Life Imitates Art Imitates Life

How do stories find us? I refer to the stories we’re each meant to read to help make sense of our lives, but also—for writers—the stories we’re meant to tell. Those of us in this profession well know the difference between an idea that might seem worth pursuing versus one that grabs us by the throat and won’t let go until we’ve put it down on the page.

In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert famously wrote about the mysterious nature of creative inspiration, how it’s a form of energy seeking the right artist to manifest it. She explained how the Romans believed that “genius” was an external, divine entity that actually lived in the walls of artists’ homes.

One of the examples Gilbert used to show the mystical power of inspiration was the American poet Ruth Stone, who recalled that when she was young and working in the fields of rural Virginia, she could hear a poem rushing toward her over the landscape like a comet. She actually felt it shake the earth beneath her feet. Stone would sprint to the house, literally chased by this poem, where she would record it on paper as it rushed through her. If she wasn’t able to reach paper and pen quickly enough, the poem would pass through her and continue on—looking, she said “for another poet.”

There were other times when Stone would get to the paper just at the tail end of a poetic comet. Then she’d reach out her hand and catch it, pulling it back into her as she transcribed it on the page. In those cases, the poem would come out precisely backwards, and she’d have to reverse-engineer it to set it straight. Mysterious, right? Both Stone and Gilbert swore it was true.

I was enchanted with this notion, that artistic ideas can be caught like a virus or a leaf on the wind. But did I believe it? Not fully. Not until quite recently, when I had an epiphany about how art and reality had intertwined in my own life.

I’ve just written a historical novel, The Ashtrays Are Full and the Glasses are Empty, about Sara Wiborg Murphy, who has haunted my thoughts for more than 50 years. I first encountered Sara and her husband, Gerald Murphy, as a college sophomore in a literature class about the Lost Generation—that group of young creatives who gathered in Paris in the 1920s.

Although I became a lifelong fan of those writers—Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and John Dos Passos among them—it was the Murphys who truly embedded themselves into my psyche. Gerald had become a respected painter in his own right but, relative to those literary icons, the couple was lesser known and much more relatable to my young mind. Their art form was hosting legendary parties, building loyal friendships, creating beautiful homes, and being attentive parents. I wanted to model my life after theirs, to live “voluptuously,” as Sara often says in my novel.

One of the things that first attracted Sara to Gerald was their shared aesthetic and creativity:

we developed a sort of manifesto between us: that we would eschew the superficial and the gaudy for the handmade, the authentic, and the deeply felt . . . We were a league of two, rebelling against the rigid thinking and traditionalism of our upbringing. I felt as if someone had sprung the lock on my birdcage and I’d flown through the open door with my wings at full span. Everyone kept commenting on how well and fresh I looked.

Later, Sara dismisses Scott Fitzgerald, who didn’t have her instinctive personal style, for his desperate attempts to be “fashionable”:

Poor Scott. He was so intent on being a Jazz Age icon, he couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Style was something that just infused how you talked, how you entertained, how you dressed. Every minute was important—but not too important. One could be too well dressed or not well-dressed enough. Style was being just right. Style was to make every day a festival.

I carried the Murphys’ story with me as I ventured into adulthood and marriage. Sara was always lingering in my peripheral vision as I shaped my own life: how could I make my world as beautiful, as interesting, as voluptuous as she had? Over the decades that followed, I thought mostly about the golden era of Sara’s life—that period in the 1920s when she hung out with the bohemian elite. She had no idea of the tragedies to come.

Then, in the early 2000s, my own life took a fall: divorce, gaslighting, and financial ruin, followed by years of healing and recovery. I eventually wrote a memoir, The Ghost Marriage, about this particularly challenging decade. Sara Murphy was far from my mind.

It was only last year, after my historical novel was well into the editing and design stage, that I began to see odd coincidences between our two stories, as if I’d identified with Sara long before my own life followed a similar trajectory. In both cases, these connections were chiefly related to the larger-than-life men we each married.

Both Sara and I, for example, experienced a “riches-to-rags” story. In my case, I’d married a successful, charismatic attorney and raised two children with an affluent lifestyle in the Napa Valley. But after about 20 years, my husband went into a downward spiral—losing his job, making bad financial choices, and even becoming addicted to opioids. In our divorce he brought me to the brink of bankruptcy, before he died of colon cancer three years later.

