FULL REVIEW: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

  

Title:          A Moveable Feast
Author:      Ernest Hemingway
Book # :    125                       

Type:         Biography

Genre:       Memoirs                

Year:         1964

Publisher:   Collier                    

Country:     US        

Language:  English                      

Media:       Paperback
Pages:       211
Rating:         9  

  

What is impressive about ‘A Moveable Feast’ by Ernest Hemingway is that it lives up to the standard of ‘writing one true sentence’ (p.12),   In fact this quality would later distinguish Hemingway from other writers. 

‘A Moveable Feast’ is a fond, but unglamorous retrospective of early life as a struggling, poor but happy artist in Paris from 1921-26 completed much later in his life in 1960 (when much of his contemporaries had passed away).  

The biography opens with an explanation of the title in the title page:

“If you are lucky to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.”

  

Hemingway even explains in the Preface that this book may be regarded as fiction so that it may "throw some light on what has been written as fact."

The famous Paris 1920s expatriate literary / artistic circle are included; Gertrude Stein, Zelda & Scott Fitzgerald, Picasso, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and Ford Madox Ford.  Woody Allen’s recent movie ‘Midnight in Paris’ wonderfully captures this ‘golden age’ of artist expression.

The book is structured in 20 short chapters, utilizing the trademark concise journalist style, with his homage to Scott Fitzgerald being by far the longest (for good reason, to properly portray this complex legend).

But what stand out are the excellent descriptions of writing in Paris cafes, eating local food chased by wine or liquor. 

“I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture.” (p.6)

The passages regarding literature are a fascinating glimpse into the budding young writer/novelist:

“In those days there was no money to buy books.  I borrowed books from the rental library of Shakespeare and Company.” (p.35)

“To have come to all this new world of writing, with time to read in a city like Paris where was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were, was like having a great treasure given to you.”  (p.134)

“Tolstoi made the writing of Stephen Crane on the Civil War seem like the brilliant imagining of a sick boy who had never seen war but had only read the battles and chronicles.” (p.133)  

“War and Peace comes out as a hell of a novel, the greatest I suppose, and you can read it over and over…. But you can’t read Dostoyevsky over and over.” (p.137)

Some of the most poignant scenes address the out-of-work hungry artist.

“You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food." (p.69)

“All the paintings (at the Luxembourg museum) were sharpened and clearer and more beautiful if you were belly-empty, hollow-hungry.”(p.69)

Some passages are truly funny with unwavering brutal honesty,

“You shouldn't write if you can’t write. What do you have to cry about it for? Go home. Get a job. Hang yourself. Only don’t talk about it. You could never write.” (p. 94)

“Everyone is the same size in bed” (p.104)

“It is not basically a question of size in repose. It is the size that it becomes. It is also a question of angle.” (p.190)

The most poignant section concerns Scott Fitzgerald and his hypochondriac condition (I once again think of Woody Allen), over-domineering wife Zelda, and terrible insecurities.  Great artists are greatly tortured by internal demons.  Hemingway appears to be tolerant and genuinely concerned and loyal towards his friend, which is very different from the popular stereotype of him as the combative, intensely jealous rival. 

A fellow book-lover, Susan Berek, wonders if his early life was truly as happy as Hemingway would have us believe, or does it appear so with the passage of time.  One can never know so sure, but my vote is for YES! I feel that Hemingway near the end of life, as all of us do at times, reflected on the ‘best of times and worst of times’ and recognized that he was happiest when he was relatively unknown and not yet famous (think of ‘Rosebud’ from classic Citizen Kane film).

The final section makes as strong case, as Hemingway holds a mirror to his life, and acknowledges that the Paris period ended when he had an affair with the babysitter (how clichéd!!).  He loved his wife Hadley dearly in those austere years as they took on a unified and supportive front against Paris and the world.  Alas, everything good somehow comes to an end.  Everyone ultimately must take stock of his life (remember Socrates?), and Hemingway ends his reflection with fondness (and yearning perhaps?):

“Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it.  But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.” (p.211)