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    A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition
    A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition
    A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition
    Ebook287 pages4 hours

    A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition

    By Ernest Hemingway, Patrick Hemingway and Sean Hemingway

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    About this ebook

    Ernest Hemingway’s classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, now available in a restored edition, includes the original manuscript along with insightful recollections and unfinished sketches.

    Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway’s most enduring works. Since Hemingway’s personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined the changes made to the text before publication. Now, this special restored edition presents the original manuscript as the author prepared it to be published.

    Featuring a personal foreword by Patrick Hemingway, Ernest’s sole surviving son, and an introduction by grandson of the author, Seán Hemingway, editor of this edition, the book also includes a number of unfinished, never-before-published Paris sketches revealing experiences that Hemingway had with his son, Jack, and his first wife Hadley. Also included are irreverent portraits of literary luminaries, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ford Maddox Ford, and insightful recollections of Hemingway’s own early experiments with his craft.

    Widely celebrated and debated by critics and readers everywhere, the restored edition of A Moveable Feast brilliantly evokes the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the unbridled creativity and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScribner
    Release dateJul 14, 2009
    ISBN9781439166451
    Author

    Ernest Hemingway

    Ernest Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. His novels include The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1899, he died in Ketchum, Idaho, on July 2, 1961.

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    Reviews for A Moveable Feast