Sara was born in the late 19th century, the daughter of a self-made millionaire. As an adult, she was supported by a generous trust fund, which enabled her, with her husband Gerald, to raise her family among the bohemian royalty in Paris. But the Great Wall Street Crash of 1929, as well as other bad family investments, seriously diminished their wealth, and the Murphys spent their later years trying to live within their means. More importantly, the couple suffered two family tragedies (no spoilers here!) that deeply affected Sara’s well-being for the rest of her life.

Although my financial ruin was steeper than Sara’s and her personal tragedy much greater than mine, we both experienced beautiful lives that ultimately collapsed. As I wrote about her, I asked questions about faith, not because I knew that she’d had those thoughts—Sara was not an outwardly religious person—but because I imagined myself in her place. It wasn’t until much later that I realized I’d had those same questions when undergoing my own tragedies. The story arc we shared was one of resilience and survival.

In the last years of our marriage, my husband developed a fondness for costumes. This first manifested as an obsession with the camo pattern: he dressed in it head-to-toe and acquired every possible camo accessory, from camping chairs to seat covers for his truck. He then went through a biker phase (fancy motorcycles and lots of black leather), a farmer phase (overalls, trucker hats, cowboy boots), and even a Daniel Boone phase (fringed buckskin with a Bowie knife strapped to his waist). I once told him that he’d been every member of the Village People except the Native American and he got a delighted look in his eye thinking about the possibilities.

Once they’d moved to France, Sara’s husband, Gerald, began dressing exotically: there are photos of him as a Chinese aristocrat, a French “Apache” dancer, a cowboy, a man on safari, and in German folk costume. When the family began living on the Côte d’Azur, he raided Navy surplus stores to make the nautical look his own. It was Gerald who first wore the now-classic striped Breton T-shirt, later popularized by Coco Chanel, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, and J.Crew. Both Gerald and my husband had been appealing enough on their own terms, but both felt the need to bring further attention to themselves by posing as caricatures. 

As mothers, Sara and I shared another common concern. The Murphys had a close rapport with their children, in sharp contrast to other affluent parents of their day. At the height of their glamorous chapter in Paris and Antibes, the Murphy kids were usually integrated into the adults’ social lives. The challenges they later encountered forced her to direct her focus solely on her family and, despite her best efforts, their fates would completely redefine her life.

In my own family, I was able to raise my children under enviable circumstances: the aforementioned Napa Valley lifestyle. But then came my disastrous divorce and near financial ruin. I became determined to reinvent myself professionally, return to the workforce, and keep a roof over my kids’ heads. Like Sara, I chose to drop everything else and put my children first.

Two very different books, written four years apart, but with some extraordinary coincidences. The fact that I didn’t notice them as I was writing Sara’s story still puzzles me now. Was that a testament to how far I’d put my own misfortunes behind me? Or was I so smitten with the Murphys that it never occurred to me that I might be like them in some small way?

Whatever the reason, I now find a measure of comfort and even awe at the way Sara’s life lessons precipitated my own. Perhaps it was Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious calling my attention to a story that would predict my experience and then give me a book to write. 

Having harbored a decades-long fascination with Sara, I experienced some serious unworthiness when I first sat down to write about her. Who was I to put her extraordinary life into a novel? There were so many more experienced writers of historical fiction than me.

In hindsight, however, I’m reminded that Gilbert encourages all of us to proudly claim our creativity, insisting that it’s not only intended for the “special, the tormented, and the professional.” Perhaps, like Ruth Stone’s poems, Sara Murphy had been patiently waiting all these years, waiting for me to live her story in a slightly different set of shoes, and then write about it.

And if that’s true, what other stories might be held by the “genius” residing in my walls? Perhaps the current arc of my life is preparing me for other narratives, maybe even other whole books.

What are the broader themes or quirky ideas that have lodged themselves in your psyche? Where have you felt a mysterious connection to a character, a place, or a moment? Pay attention, Gilbert says. The result might be more than a story; it might well teach you something about your own life. The lesson is to be open and curious about the ideas that call to you. It’s not always a loud signal, I’ve learned. Sometimes it’s a person, like Sara, who gently takes your hand but never lets go.