Madrid un hotel que fue el equivalente del Holiday Inn de su tiempo, los últimos años 30. No es un secreto pero tampoco es ningún hito en la memoria de la ciudad. Se llamaba Hotel Florida y estaba en la plaza en la que los turistas salen del metro para dar su primer paseo por el Centro. En Callao, donde El Corte Inglés, donde antes estaba Galerías Preciados. John Dos Passos, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, André Malraux, Josephine Herbst, Lillian Hellman, e Ilya Ehrenburg fueron residentes de este esquinazo que parece esconderse de la Gran Vía. A veces, subían a la azotea, para ver a las tropas rebeldes que presionaban desde la Ciudad Universitaria. España estaba en guerra.

http://www.elmundo.es/cultura/2014/06/10/5395c514e2704e6d438b4581.html

The telling of the story of the Spanish Civil War through the eyes of several different people including Ernest Hemingway, his girlfriend Martha Gellhorn, a couple of talented young photographers, a Spanish government official and a few others. What they all have in common is that from time to time they stated in the Hotel Florida in Madrid, Spain. This is a well researched book about the unsettled world of Spain during that time as well as the unsettled lives of the major characters portrayed. The reading of the book is well worth the investment of time required to look into their compelling lives.

The Spanish Civil War is such a complicated subject that it's hard to tell the story clearly. I'm not sure Vaill's strategy of using these three couples as lenses worked perfectly, but it's an interesting approach. In such a tangled story, it's good for a reader to be able to latch on to specific characters. However, why not focus on the political leaders of the various groups? Perhaps that angle has been overused.

I have a good deal of background knowledge on this subject so I'm not sure if this is a good book for those who are coming to the subject fresh or not. If nothing else, it makes clear how confusing the Spanish Civil War was, then and now, and how tragic and unfair: the legitimately elected government of Spain was ultimately overthrown by a military rebellion backed by German and Italian resources, despite a Non-Intervention Pact signed by the European powers.

Quotes

In less than a week, the fascists' rebellion had triggered the very revolution they had spent the past five years resisting. And working together, the armed workers and the government's own forces had prevented an immediate fascist victory. (July 1936, Madrid, p. 18)

"My guts aren't as brave as my camera" -Capa, November 1936, Madrid (84)

Virginia Woolf's essay "Three Guineas" inspired by Capa's and other images from Madrid (88)

"These are terrible times. To overcome them we have to be terrible ourselves." -Pepe Quintanilla to John Dos Passos, April 1937, Madrid (175)

...this was war, and you had to fall in line with whatever the leadership told you. (Hemingway implied to Dos Passos, April 1937, Madrid, p. 176)

"It's this bloody Non-Intervention Committee that is the root of all evil," [Eric Blair a.k.a. George Orwell] said [to Dos Passos]: with Britain, France, and the United States refusing to support the government, the only friend Spain had was the Societ Union, and Stalin was using that friendship as leverage. (May 1937, Barcelona, p. 187)

Suddenly Spain's war had become an experimental exercise - which will prevail, fascism or socialism? Whose weapons are stronger, Germany's or Russia's? - that the rest of the world was watching with interest. Or worse: for although the powers-that-be in Europe and America hoped militant fascism might be weakened by the war, they actively didn't want the Russian Communists and their de facto protegees, the Spanish government, to win it - that would make communism too powerful.
We're condemned in advance, Barea thought. We can't win, but we have to fight. Maybe we'll be saved if an antifascist war starts in Europe; maybe all we can do is carry on and give the other countries time to arm themselves. (May 1937, Madrid, p. 197)

"You get an absurd feeling that somehow it's unfair still to be alive." -Gerda Taro, July 1937 (225)

"It is not always easy to stand aside and be unable to do anything except record the sufferings around one." -Robert Capa, Barcelona, January 1939 (345)

"Fascism is a lie told by bullies. A writer who will not lie cannot live under fascism." (Hemingway, June 1937, New York, p. 202)

"The war photographer's most fervent wish is for unemployment." -Robert Capa (229)

