A MOVEABLE FEAST

by Ernest Hemingway

Release Date: 01 October, 1996

Edition: Hardcover

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A Corps of Classic Artists in Paris in the 20s

Hemmingway describes the people he cavorted with in France during the 1920's as Vonnegut portrays fantastic characters in his novels. The prose tells the idiosyncratic tales and eccentricities of writers making their way, or trying to make their way, on the streets of Paris after World War I. I enjoyed the book immensely, especially as it provided insight into the lives of many writers whom I had previously read, but never read about. Hemmingway describes reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gadsby when it was first published. He tells of his relationship with Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda. He writes about visiting Gertrude Stein and others in his younger days in Paris. Hemmingway's vivid portrayal of many of the '20s most famous personalities has given me renewed interest to read their works, and his. I look forward to rereading The Sun Also Rises and other works of literary greatness.

He also writes about what it is like to be a writer. Holding counsel with Fitzgerald and others, Hemmingway provides a snapshot into his discipline. This work presents great insight into the life of a truly great author.

Infinitely interesting.

Anyone who enjoys twentieth-century Western literature will dig A Moveable Feast. It's simply inevitable. Hemingway knew and hung out with pretty much all the major American literary players of the early twentieth century - James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound. It gives some background behind all those books you've read, and it gives real human faces to their authors (as opposed to just entries in encyclopedias). And there's something infinitely cool about the fact that at some point, all of these people were poor, struggling to get by, destined to become great, and all knew and talked to each other. They're all brought to life on these pages by Hemingway's infectious enthusiasm, making this autobiography as good as any novel.

In a sense, this book is the effective culmination of where the author had been going towards the end. In his later books, such as Across the River and Into the Trees (also very highly recommended by me), Hemingway showed a sort of quiet, elegiac nostalgia for the past. His characters increasingly lived in the past, reliving old memories until the line between past and present became blurred in their minds. (Recall how Santiago kept reminiscing about his youth, or how Richard Cantwell kept coming back to his wars.) Well, that's most likely because Hemingway himself was longing for the days when "we were very poor and very happy." Now he finally stops masking his feelings by putting them into fictional characters and writes in the genuine first person. And the emotional weight of his longing, finally met completely head-on, is what makes A Moveable Feast such a great, visceral read.

Of course, what helps is the number of interesting characters he interacted with - and his very witty caricatures of some of them. The beat-down of Gertrude Stein is absolutely hilarious, and doubly so for anyone who, like me, cares little for her asinine "works." Hemingway isn't afraid to deride anyone who he thinks was phony or pretentious (and there are many such people), and this makes for great entertainment. But others are treated with more respect. Take, for instance, F. Scott Fitzgerald. The editorial review says that Hemingway's portrait of him was "acidic." Nothing of the kind. True, Hemingway points out his embarrassing character flaws like his poor handling of spirituous beverages and his conduct while intoxicated, but he always makes sure to reiterate that Fitzgerald was a brilliant writer. He praises The Great Gatsby to the skies, and he bitterly laments the fact that Fitzgerald didn't entirely fulfill his enormous potential. Moreover, he calls Fitzgerald a great friend, at one point even his only friend. Now, his opinion of Fitzgerald's wife Zelda is completely different, and _that's_ where the "acidic" part really comes in. Clearly he felt that she was unworthy of Fitzgerald, that she dragged him away from his writing, and that she was a loon, and he blames her for what happened to her husband.

Then, at the ending, after all the jokes and anecdotes and observations, something very extraordinary happens. Hemingway tells a final story about how he and his first wife travelled into the mountains and skied at a resort. And here, all the book's wistfulness and melancholy suddenly disappears to reveal an undercurrent of very bitter longing, as Hemingway drops several extremely biting comments about idle rich people who addle the brains of young writers with their excessive praise, and some absolutely brutal remarks about various lying "friends" who think nothing of breaking up couples, stealing wives or leading away husbands. And then he concludes with his remark about being very poor and very happy, and only then, in the book's last sentence, do we realize the full extent of just how much this time meant to him. And when we do realize it, the way he ended his life should come as no surprise to any of us.