Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Since CNN.com is running nothing but Michael Jackson coverage today, I headed to the BBC and found out that if you’re an expatriate low on cash, you do not want to go to Tokyo. (Try Johannesburg instead.)

“Expat” has such a decadent feel to it. Being an English major, the first expats that come to my mind are the literary stars of the Lost Generation: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein. (I recommend Hemingway’s account of his time in Paris, “A Moveable Feast” — I’ve also added Martha Gellhorn’s “Travels with Myself and Another” and Morley Callaghan’s “That Summer in Paris” to the Amazon wish list.)

Of the expat writers away from these fair shores after World War I, my favorite is Fitzgerald, who wrote “The Great Gatsby” while he was abroad in France in 1924. He spent the winter revising it in Rome. (Hint to my boss: Writing can be polished in Italy!) It’s safe to say that his writing during this time was made more difficult by his relationship with his wife, Zelda.

Their marriage was legendarily tempestuous. They were both young and attractive, quite the Bright Young Things, and at the center of every party. But he was an alcoholic who used bits of her diary in his books and she was an incorrigible flirt who turned out to be schizophrenic. They were both jealous and wild, and the excessive drinking didn’t help.

She died in a sanitarium, where she wrote a book of her own. He died a drunk, thinking he hadn’t left much of a legacy behind. Little did he know that we would all spend middle school getting to know Daisy Buchanan and being dazzled by the Jazz Age through his words.

I’d truly like to see a modern-day, Tokyo version of “Tender is the Night,” though. It could be the companion to the zombified “Pride and Prejudice.”

Want more?:

How Jazz Works
How Prohibition Worked
How Jealousy Works