For readers who wish to peruse those letters, I highly recommend Letters from the Lost Generation, edited by Linda Patterson Miller. That collection, which skillfully illuminates the web of friendships among this group of talented and difficult people, inspired many of the letters that appear in the novel.
Aside from Vaill and Miller, another rich source of letters is the memoir penned by Sara and Gerald’s daughter, Honoria Murphy Donnelly, Sara & Gerald: Villa America and After. Providing a firsthand account of life at Villa America as well as documenting a treasure trove of correspondence, Donnelly’s book was indispensable in my gaining a clear and realistic picture of the Murphys, of the details of their everyday life, of their love and affection for their children. In particular, Honoria’s extremely moving descriptions of the tin-soldier battle at Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s villa and the treasure hunt that makes up the final section of the novel were crucial.
The letters in Villa America are, for the most part, invented. However, some of them echo real letters, some of them contain a line from a real letter, and a few of them are reprints of the originals.
For example, in the series of letters exchanged between Sara and Gerald while she was visiting India, his comment that “I can’t very well chat about such a small thing with the men I know without being thought effeminate. About Wilson, Panama, and the Cadillac 1914, yes” was inspired by a line in a real letter to her, quoted in Vaill, that reads: “How few men there are with whom I am able to carry on more than a five minute conversation…These diners out, during coffee,—get so far with the Panama situation, or Wilson,—or the 1914 Cadillac vs. the 1914 Ford,—and then sit back…Any mention of some important exhibition, concert, book…is at once allied with effeminacy.”
Similarly, Sara’s letter to Gerald dated March 20, 1914, in the novel is based on a real letter she penned him from Rome. In the original letter, Sara says: “What do you mean by never writing?…What have you all been doing, and what were your costumes like at the costume balls? Having been to the ends of the earth, we’d like some news…India was the wildest success.” The fictional letter clearly echoes the real one; however, in the novel, this letter is intended to cover up the fact that she and Gerald have been writing in secret to each other, which colors the tone.
The fictional letter Gerald writes Sara saying that he is coming to ask her father for her hand in marriage was inspired by three separate letters he wrote to her shortly before declaring his intentions. In the first, he describes a meeting from the previous evening that “left me impressed, uplifted, awed (no word!) as I have never been. It may be strange,” he continues, “for a man to admit of this:—but I could never take what occurred to us last night casually.” In the second, he says that “I cannot live alone with this feeling much longer.” And in the third, Gerald writes that he can no longer bear to have their courtship kept a secret and that he will come to “ply my suit with your respected male parent.”
And in the next letter in the novel, the line “Think of a relationship that not only does not bind, but actually so lets loose the imagination! Think of it, my love—and thank heaven” comes directly from a line Gerald wrote to Sara when they first became secretly engaged, the only variation being the substitution of my love for the original Sal.
Similarly, in the novel, the letter Gerald writes to Sara from San Antonio was greatly inspired by part of a real letter he wrote to her when he was at the training camp in which he said: “It gives me such courage now to think of us established as a little family. I believe so in us—it is my creed—we can do anything with ourselves.”
In other cases, expressions and words that Sara and Gerald favored have been used in the letters, such as the description of their future children as “humorous, lithe, and clean,” their referring to the decorating fashion of the day as “smart apt,” and Gerald’s feeling of being “inspected” when with a group of men.
In the other large series of letters in the novel, the ones exchanged between 1928 and 1937, there are several cases where real letters have been used. First, the lines by Archie MacLeish that Gerald includes in the fictional letter to Owen, beginning “This land is my native land” comes from a real letter MacLeish wrote to Gerald upon his return to the United States. MacLeish later turned the letter into a poem, “American Letter,” that appears in the collection New Found Land.
MacLeish’s heartbreaking letter to Patrick Murphy about the sick baby squirrel he finds in the woods is a real letter he wrote to the boy with a few lines cut to make it shorter; it appears in Donnelly’s memoir. Finally, Fitzgerald’s poignant letter to the Murphys upon the death of Patrick Murphy, which begins “The telegram came today and the whole afternoon was so sad with thoughts of you,” is an original letter. A few lines have been cut for brevity.
Other letters in this series in the novel, while crafted by the author to advance the narrative, were inspired in part by real missives as well as by the general style of the various writers to whom they are fictionally attributed. Gerald’s letter to Owen describing his time in Los Angeles, for example, contains echoes of a letter Gerald wrote to MacLeish in which he commented on the infantile nature of the culture (as evidenced by the silly restaurant names) and his experience with the racial stereotyping on the set of Hallelujah! In similar fashion, Dorothy Parker’s letter to Bob Benchley about her time with the Murphys in Switzerland draws from Parker’s actual letter describing that experience.
