A Moveable Feast

Rating:
Summary: ONE OF MY FAVORITES
Review: This is one of my favorites of Hemingway's work. It is a easy read, almost light when compaired with Hemingway's other work. Of course the brilliant word crafting is still there but I found it more enjoyable that some of his other work. I have never been a big fan on Hemingway novels, preferring his short stories, but do make an exception with this one. I enjoy works which address this time period and place, and here we have a first hand account by one of the principle players. To be fare though, you really need to read some of the memoirs of some of the others written of that period. Hemingway did probably have some axes to grind, but hey, who dosen't? All in all recommend this one highly.

Rating:
Summary: Indigestible
Review: This is a thoroughly nasty book. Not a celebration of Paris or anything else, but rather an attempt by an aging and embittered man to settle scores (imaginary and otherwise) against people no longer able to defend themselves.

Take the chapter on Ford Madox Ford. Hemingway was well aware that Ford was the superior novelist, but rather than confront him on that level, he makes a point of mentioning Ford's horribly foul breath. The heroic ambulance driver fails to add that Ford's lungs were nearly destroyed in a gas attack while he was leading troops in the trenches. Very classy, particularly since Ford's injuries later killed him.

Similarly, Hemingway bends over backwards to make it seem that something of Lovecraftian depravity was going on between Gertrude and Alice, while presenting no evidence whatsoever. You don't have to be a radfem or a Stein idolater either to find this obnoxious.

And on it goes, one chapter after another, almost without relief. It's difficult to grasp what readers see in this thing. I can only surmise that they've been blinded by Hemingway's genius. Though in point of fact, there's little enough of that in evidence here. This book was written by the man who wrote so gloatingly of rotting "Kraut" corpses during World War II. If you want the artist who changed fiction writing so profoundly and permanently, you'll have to look to the early novels and collections.

Rating:
Summary: If you snored through "Old Man and the Sea" in school, read
Review: this anyway. It's wonderful,poignant,gossipy, and a must for anyone who fantasizes about Paris in the 1920's. It is a fast read, and very revealing about what was going on in Hemingway's head before he died. His goal as a young writer was to write just one true sentence a day, and in this fascinating book, he achieved much more than that. I take back all the rude things I ever said about him as a writer, and maybe I'll go back and have another look at some of his other books.

Rating:
Summary: One Moveable Gift.
Review: This book is nothing short of stupendous. It's written straight as a collection of pastiches from when the author was one of the ex-patriates--due mostly to prohibition. Paris was the Mecca of the literary artist. For those of us stuck in vocations of repetition and bureaucracy, Hemingway's spontaneous, productive lifestyle in Paris will truly produce envy. The cuisine and the company will turn you green. Nothing will make you want a dozen oysters and a bottle of Sancere more. When I first read it I believed that he had been cruel to Fitzgerald, but I must modify that view now. It may be an accurate portrait of a man tied to a crazy spouse who constantly placed him under psychological siege. Hemingway is very sensitive towards the French working man, and his prose, for the most part, is up to his usual quality. I greatly enjoyed this book and recommend it as a grand vacation away from life's drudgery.

Rating:
Summary: A Fine Read
Review: Although Hemingway's arrogance is tiresome at times, this book is a must read for anyone who has spent time in Paris because Hemingway's description of the city still rings true today. Hemingway's prose is, as always, a joy to read. Finally, whether the events in Hemingway's trip from Lyon to Paris with Scott Fitzgerald really happened, his story about the trip is a jolly good read.

Rating:
Summary: A Fun Insider's View Of 1920s Paris!
Review: It's interesting to read about Hemingway's relationships with the famous people living in Paris at the time (Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Ford Maddox Ford, Sylvia Beach (and her wonderful bookstore), F. Scott Fitzgterald, etc. -- for even more about these people, and many others [John Dos Passos, Fernand Leger, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, Dorothy Parker, Cole Porter, etc.])