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      In the Preface, Hemingway writes: "If the readers prefer, this book may be regarded as fiction. But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw light on what has been written as fact".... One feels intrigued and disappointed at the same time about such a statement. But one reads eagerly nonetheless. Because right from the start, Hemingway's way of narration flows so easily, not overrun by flowery metaphors and yet so compelling. A certain unavoidable feeling of rhythm to his writing. Yes, probably romanticized a bit - or even more than a bit! - it having been written so much later in life, but I couldn't let that bother me: the writing was just too good.During these years in Paris (1920s), still as a young writer, Hemingway encounters interesting personalities and describes them to the fullest: Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and Scott Fitzgerald are in particular given colorful portraits. Also, I couldn't help being impressed at his fascination with the Russian writers - Turgenev, Tolstoi, Dostoyevsky:"From the day I had found Sylvia Beach's library, I had read all of Turgenev, what had been published in English by Gogol,... translations of Tolstoi and Chekhov.... In Dostoyevsky there were things believable and not to be believed, but some so true they changed you as you read them; frailty and madness, wickedness and saintliness, and the sanity of gambling were there to know as you knew the landscape and the roads in Turgenev, and the movement of troops , the terrain and the officers and the men and the fighting in Tolstoi.... To have come on all this new world of writing, with time to read in a city like Paris where there was a way of living well and working, no matter how poor you were, was like having a great treasure given to you." Strangely enough, there is only faint mention of Hemingway's wife Hadley and their child in the whole of the narration. She comes through as a pale background to all his wanderings on Paris streets and meetings at cafes. Her portrayal (or what there is of it) is very sweet and genuine in the few words that the writer allots her, but not sufficiently "real" for a constant companion. He gives much more colorful description to the character of Zelda Fitzgerald (who, as he witnessed, turned out to be a bad influence on her husband) than to his own wife.As for Scott Fitzgerald, his portrait is probably the most revealing. At first we see certain contradiction of attitude during their first meeting, during their unusual and troublesome car trip, but little by little (and especially after reading "The Great Gatsby") Hemingway puts aside the weird idiosyncrasies of the man, his hypochondriac character, his problems with his wife Zelda - to give him full credit as a great writer - and gives himself a promise to always be there for him.Among the good times, there were bitter disappointments - like when all his manuscripts were lost in a robbery, and he had to start writing all anew. Or hardships - when he had to go hungry and "invent" meal invitations (while simply going on long walks and later retelling his wife at home the menus and what he ate at such "invitations") to save money on food. But the general feel to this time in Paris (as well as short trips and stays outside the city during the winter) is a good and treasured one, one that probably stayed with the author throughout his life.
    • 4/5
      Hemingway's description of Scott Fitzgerald is my favorite paragraph in the book: "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 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 and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless."
    • 2/5
      Vooral documentair interessant, over zijn verblijf in Parijs in de jaren 20. Duidelijk verfraaid. Soms ontluisterend over collegaschrijvers.
    • 4/5
      One of the ones you sometimes re-read, partially or entirely.
    • 3/5
      In this collection of short, autobiographical essays, Ernest Hemingway and his first wife Hadley drink, gamble, and hobnob with expatriate writers in post WWI Paris and elsewhere in Europe. Sometimes, in between meals and trips to the racetrack, he settles down and "works" (writes).This book was very different, and not nearly as compelling, as I thought it would be. The essays are too brief and disconnected to allow for indentification with any of the characters, and the narrative (or lack of the same) often failed to hold my interest. It would have helped me if the edition I read had annotations to put the essays into context.
    • 4/5
      A glimpse of Paris in the 20s and the lives of Hemingway and his contemporaries. I love the immediacy of Hemingway and this book transports you to a very specific time in his story. I enjoyed it.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant. Fitzgerald could create a flawless story, Hemingway could create a flawless sentence.
    • 2/5
      Vooral documentair interessant, over zijn verblijf in Parijs in de jaren 20. Duidelijk verfraaid. Soms ontluisterend over collegaschrijvers.
    • 4/5
      I had actually read this last year, but never entered it into my read books. Reading each vignette about Paris (and the mountains Hem skiied in) reminded me of the wonderful time I had there. My favorites were about writing in the cafe, his initial meetings with G. Stein, and the first times they went skiing.
    • 5/5
      I can't help thinking that "A Moveable Feast" is a kind of Facebook into Hemingway's Parisian past. Hemingway writes of himself and in particular, Scott Fitzgerald, as if he were posting on social media private details about a recent event. I don't mean to cheapen the work by comparing prosaic Facebook with Hemingway's genius but the raw public openness is analogous. I felt Hemingway's poor and happy nostalgia marks the end of his innocence and the very ending made me tingle all over - at once identifying with him while hoping it is all in the past. In short, a masterpiece.
    • 4/5
      I read a lovely high-quality Book-of-the-Month Club edition of this book from 1964 that still had a flyer with discussion by Clifton Fadiman in it. His remarks heightened my appreciation of this interesting book. I hesitate to call it a novel - it is really a memoir of Hemingway's time in Paris in the 1920's - pieces of it told via 20 remembrances of people and places as well as his own struggles with writing and defining himself as a writer. He and his wife Hadley, and son, were quite poor. Hemingway started writing this in Cuba in 1957. Hemingway was writing this thirty years after the events and many of his thoughts do not treat his companions of the times well. Hemingway can flatter and praise some, but he reveals his true thoughts on others quite a lot. Altogether this was a fascinating look at life, love, racing, cafes, just all the places in Hemingway's rather small area of Paris that is just fun to read and drift back into history.There are some lines throughout the book that just zing you when you come across them. Perhaps the most famous is the epigraph: 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. Ernest Hemingway to a friend, 1950" The very last words of the book zinged me: "But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy." I think I got teary-eyed there.
    • 3/5
      My first Hemingway. I don't like memoirs, esp vague ramblings like this, but there is such gorgeous writing and hints of the genius in his work, that now I feel like I have to read him.
    • 4/5
      A Moveable Feast is a series of stories about Hemingway's life in Paris in the 20s with his first wife, before the publication of his first novel. Ford Madox Ford, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald all have a chapter. This is a fun Hemingway (perhaps the only one), and everything has a happy nostalgic patina, even when he's digging viciously at Zelda Fitzgerald.
    • 4/5
      I had never read Hemingway before so thought a small book would be something to try and see if I enjoyed it.Turns out I picked an Auto-biography of his time in the 20's in Paris where he was starting out as an unknown. You get the atmosphere on Paris in the 20's and the cliques that existed of the in crowd and the writers and the painters. You see that even then distractions existed for the famous but, as was life, were simpler than those of today.No laptops to write with just pen and paper and the local cafe to sit in Hemingway paints the picture of a Paris which once it has you will not let you go. And people who are interesting but have something held back that keeps you wondering.As well as learning about his life in those early years it is a book from which you can pick up his style of writing. And I can say now it will lead me to read more.
    • 4/5
      This memoir, published posthumously, covers Hemingway's early days in Paris, right after he decided to leave journalism to become a writer of fiction. He was married, a father, constantly writing, friends with some very intelligent and very successful writers (Gertrude Stein and Scott Fitzgerald), and - to use his words - "very poor and very happy." In this series of short essays, he sheds his skin to expose his heart.

      I was struck with the sense that Hemingway found every day an adventure. He is constantly stringing together sentences as run-ons with the connectors of "but" and "and." It's like he is spinning some yarn and can't wait to get to the end. So he rushes and avoids the periods and the commas. He is ready to tell his tale no matter what comes. Such was his sense of determination to become a writer while in Paris.