Other letters inspired by real-life writings include Donald Stewart’s letter to Phil Barry, which draws on Stewart’s letter to Calvin Tomkins describing a visit to the Murphys; it can be found in Stewart’s autobiography, By a Stroke of Luck! Archie MacLeish’s letter to his wife, Ada, quoting a part of a letter from Gerald also falls into this category.
Similarly, Fitzgerald’s fictional letter to Ernest Hemingway describing his feelings about Sara echo words Fitzgerald wrote to her in a real letter several months after Baoth’s death. The short fictional letter Zelda Fitzgerald writes to Scott was inspired by a letter, cited in Nancy Milford’s fantastic biography Zelda, that she wrote to her husband during the period when she was living at the psychiatric facility Highland Hospital.
One of Hemingway’s fictional letters to Sara was inspired by a letter he wrote to her in 1934, after a trip to Africa, in which he offered her a stuffed impala’s or gazelle’s head, insisting that it was “clean and light and quite beautiful to look at when you’re in bed,” and described impalas as being “the ones that float in the air when they jump.”
All the works cited above were invaluable to the writing of this novel and I am indebted and extremely grateful to their authors for setting me upon this frustrating and wonderful and heartrending journey. I cannot recommend these works enough: Living Well Is the Best Revenge, Everybody Was So Young, Letters from the Lost Generation, and Sara & Gerald. Read them.
I also owe thanks to the staff at Yale’s Beinecke Library, which houses the Sara and Gerald Murphy Papers, for their help in my research and their patience in teaching me how to handle rare manuscripts.
Acknowledgments
There may be nothing harder for a writer than writing into the void: it’s a lonely business at the best of times, but when no one gives a damn, it’s even lonelier. Conversely, there is nothing more joyous than writing a novel amid the cheering sound of encouragement and support. And when it comes to support for this book, my cup runneth over.
I am evermore indebted to my editors Kate Harvey at Picador and Judy Clain at Little, Brown, who washed this novel with all the taste and style and brilliance in their arsenal. Whatever its flaws are lie with me; but when it comes to any of the high, gleaming moments, so much credit goes to those two talented women. Thank you, thank you—I can’t say it enough.
My agent, Caroline Wood, a woman of truly startling honesty, has been an amazing shield and an incredible companion on the path we’ve traveled together over the last four years. Thank God I found you.
S
o much gratitude goes to my U.K. publicist—and my friend—Emma Bravo, who wages one hell of a campaign. Long may our capers continue. And also to my U.S. publicist, the incomparable Sabrina Callahan, whose humor and tirelessness have made tromping around the United States a real joy.
My thanks to the whole team at Picador, who’ve become a bit like my very own pirate gang, and in particular to my lovely publisher, Paul Baggaley, for all his gracious support of this novel.
To the folks at Little, Brown—I send my heartiest thanks and devotion from this side of the pond for the hard work, eagle-eyed attentiveness, and astounding support.
Also deserving of so much love and acclamation are the long-suffering writers in my workshop group: Emma Chapman, Tom Feltham, Liz Gifford, Carolina Gonzalez-Carvajal, and Kat Gordon.
Finally, to my family: Thank you. I love you.
About the Author
Liza Klaussmann is the author of Tigers in Red Weather, an international bestseller for which she won a British National Book Award and the Elle Grand Prix for Fiction and for which she was named Amazon UK’s Rising Star of the Year in 2012. A former journalist, Klaussmann was born Brooklyn and spent ten years living in Paris. She currently lives in North London. Villa America is her second novel.
Also by Liza Klaussmann
Tigers in Red Weather
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Frontispiece
Epigraph
1935: What Was Lost
1898–1918: The Awakening 1898
1910
1913–1914
1915
1918
1923–1937: The Golden Bowl 1923
1924
1925
1926
1927–1928
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1937
1928: What Was Found
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Liza Klaussmann
Newsletters
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, and events in this book are the product of the author’s imagination, or they are used fictitiously and are not intended to represent real incidents or people, living or dead.
Copyright © 2015 by Liza Klaussmann
Author photograph by Leta Warner
Cover design by Kapo Ng
Cover photographs © Jayne Szekely / Arcangel Images (villa), Ralf Hettler / Getty Images (airplane)
Cover copyright © 2015 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: August 2015
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Frontispiece © Delius / Leemage / Lebrecht Music and Arts. “Life After Death” from The Hocus Pocus of the Universe by Laura Gilpin, copyright © 1977 by Laura Gilpin. Use by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Excerpt from “Letter to Gerald Murphy, dated September 1, 1928” from The Letters of Archibald MacLeish, 1907–1982, edited by R. H. Winnick. Copyright © 1983 by The Estate of Archibald MacLeish and by R. H. Winnick. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Excerpt from a letter from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Gerald and Sara Murphy reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. from The Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald edited by Andrew Turnbull. Copyright © 1963 by Frances Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan. Copyright renewed © 1991. All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-316-21137-6
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