If you are lucky enough 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.
I’ve struggled quite a lot with this memoir about life in 1920’s Paris. Not the writing style – I actually don’t mind Hemingway’s pared back, non-descriptive language. And I love all things Paris.
There’s something about Hemingway himself – the man comes across as being a pompous, self-righteous old git!
As I moved through A Moveable Feast I realised that I didn’t trust Hemingway’s observations or opinions of other people. I didn’t believe what he was telling me. It felt like I was reading the self-justifications of a dying man.
Perhaps The Paris Wife and Hadley’s side of the story was still too close to my heart. Whatever the reason, the end result was the same; Hemingway failed to move me.
Hemingway may be a great American writer – profound, respected and influential – three words I kept coming across when I goggled him, but I failed to connect to him at all. Sadly, in Hemingway’s hands, even Paris seemed like a bland, any-city entity. I didn’t get from his writing why Paris was his ‘moveable feast’; why it was so influential and significant within the course of his life that he wanted to write a book about it.
But I think the part I struggled with the most was his dialogue. The language and the actual conversations seemed stilted and pointless. They rarely moved the story on or revealed anything significant.
A Moveable Feast has left me with no compulsion to read anything else by Hemingway, certainly not anymore memoirs or biographies. But I will continue to read all I can about Paris itself! My edition was published 2012; originally published in 1964.
Hemingway’s memories of his life as an unknown writer living in Paris in the twenties are deeply personal, warmly affectionate, and full of wit. Looking back not only at his own much younger self, but also at the other writers who shared Paris with him – James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald – he recalls the time when, poor, happy, and writing in cafes, he discovered his vocation. Written during the last years of Hemingway’s life, his memoir is a lively and powerful reflection of his genius that scintillates with the romance of the city.
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