A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway (1964 (Restored Edition, 2010). Scribner. ISBN 1-4391-8271-0)
So what’s not to like? Reading Hemingway’s memoir of the time he and his first wife Hadley spent in Paris in the 1920s in the company of Gertrude Stein, F.Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and a host of other poets, writers, and artists is like descending into a time machine and turning back the clock. The writing, done at the end of Hemingway’s long career, is some of his best, if a bit abbreviated. We will never know exactly how the book should read in its final edit because Hemingway killed himself before the memoir was completed. Still, with this edition’s added excerpts and snippets, the book contains some of Papa’s best prose: succinct, declarative, bald, and honest. There is absolutely none of the blatant misogyny that mars Hemingway’s other works. In fact, his portrayal of his betrayal of Hadley (through his affair with her best friend, who became Hemingway’s second wife) is an apology that Hemingway likely never made in public before his death.
It’s also the kind of writing that begs for more:
Scott Fitzgerald
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than a butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think. He was flying again and I was lucky to meet him just after a good time in his writing if not a good one in his life.
Though others have written that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s jealousy of his wife’s writing talent assisted in driving her mad, Hemingway doesn’t see it that way. Which is the correct view, I’ll leave to you and history. However, one does get the sense that Hemingway tends to overlook the faults of those he respects, and inflate the faults of those he considers inferior: Just a caution to the reader to look at other sources before deciding whether to accept Hemingway’s version of truth as true.
This, and the fact the book left me wanting more (which is what a good book should do) are my only criticisms of the restored version of this great look into the life of one of America’s greatest writers.
4 and 1/2 stars out of 5.