Aside from the chapters about his writing and hanging out in Paris and chatting with the famous friends, there are some particularly touching chapters. His chapter on Scott is great: funny and moving. He prefaces it with this eloquent description of Scott's writing, rivaled only by Melville's idolizing of Hawthorne and D. H. Lawrence's raving about Melville: "His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did no know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless." The last chapter, "There Is Never Any End to Paris," is touching as well. This is just a great fun book! Two other great books I recommend is Hemingway's THE SUN ALSO RISES and THE LOSERS CLUB by Richard Perez


Rating:
Summary: Paris: 1921-1926
Review: "...this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy." This is more than an autobiographical memoir of Hemingway's early years in Paris. It is a glimpse into a literary epoch, an intimate glimpse into the community of expatriate writers and artists who lived in Paris in the 1920s: Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and so on.

And of course, it is a chapter from Hemingway's own life, written thirty years after the fact. There are passages of rich, descriptive attention to sensory details - "As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture..." - very different from the often terse writing style of his novels and short stories.

And while I do long (just a bit) for the Paris that Hemingway describes, the enduring treasure of this is a book is how it passes along a passionate attention to the details of life - not just Hemingway's, but your own, as well. In this way, the "moveable feast" is not just the experience of Paris, it is life itself.

Rating:
Summary: Hemingway's Paris comes Alive
Review: Let me start off by saying if you dont' like Hemingway, and aren't interested in what many consider one of the most well known periods in Anglo-American literary history then you'll probably find this book a good read but not much else.

To me it is fascinating how so many young people in one place either were famous or were to be come literary and artisitic incons.

The book is a lose autubiography of Hemingway as a young writer trying to make it in Paris with a wife & child. There are lose sketches of what has now become something of a cliche- the bohemian writer hanging out among artists and writers in the cafes of Paris- but here we have the reason for the cliche. He records his meetings with Erza Pound, Fitzgerald, G. Stein, and a couple of lesser known figures.


What's often missed in popular portrayls is just how hard Hemginway worked, which is made clear in the book but not in an abtrusive way.

Rating:
Summary: From a Traveller's Perspective...
Review: From my perspective as a traveler about to visit Paris for the first time, I'm really glad I picked up this book. I haven't taken notes as to the specific locations of the cafes and other addresses as they're bound to have changed over time as even Hemmingway laments that his favorite haunts were changing in his time. I think what I'll take from the book is that in my rush to visit the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, I should also leave time to meet the characters that Hemmingway shows lurk around and are only truly revealed over a glass of eau-de-vie, brandy, whisky, beer, wine, etc. (For him it's a long list...) It was not his intent to have people make pilgrimages to the locations mentioned in his book, and the line in the preface admonishing the reader to treat the content of the book as fiction brought that home for me. The fame of some of the writers and artists that he describes adds some flavor, but I enjoyed it simply from the storytelling perspective. For others that enjoyed the relationship between the writer and his city portrayed in this work, I would strongly recommend Bloomsbury's The Writer and the City series which pairs known writers with a city that spawned them and returns them to examine this relationship similar to A Moveable Feast -- a term which could really be associated with anyone's relationship with a city.

Rating:
Summary: An American in Paris
Review: During the early days of Hemingway's career Paris was was the most prolific writer's colony on the planet. The cost of living was cheap, the wine and food were good, and Paris attracted the talents of James Joyce, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ford Maddox Ford among others. Paris was truly a moveable feast in his day and, although Hemingway was poor at age 25, he was devoted to a career in which his primary objective was to capture a true sentence and then to follow it with another. This simple objective gives Hemingway's writing its power, simplicity, accessibility, integrity, honesty, relevance and broad appeal. Hemingway may have been poor but he lived well and from his Paris base ventured to Spain for trout fishing, Austria for skiing and the Riviera before it became fashionable. Hem's highly personal anecdotes about Scott and Zelda were exceedingly revealing. His insights on TS Eliot working at a bank and his boxing lessons with noble Ezra Pound lend new depth to these writers' works. Hemingway played close to the vest his fling in Paris and one wonders if it weren't with Sylvia Beach, whom he admired, lent him books and ultimately published Joyce's Ulysses. If you're a serious writer or aspire to become one, this little book of true sentences defines the sacrifices made by the genuises who crafted some of the finest novels ever written.