It’s one thing to read about the good old days of artists living lives of dramatic intrigue in 1920s Paris. It’s quite another to learn about the creative and romantic energy of 1970s Key West, which exploded on the little coconut tree-lined lanes I cross daily.

The foreign allure of the City of Light’s “Lost Generation,” as dubbed by its matriarch Gertrude Stein, hinges on quaint tales of long-dead players renting pensions for mere francs. Many of the main characters driving the narrative that emerged out of 1970s Key West, on the other hand, are not just alive, but thriving artistically and financially.

If temperatures are falling to freezing wherever it is that you live, travel south with me to this inspiring subtropical island -- at least in your imagination.

The songwriter Jimmy Buffett still capitalizes on performing for masses of devoted Parrotheads, making frequent visits to his flagship Margaritaville restaurant and bar on Duval Street, the main drag of the southernmost city in the United States. The writers Tom McGuane and Jim Harrison, both working mostly from the wide expanse of Montana, might be far flung from Florida, but they’re still cranking out critically acclaimed fiction and nonfiction rooted in the nonconformist sensibilities that drew them to end-of-the-road Key West.

Like a vintage sepia photograph turning vivid Kodachrome before your very eyes, the nostalgia surrounding Hemingway’s copious Parisian moules-frites and absinthe intake -- fit in whenever he wasn't writing furiously or browsing at Sylvia Beach's Left Bank bookstore Shakespeare & Company -- achieves a bright clarity in William McKeen’s collective biography Mile Marker Zero: The Moveable Feast of Key West.

With a title inspired by A Moveable Feast -- Hemingway's memoir of his time in France -- McKeen’s book honors the legacy of the writer who also lived, fished, and drank so famously in Key West, drawing generations of writers in search of the mystique that inspired him and his lifestyle. Just as you would alternate reading Hemingway's fiction and nonfiction in trying to understand the overlap between the myth and the man, you can supplement your knowledge of the legendary real-life characters in McKeen's Mile Marker Zero with these personal stories below.

A Pirate Looks at Fifty 
by Jimmy Buffett

Along with his bestselling book Tales From Margaritaville, this memoir reveals Buffett’s secrets to building a life -- and an empire -- totally in line with his life philosophy. Published on the occasion of his milestone birthday, it contains a half-century’s worth of reflections and anecdotes, with many of its juiciest springing from his main muse, the island of Key West.

The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing by Thomas McGuane

This transcendent collection of essays by the author of Ninety-Two in the Shade and Nothing but Blue Skies evokes the deep well of feeling McGuane accessed during his days of fishing tarpon and other wildlife in the waters off Key West. Click here for our recent look at the book in more detail.

Off to the Side: A Memoir by Jim Harrison

This New York Times Notable Book of the Year (2002) by the author of classics like Legends of the Fall and The Road Home juxtaposes his coming-of-age in Michigan during the fallout of the Great Depression and the Second World War with the bright lights of Hollywood screenwriting and the vivid colors of Key West, where he befriended writers including Tom McGuane, Philip Caputo, Peter Matthiessen, Truman Capote, and Tennessee Williams.