      It is good for this aspiring writer to read of his struggles. He knew not how to make money. He just worked on his craft. This is good advice for anyone starting off in any profession or station in life. Work on the craft; be dedicated to the work; hone your skills; don't be discouraged by rejection. Such was Hemingway's time in Paris, whose lesson of being "very poor and very happy" is the path to success.
    • 4/5
      The passages about Gertrude Stein and Fitzgerald and writing and Paris are fantastic. The stuff about horse racing and skiing vacations, much less so. But then, maybe that says more about my interests than anything else.
    • 1/5
      I have to confess that I have never understood the acclaim afforded to Ernest Hemigway, and this book has done nothing to assuage my doubts. I know that he is revered as one of the great writers of the twentieth century, and seen as some sort of embodiment of the writer as a man of action, but his works simply leave me cold.I was looking forward to this account of his life in Paris between the World Wars. After all, with such a setting, and the added frisson afforded by accounts of F. Scott Fitzgerald (one of my all-time literary heroes), how could the book fail to enthral? Well, somehow, it managed to overcome the integral advantages, and somehow claw back defeat from the jaws of victory. The foreword and preface to this edition, written by one of Hemingway’s sons, and one of his grandsons, made much play of the considerable efforts to edit the manuscript undertaken by Mary, Hemingway’s final wife, and the rest of the family. I must say that if this manuscript was the consequence of intense and dedicated editing, I dread to think how dreadful the original must have been.Far from an enlightening selection of memoirs recounting scintillating encounters between prominent figures of the world of the arts, it is a series of inconsequential and rambling recollections of tedious meetings, recounted in appalling, inchoate prose. I think we would all have been better served if this book had been edited through the medium of a shredding machine.
    • 3/5
      Yes, Hemingway is a giant of American literature. Still, I do not like his writing style. His descriptions are literal but his sentences can be long, rambling and nonsensical. While this was interesting to read as a writer, only readers well versed in Hemingway’s biography will be able to fill in all the blanks Hemingway leaves.
    • 5/5
      I recognize that Hemingway's memories of Paris are flawed and romanticized, but I still love this book, one of my go-to comfort reads. I never get tired of it.
    • 5/5
      This is only my second Hemingway novel, but his writing definitely strikes a chord with me. He has a wonderful sense of place (which I loved as well in A Farewell to Arms). This time the place is Paris, and an autobiographical look back at his time there as a struggling author just starting to get noticed.Hemingway wonderfully transports you back to the cafes of 1920s Paris, with walk-on parts from literary legends such as Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's the kind of era that this modern technological age of rush, rush, rush will never see the like of again, and I savoured hopping into Hemingway's time machine to enjoy some respite there.4.5 stars - nothing momentous happens in this brief book, but it's just perfect all the same.
    • 4/5
      Published after Hemingway's death, "A Moveable Feast" is a progressive dining experience with some of the great (and some lesser) lights of the post WWI expat literary community in Paris. It interesting to see what personal qualities he zeroed in on, while spending time with Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, and others. While moving distinctly from person to person, the backdrop throughout is 1920s Paris and its café culture. Sales of this book spiked in Paris after the extremist attacks in November 2015; perhaps a touchstone for how Parisians see themselves and a vision they don't want to slip away after such a shock. The most quoted paragraph of the book --- one that could be a suitable hook -- lies at the very end. Hemingway sums it up: "There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it."
    • 5/5
      Hemmingway’s reflections on his time in Paris. Hemingway as a poor young writer, his wife, son, Sylvia Beach, Gertrude Stein, Fitzgerald and more. The title isn’t used or explained.
    • 4/5
      I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Hemingway's stories of life in Paris as a young man.
    • 3/5
      Had read this before so listened to it this time. Unfortunately, there's a reason Hemingway is subject so often to parody. His intentional avoidance of all adjectives or variation in sentences makes him difficult to listen to as well as to read. Enjoyed his portraits of his peers, but would not have made it all the way thru had this not been for a book club.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      3.5 really, I couldn't go the whole four. I listened to the audio version of the restored edition, and the narration was out of this world. The type of narration that lifts a story up. There are a number of fragments at the end, from his historical collection, and I have to say that audio is perhaps not the best venue for really soaking this sort of thing up. One of things noted about this restored edition is that it did not flow chronologically, which did in fact end up a little confusing, but that is not a major issue.

