false 54940714 210203 4631 0099285045 9780099285045 684 <![CDATA[A Moveable Feast]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165447519m/4631.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165447519s/4631.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4631.A_Moveable_Feast 4.06 7057 A Moveable Feast, Hemingway remarks casually that "if the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction"--and, indeed, fact or fiction, it doesn't matter, for his slim memoir of Paris in the 1920s is as enchanting as anything made up and has become the stuff of legend. Paris in the '20s! Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, lived happily on $5 a day and still had money for drinks at the Closerie des Lilas, skiing in the Alps, and fishing trips to Spain. On every corner and at every café table, there were the most extraordinary people living wonderful lives and telling fantastic stories. Gertrude Stein invited Hemingway to come every afternoon and sip "fragrant, colorless alcohols" and chat admid her great pictures. He taught Ezra Pound how to box, gossiped with James Joyce, caroused with the fatally insecure Scott Fitzgerald (the acid portraits of him and his wife, Zelda, are notorious). Meanwhile, Hemingway invented a new way of writing based on this simple premise: "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."

Hemingway beautifully captures the fragile magic of a special time and place, and he manages to be nostalgic without hitting any false notes of sentimentality. "This is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy," he concludes. Originally published in 1964, three years after his suicide, A Moveable Feast was the first of his posthumous books and remains the best. --David Laskin

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

In a series of wonderfully evocative vignettes Hemingway captures day-to-day life in Paris where he lived with his first wife Hadley in the early 1920’s. Despite being very poor he paints an irresistibly appealing account of that period. He was energized, optimistic, a very disciplined writer and seemed to relish his struggles to survive and make a name for himself. In twenty chronologically organized chapters he captures the Bohemian ethos of Paris life; provides insights to his writing process; states some style preferences; reveals his penchant for boxing, gambling, bicycle racing and skiing; specifies what he ate and drank on innumerable occasions; describes interactions with his friends and acquaintances and sometimes cruelly betrays them by revealing confidences and intimate details of their lives. His tone is both high spirited and mean spirited. With the exception of gambling he seems mostly unaware of/unconcerned about his personal excesses.

]]> 1455 3.73 152754 9328 1960 0 0 false Thu May 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon May 04 15:04:57 -0700 2009 Thu May 14 14:51:50 -0700 2009