A Moveable Feast

Additional A Moveable Feast Information

-- ERNEST HEMINGWAY TO A FRIEND, 1950

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works. It is his classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, filled with irreverent portraits of other expatriate luminaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein; tender memories of his first wife, Hadley; and insightful recollections of his own early experiments with his craft. It is a literary feast, brilliantly evoking the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the youthful spirit, unbridled creativity, and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized.

Ernest Hemingway did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer in the twentieth century, and for his efforts he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. Hemingway wrote in short, declarative sentences and was known for his tough, terse prose. Publication of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms immediately established Ernest Hemingway as one of the greatest literary lights of the twentieth century. As part of the expatriate community in 1920s Paris, the former journalist and World War I ambulance driver began a career that lead to international fame. Hemingway was an aficionado of bullfighting and big-game hunting, and his main protagonists were always men and women of courage and conviction, who suffered unseen scars, both physical and emotional. He covered the Spanish Civil War, portraying it in fiction in his brilliant novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, and he subsequently covered World War II. His classic novella The Old Man and the Sea won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. He died in 1961.

What Customers Say About A Moveable Feast:

He includes a lot of thoughts on writing, and on the people he knew there -- Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Ford Maddox Ford -- as well as some picture perfect descriptions of the city.What really surprised me, though, was how funny it was, how many wry observations and underplayed comic asides there were. I was in Key West earlier this year, and one of the things I made sure to do between cocktails and conch salads was visit Hemingway's house. But I hadn't remembered him as funny. I knew Hemingway was a master of rhythm, and when it comes to making you feel a bullfight or a battle with a tarpon, there ain't nobody better. It's an incredible place, maybe the perfect writing space, and I want it.Anyway, I hadn't read Hemingway in years, so while there, I picked this up. Released posthumously, it's a loose memoir about his years in Paris at the beginning of his career.

It is very obvious that Hemingway was ill when he wrote this book. In addition, it is common knowledge that Scott Fitzgerald did, in fact, give Hemingway considerable help with the first draft and subsequent revisions of his first novel The Sun Also Rises, something Hemingway categorically denies. What is most likely is that at this point in his life, suffering from depression, failing health and undergoing shock treatments, he found it increasingly difficult distinguishing what actually happened as opposed to what, in keeping with his writer's sense, he imagined happening.Stylistically, this book is poorly written, with long cumbersome sentences and descriptions frequently marring the narrative. This book is not really even a literary work in any real sense but more in the tradition of another one of Hemingway's newspaper accounts albeit with literary pretensions.The book also abounds in falsifications.

Hemingway, himself, in the book, describes an incident when both he and Fitzgerald, after lunch and a few drinks, went into a washroom to inspect and determine the size of Fitzgerald's penis. He also leaves out the fact that whatever income he earned from writing was supplemented by his wife Hadley's trust fund, making the Hemingways not as poor as he would want readers to believe. Judging by Hemingway's own words, his friendship with Fitzgerald was a peculiar one. Also, he describes a night in a hotel spent with Fitzgerald with Fitzgerald obviously faking a sick spell possibly, one might suspect, as a way of getting Hemingway to 'doctor' him - feel his forehead, open his pyjamas and put his hand on his chest, hold his wrist and take his pulse.This and Hemingway's repeated references to Fitzgerald's 'perfect' features, his 'beautiful' nose and a mouth that, on a woman, could easily be considered 'beautiful' and one is left with the impression that some sort of homoerotic attraction did exist between the two of them. Zelda Fitzgerald, though not a reliable source, even claimed the two had a homosexual relationship. He mixes fantasy with reality quite liberally and he himself, in the introduction, freely acknowledges this, recommending that this supposed 'memoir' of life in Paris in the 20's be regarded, for the most part, as a work of fiction.

There is also no proof of his claim that Scott Fitzgerald cynically admitted to deliberately spoiling short story submissions in order to make them saleable to the slick, mass-circulation magazines. Whether this was ever consummated, as Zelda Fitzgerald claims, is not known.If one can excuse the garbled thoughts, the run-on sentences, the sometimes excruciatingly minute details of what streets he walked on, where he turned, how many blocks he walked, where he went for coffee, what he ate etc., the book can be a fairly entertaining read. In addition, Hemingway's train of thought is sometimes confusing and many of his observations and conclusions remain hard to decipher. Contrary to claims by the the author, there is no record of him ever taking a room in a hotel that was specifically reserved for writing; the same hotel, he claims, where 'Verlaine died'.

I like his three or four big novels including Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, and Old Man and the Sea. It is about his life in Paris in the 1920s on the south bank of the river, south of the University of Paris on and around Saint-Michel and Montparnasse, and in the areas between, and the people he knew. He was a combination of male macho and sensitivity. I walked down the street where Gertrude Stein lived. I have the English and The French versions.

As in Hemingway's day, there are still some cheap places to live.The stories are (both in French and English, slightly different in translation):-A Café on Saint Michel,-Miss Stein,-The Lost Generation,-Shakespeare,-Hunger Makes You Focus,-People of the Seine,-False Spring,-The End of an Avocation,-Ford Maddox,-Birth of a New School,-Pascin,-Erza Pound,-A Strange Enough Ending,-The Man Was marked For Death,-Evan Shipman,-Agent of Evil,-Scott Fitzgerald,-Hawks Do Not Share,-Matter of Measurements, and -Paris Never Stops, or There is Never an End to Paris.I liked most. But the atmosphere remains for those who can afford to live there: interesting and culturally diverse. My guidebook was the present book written by Hemingway in the 1950s. A modest apartment can cost a million dollars. One place on rue St. Now it is a relatively expensive place to live. Recently, I spent some time in Paris and I re-traced some of the old cafés where Hemingway drank wine and spent time talking with his wife and fellow writers. Paris has changed.

The French version feels like a Paris travel guide.Hemingway had been an important American writer for thirty to forty years. He was a poor and struggling writer living off of small royalty cheques from America. 5 Stars. Farewell to Arms has exception prose in the first chapter. Germaine is now a Starbucks.

I enjoyed it for it's descriptions of Paris cafe life and the commentary of these writers on the issues and the literature that was inspiring them at the time.I haven't read Hemingway in a long time and this was probably a good selection for me personally as it will inspire me to go back and re-read some of his better known novels. Something about Hemingway's account of his years as a struggling writer in 1920's Paris is incredibly endearing. As a glimpse into his thoughts about the circle of friends he later christened the lost generation A Moveable Feast is a very quick and entertaining entre' into the world of Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Scott Fitzgerald and others.

going to the racetrack with his wife to gamble) will appear boring and needless.Skip this book; read his other works. You've lost his brilliant characters; Hemingway writes the story of his life without most of the charm of his fiction. Where you'll find the details and descriptions of bull fights in 'The Sun Also Rises' that will tear your heart asunder, this same writing style applied to his everyday events (i.e. 'A Moveable Feast' is not Hemingway's best work. Especially if this is your first Hemingway novel, you will feel as if he is overhyped and misunderstand why he has become such a literary icon today. I did. This is the conclusion I came to halfway through this book.I love his classics, and if you are like me you loved the brilliant characters from novels such as 'The Sun Also Rises' and 'Old Man and The Sea'. Hemingway has a simplistic way of words that still manages to evoke powerful scenes.Hemingway's writing still evokes these powerful scenes in 'A Moveable Feast', however, that is all you'll get from it.