      I am keeping this book - I keep only a fraction of the books I read, that is notable. There were a number of parts of this memoir/work of fiction (in his words), that I really enjoyed. I loved hearing about their winters in Schroontz, which I am entirely sure I have misspelled, but hey, I never saw it in writing. And I absolutely adore the dialogue. There is something unique about his dialogue, and between his words and this narration, it was just outstanding. Some of the things that were really small were amazing to ponder, such as leaving their baby son home alone in the crib with the cat as a babysitter

      His writing about Scott Fitzgerald was sadly distressing. I will follow up soon by reading Z, about Zelda, as it also fits in my challenge.

      If you like Hemingway, this is worth your while. If you don't already care for him, this probably won't, change your mind.
    • 3/5
      Hemingway is not one of my favorite authors, but in this book his description of Paris in the 20s is wonderful. He plays around with some of the facts, but captures a time and a place in history that fascinates me. Paris was the center of the world then and so much that was groundbreaking was happening there in the way of music (jazz), painting (cubism), and writing. Hemingway shows us his take on this magical time.
    • 2/5
      I read this book because I had just read The Paris Wife, and it was a good companion to that book. However, I am just not a Hemingway fan, and I can't say I liked this book at all. He really seems like he's full of himself. Sorry to all Hemingway lovers!!
    • 2/5
      Meh. I'm not a Hemingway fan, anyway, there just wasn't much else to read. Library day tomorrow.
      I got sick of Henley calling him"Tatie" this and"Tatie" that. I hate how he calls women "girls" and not men "boys." Things were different in those days, I guess, and there wasn't the competition and the capitalism there is now. And I'm not a person who slobbers over Paris (or anywhere in Europe).
      One good part: I found a slip of paper with my mom's writing on it--it was a to-do list and I kissed it, knowing that the last time the book had been opened, it was with her sweet hands.
    • 5/5
      Reading Hemingway's sketches is a journey backward, and a wonderful one. With the intimate glimpses into his life that the book provides, and his beautifully simple language, each sketch of a chapter takes on a beauty of its own. Any reader of Hemingway should at some point find their way here, to this simple and lovely book.Absolutely recommended.
    • 4/5
      Absorbing reading. Features a snarky "new introduction" by Jane Kramer that wasn't even bound into the book, and badmouths him pretty much from start to finish. He probably deserved it.

    Book preview

    A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway

    1

    A Good Café on the Place St.-Michel

    Then there was the bad weather. It would come in one day when the fall was over. You would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold wind would strip the leaves from the trees in the Place Contrescarpe. The leaves lay sodden in the rain and the wind drove the rain against the big green autobus at the terminal and the Café des Amateurs was crowded and the windows misted over from the heat and the smoke inside. It was a sad, evilly run café where the drunkards of the quarter crowded together and I kept away from it because of the smell of dirty bodies and the sour smell of drunkenness. The men and women who frequented the Amateurs stayed drunk all of the time or all of the time they could afford it; mostly on wine which they bought by the half-liter or liter. Many strangely named apéritifs were advertised, but few people could afford them except as a foundation to build their wine drunks on. The women drunkards were called poivrottes which meant female rummies.

    The Café des Amateurs was the cesspool of the rue Mouffetard, that wonderful narrow crowded market street which led into the Place Contrescarpe. The squat toilets of the old apartment houses, one by the side of the stairs on each floor with two cleated cement shoe-shaped elevations on each side of the aperture so a locataire would not slip, emptied into cesspools which were emptied by pumping into horse-drawn tank wagons at night. In the summer time, with all windows open, you would hear the pumping and the odor was very strong. The tank wagons were painted brown and saffron color and in the moonlight when they worked the rue Cardinal Lemoine their wheeled, horse-drawn cylinders looked like Braque paintings. No one emptied the Café des Amateurs though, and its yellowed poster stating the terms and penalties of the law against public drunkenness was as flyblown and disregarded as its clients were constant and ill-smelling.

    All of the sadness of the city came suddenly with the first cold rains of winter, and there were no more tops to the high white houses as you walked but only the wet blackness of the street and the closed doors of the small shops, the herb sellers, the stationery and the newspaper shops, the midwife—second class—and the hotel where Verlaine had died where you had a room on the top floor where you worked.

