A Moveable Feast
By Ernest Hemingway
Memoir
Read from 1/31 - 2/6
My grade: 9
I only had two notions about A Moveable Feast before I read it. First, it was featured in the world's saddest movie, City of Angels. Second, I hear it referenced a lot as food porn, full of descriptions of sumptuous Parisian feasts that would make me salivate as I turned the pages.
I don't know how I got that impression, because most of the book is about how hungry Hemingway is because he can't afford to buy food. And there are maybe two meals actually eaten in the whole thing. There are a couple of times where he mentions lying to his wife about having a lunch appointment with someone, then wandering around Paris trying to avoid seeing bakeries and restaurants, then coming home and describing the amazing meal he had. Anyway, I did not salivate.
I've read a fair amount of Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms, To Have and Have Not, The Old Man and the Goddamned Sea, most of The Sun Also Rises, and also every single one of his short stories. To Have and Have Not was one of the most confusing books I have ever read. I don't think I'm stupid, but I have almost no idea what happened in that book. There's this part that feels like 20 pages from some other book were accidentally bound with his book. Plus, I mean, Hemingway's women? Enough said. So, I've been unimpressed by the books, though I adored the short stories.
A Moveable Feast was a surprise. I think it was the young Hemingway that made it so enjoyable. He's sort of sweet and awkward and ambitious here, instead of all, "Rico stared the bull down. The bull was brown with dirt and blood. Rico had come down from the Bay to fight the bull." You know? Plus, he seemed genuinely fond of his wife in it, which was refreshing. And they did such interesting things - wandering around Paris with famous literary figures and eccentrics, skiing untouched mountains, watching F. Scott Fitzgerald turn into an alcoholic, watching Zelda go nuts, leaving toddler Hemingway Jr. alone in their apartment for hours. You know, fun stuff. It was very gossipy, too - Gertrude Stein is a major figure, in all her glory, and there's a weird subplot about how everyone hates T.S. Eliot.
In conclusion and in summation, maybe Hemingway wasn't all bad. I mean, he even used commas in this book. COMMAS!
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