"[Hemingway] is living in a world so entirely his own," wrote Scott Fitzgerald to Max Perkins...
that it is impossible to help him, even if I felt close to him at the moment, which I don't." (August 1937, New York, 237)

"I will occupy Spain town by town, village by village...I can assure you that I am not interested in territory, but in inhabitants. The reconquest of the territory is the means, the redemption of the inhabitants the end. I cannot shorten the war by even one day..." -Franco to Italian ambassador (fall 1937, Madrid, 259)

"We [Spain] aren't used to intelligent women yet." -priest Leocadio Lobo to Ilsa (fall 1937, Madrid, 261)

In war you can shoot the people who deserve to be shot. (Herb Matthews, December 1937, Teruel, 276)

"What goes on here [in Spain] seems to be the affair of all of us who do not want a world whose bible is Mein Kampf." -Gellhorn to Eleanor Roosevelt (April 1938, Barcelona, 308)

"In a war, you can never admit, even to yourself, that all is lost. Because when you will admit it is lost you will be beaten." -Hemingway (331)

Capa was "always very brave and always saying how frightened he was. He had none of Hemingway's bravado." (Gellhorn, November 1938, Barcelona, 338)

"There will be no mediation, because criminals and their victims cannot live together." -Franco, January 1939 (343)

...and Capa taking pictures as if the camera were a shield against his feelings. (346)

Hemingway "was always a spectator who wanted to be an actor, and who wanted to write as if he had been an actor. Yet it is not enough to look on: to write truthfully you must live, and you must feel what you are living." (Barea, "Not Spain But Hemingway," 357)

Gellhorn had "no intention of being a footnote in someone else's life." (360)

Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story by Amanda Vaill is a detailed account of the life of artist Gerald Murphy and his wife Sara. They are probably now best known as the basis for Dick and Nicole Diver in Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

They Murphys were good friends with F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway and their families, in addition to many other modernist movers and shakers, many of whom they met in Paris in the early 1920s.

The edition I read was around 360 pages long. It took around 100 pages for couple to meet, marry and then get to Paris. Not much of interest happens before they move to Europe and my main criticism is Amanda Vaill appears to be so in thrall to the Murphys, and has done so much research, that she chose to give the reader a lot of chronological detail. Whilst a logical way to structure any biography, I think this story would have benefitted from being structured thematically. The book contains some fascintating stories and insights into the world of the Murphys, the Fitzgeralds, the Hemingways, Picasso and his family, Dorothy Parker, Cole Porter, and so on, however for each nugget there's a lot of less interesting detail to work through.

The Murphys' personal story has more than its fair share of tragedy, and the shadows that darken the story of this handsome, talented, and wealthy American couple, who were at the centre of the artistic scene in Paris and Antibes in the 1920s, is what sticks in my memory.

Interesting book on Sarah and Gerald Murphy but not a " could not put down" and would like more depth.

Can there be too much of a good thing when it comes to biography? If there is someone Amanda Vaill did not interview, if there is a document she overlooked, if there is an archive or other source of information she could not access, it is news to me. I have to second Terry Teachout's claim, "I can't imagine a better book about Robbins ever being written."

Of course there will be other books because, to quote Mr. Teachout again, "Jerome Robbins is the great subject of American theatrical biography." Others may demur, but certainly this magnificent choreographer (the term does not do justice to his many talents) is a great subject.

Even for those who have already read earlier biographies by Greg Lawrence and Deborah Jowitt, there are rewards, because Ms. Vaill has used Robbins's own articulate writings (many of them unpublished) to provide an intimate portrait that bridges the gap between autobiography and biography.

Every reviewer can only come to "Somewhere: The Life of Jerome Robbins" (Broadway, 675 pages, $40) with a partial knowledge of Robbins. I know him mainly from work on musicals like "On the Town," "West Side Story," and "Fiddler on the Roof." Others know Robbins for his ballets and his collaborations with great artists such as Leonard Bernstein. Still others (an angry cohort) can't get over Robbins's naming names at his House Un-American Activities Committee hearing.

