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A Moveable Feast
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A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway - 4*
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I really enjoyed this one too!
Great review! I’ve had this in my tbr for a long time, I think it’s time to bump it up!!! I read a book last year that included Shakespeare & company in a later time period. The MC cooked dinner with James Baldwin.
Algernon (Darth Anyan) wrote: " Paris was my first destination outside my home country, back in 1996 and Paris remains my favorite place in the world to visit today. ..."We share this - though mine dates from semester abroad in 1976. I left my soul in Paris then, literally cried the entire flight home because I had to leave or lose the well-paying summer job being held for me and needed to pay for my senior year at Barnard. I have revisited Paris frequently since, introduced family and friends to my favorite city in the whole world. It is a second home and yes, my soul still lives there.
One of the things that fascinates me about this book is that it is the only one he literally tinkered with, added on to, nearly his entire life. I think this is his most personal book.
Great review.
I've read the revised edition, and the last section includes dozens of fragments that Hem struggled with and rewrote until he got that phrase that is true, that he could keep.I enjoyed the details about his writing process as much as his sharp digs at his fellow writers, yet the street scenes remain my favorites.
Will then get myself the revised edition to reread rather than search for my original paperback.
I really enjoyed this book and remember it so fondly.This is the book that really got me going on my Hemingway kick.
He wrote about how deeply in love he was with Hadley and then well he dumped her, which seem to be a pattern.
Drinking may have been involved...
Booknblues wrote: "I really enjoyed this book and remember it so fondly.This is the book that really got me going on my Hemingway kick.
He wrote about how deeply in love he was with Hadley and then well he dumped ..."
Yes, he was a cad, but in this memoir he takes responsibility for his past actions and admits he was the one who strayed.
Any blame in that was mine to take and possess and understand. The only one, Hadley, who had no possible blame, ever, came well out of it finally and married a much finer man than I ever was or could hope to be and is happy and deserves it and that was one good and lasting thing that came of that year.
I believe the sketch The Pilot Fish and the Rich was not included in the original edition because it describes in greater detail the events that led to his first divorce.
I read the "restored edition" and remember that he took responsibility for the failure of his marriage.That book lead me to all sorts of rabbit holes as Theresa calls them.
-Reading Hemingway and biographies about him and his wives.
-Reading about the lost generation
-Reading about Paris during the 1920s
-Reading about war reporters and photographers.
-Reading about the Spanish Civil War.
Paris was my first destination outside my home country, back in 1996 and Paris remains my favorite place in the world to visit today. So this book is like a personal treasure chest for me, my own memories of happy days in the sun, beside my best friends, become interweaved with those of the famous author. I wasn’t even planning to push this book to the top of my TBR list, but for a challenge prompt to read something published in the year of my birth and a planned trip to Paris this very month. I’ve read all the major novels and stories of Hemingway before I was 18, he was one of my teenage idols, but for some reason, I never felt the need to revisit him and be reminded why I put him on a pedestal in the first place. I believe now his thirst for life and his integrity towards his art might have something to do with it.
That every day should be a fiesta seemed to me a wonderful discovery.
This is also very much a book about being young, in love and hopeful about the future, a bulwark against the ravages of time and ill health. Hemingway worked on the text while struggling with crippling injuries and depression, well aware that the electroshock treatments he was receiving were damaging his ability to express himself through words, the very reason of his being. But he still had Paris, where it all began for him, his anchor and his shelter from the storm.
I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.
My favorite scene is probably the meeting between a penniless Hemingway and Sylvia Beach, the founder of the Shakespeare and Company lending library, his joy at having access to good books that he could read in the parks, in the cafes or even take with him on vacation:
“And we’re going to have all the books in the world to read and when we go on trips we can take them.”
It should be not surprising, but nevertheless I think it needs repeated that most great writers are also voracious readers. It is parts of the journey of becoming true to yourself, of discovering your unique voice, of what is important and what is superfluous in the way you write. Hemingway himself uses the second person narrative here as a way to reinforce this intimate, confessional tone of the memoir. Once again, the reader finds it easier not only to relate to the writer’s efforts, but also to find common cause with some of the opinions expressed. In particular when Hemingway comments on the books he is reading that you also explored recently, like his admiration for Chekhov or the mention of authors almost forgotten today, like Paul Fort or Marie Belloc Lowndes.