    It was either six or eight flights up to the top floor and it was very cold and I knew how much it would cost for a bundle of small twigs, three wire-wrapped packets of short, half-pencil length pieces of split pine to catch fire from the twigs, and then the bundle of half-lengths of hard wood that I must buy to make a fire that would warm the room. So I went to the far side of the street to look up at the roof in the rain and see if any chimneys were going, and how the smoke blew. There was no smoke and I thought about how the chimney would be cold and might not draw and of the room possibly filling with smoke, and the fuel wasted, and the money gone with it, and I walked on in the rain. I walked down past the Lycée Henri Quatre and the ancient church of St.-Étienne-du-Mont and the windswept Place du Panthéon and cut in for shelter to the right and finally came out on the lee side of the Boulevard St.-Michel and worked on down it past the Cluny and the Boulevard St.-Germain until I came to a good café that I knew on the Place St.-Michel.

    It was a pleasant café, warm and clean and friendly, and I hung up my old waterproof on the coat rack to dry and put my worn and weathered felt hat on the rack above the bench and ordered a café au lait. The waiter brought it and I took out a notebook from the pocket of the coat and a pencil and started to write. I was writing about up in Michigan and since it was a wild, cold, blowing day it was that sort of day in the story. I had already seen the end of fall come through boyhood, youth and young manhood, and in one place you could write about it better than in another. That was called transplanting yourself, I thought, and it could be as necessary with people as with other sorts of growing things. But in the story the boys were drinking and this made me thirsty and I ordered a rum St. James. This tasted wonderful on the cold day and I kept on writing, feeling very well and feeling the good Martinique rum warm me all through my body and my spirit.

    A girl came in the café and sat by herself at a table near the window. She was very pretty with a face fresh as a newly minted coin if they minted coins in smooth flesh with rain-freshened skin, and her hair black as a crow’s wing and cut sharply and diagonally across her cheek.

    I looked at her and she disturbed me and made me very excited. I wished I could put her in the story, or anywhere, but she had placed herself so she could watch the street and the entry and I knew she was waiting for someone. So I went on writing.

    The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it. I ordered another rum St. James and I watched the girl whenever I looked up, or when I sharpened the pencil with a pencil sharpener with the shavings curling into the saucer under my drink.

    I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

    Then I went back to writing and I entered far into the story and was lost in it. I was writing it now and it was not writing itself and I did not look up nor know anything about the time nor think where I was nor order any more rum St. James. I was tired of rum St. James without thinking about it. Then the story was finished and I was very tired. I read the last paragraph and then I looked up and looked for the girl and she had gone. I hope she’s gone with a good man, I thought. But I felt sad.

    I closed up the story in the notebook and put it in my inside pocket and I asked the waiter for a dozen portugaises and a half-carafe of the dry white wine they had there. After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day.

    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, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.

    Now that the bad weather had come, we could leave Paris for a while for a place where this rain would be snow coming down through the pines and covering the road and the high hillsides and at an altitude where we would hear it creak as we walked home at night. Below Les Avants there was a chalet where the pension was wonderful and where we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright. That was where we could go.

    I would give up the room in the hotel where I wrote and there was only the rent of 74 rue Cardinal Lemoine which was nominal. I had written journalism for Toronto and the checks for that were due. I could write that anywhere under any circumstances and we had money to make the trip.

    Maybe away from Paris I could write about Paris as in Paris I could write about Michigan. I did not know it was too early for that because I did not know Paris well enough. But that was how it worked out eventually. Anyway we would go if my wife wanted to, and I finished the oysters and the wine and paid my score in the café and made it the shortest way back up the Montagne Ste. Geneviève through the rain, that was now only local weather and not something that changed your life, to the flat at the top of the hill.

    I think it would be wonderful, Tatie, my wife said. She had a lovely modeled face and her eyes and her smile lighted up at decisions as though they were rich presents. When should we leave?

    Whenever you want.

    Oh, I want to right away. Didn’t you know?

    Maybe it will be fine and clear when we come back. It can be very fine when it is clear and cold.

    I’m sure it will be, she said. Weren’t you good to think of going, too.

    2

    Miss Stein Instructs

    When we came back to Paris it was clear and cold and lovely. The city had accommodated itself to winter, there was good wood for sale at the wood and coal place across our street, and there were braziers outside of many of the good cafés so that you could keep warm on the terraces. Our own apartment was warm and cheerful. We burned boulets which were molded, egg-shaped lumps of coal dust, on the wood fire, and on the streets the winter light was beautiful. Now you were accustomed to see the bare trees against the sky and you walked on the fresh-washed gravel paths through the Luxembourg gardens in the clear sharp wind. The trees were beautiful without their leaves when you were reconciled to them, and the winter winds blew across the surfaces of the ponds and the fountains were blowing in the bright light. All the distances were short now since we had been in the

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