Ms. Vaill slights none of these aspects of Robbins's career. If she is resolutely sympathetic toward Robbins, taking the edge off the caustic man who appears in other biographies, she not so much rebuts the work of others as simply presents what she obviously regards as a fuller portrait, a dramatic, incremental revelation of the kind we expect in novels of a high order.

I suppose a reader less than committed to the arts, less than attuned to the politics of the New York stage during much of the 20th century, could weary of the detail that informs Ms. Vaill's narrative. Jerome Robbins deserves a lyrical biography, the equivalent of a dance with the reader, and Ms. Vaill obliges. If a better biography is ever written about Robbins, it will have catapulted off Ms. Vaill's strong work.

But quite aside from the biographer's superb handling of Robbins's major achievements, the story of how he transformed himself from Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz to Jerome Robbins, how he negotiated his love life as a gay man who also loved women — and countless other aspects of his art and life — what entranced me was the discovery of how literate Robbins was. At a very early age he was reading Faulkner (always a good sign in my book) and the other greats. Robbins himself wrote very well and had an ear for music that often helped him to coalesce dance steps and movements into a form that resulted in extraordinary rapport with collaborators like Bernstein.

Lest you think Ms. Vaill knows everything, I hasten to add that she cannot say if the Bernstein/Robbins partnership ever segued into the sexual. A few murky references in Robbins's diaries suggest as much, but they are not definitive. And Ms. Vaill does not push the matter. It is a matter of tact — biographer's tact — not to go beyond the evidence, or beyond (in this case) how Robbins or Bernstein may ultimately have understood their relationship.

Beyond tact, there is Ms. Vaill's knack for finding the nub. Every biographer writing for a general audience has to supply a certain amount of background. How much, for example, should readers be told about the Group Theatre or the Actors Studio, which contributed significantly to Robbins's artistic development? Some readers, like me, already know quite a bit and will chafe at boilerplate. Here is how Ms. Vaill treats the work of Elia Kazan and Robert Lewis, two founders of the Actors Studio: "The cornerstones of Lewis and Kazan's teaching were Stanislavsky's twin principles of intention, or the importance of one's character's objective in a given scene, and work on oneself, or technique." This pithy statement neatly avoids the pitfalls of saying too much or too little. Believe me, there is a considerable margin of error. A less able biographer might introduce Actors Studio by referring to "the Method," or to the prickly personalities involved. But Ms. Vaill wants to show what Robbins got out of it. Even a reader well versed in the ins and outs of theatrical history will never bored by this fresh, concise explanation of a well-known institution.

Ms. Vaill's biography does not so much supplant previous efforts as provide a broader and deeper context that can be used to assess them. And I take her own acknowledgment of previous biographers at face value: She is indeed "indebted" to them. How else could she write with such precision, knowing where her score needs a soft pedal or crescendo?

There can be too much of a good thing in biography. Countless biographies have foundered on precisely the grounds Ms. Vaill stands on. Congested with too much detail, with too much good fortune in the way of access and archival sources, the biographer cannot resist parading how much she knows. Ms. Vaill, who once upon a time was a book editor and surely dealt with baggy monster biographies, knows what I mean all too well. But it is the rare biographer, let alone editor, who is capable of acting on her own acumen and producing such an exquisitely polished performance.

I re-read this book after first reading The Paris Wife (about Hemingway's first marriage) and while re-reading A Moveable Feast (Hemingway's memoir about Paris in the 1920s). Everybody Was So Young is the portrait of the marriage of Sara and Gerald Murphy focusing on their life living as American expatriots in Paris in the 1920s. The Murphys were wealthy and beautiful and attracted to the artistic set living abroad. They befriended Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Picasso, and Leger to name just a few. Paris was not only less expensive but more permissive socially than the US during the 1920s and was a destination for young artists who wanted to practice their craft and live a good life. While Gerald dabbled in painting and creating theatrical backdrops, he and Sara were great and generous entertainers who set up house at Villa America in Antibes.

I loved this book enough to go have lunch with the author (who is a delight). This is a wonderful view into the lives of the expat writers during the 1920s. If you are a fan of Fitzgerald or Hemingway, this book will give you some unusual insight into their friendship, inspiration, and writing.