Letters from the Lost Generation: Gerald and Sara Murphy and Friends, Expanded Edition Book

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.