Editorial Reviews

In the preface to A Moveable Feast, Hemingway remarks casually that "if the reader prefers, this book may be regarded as fiction"--and, indeed, fact or fiction, it doesn't matter, for his slim memoir of Paris in the 1920s is as enchanting as anything made up and has become the stuff of legend. Paris in the '20s! Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, lived happily on $5 a day and still had money for drinks at the Closerie des Lilas, skiing in the Alps, and fishing trips to Spain. On every corner and at every café table, there were the most extraordinary people living wonderful lives and telling fantastic stories. Gertrude Stein invited Hemingway to come every afternoon and sip "fragrant, colorless alcohols" and chat admid her great pictures. He taught Ezra Pound how to box, gossiped with James Joyce, caroused with the fatally insecure Scott Fitzgerald (the acid portraits of him and his wife, Zelda, are notorious). Meanwhile, Hemingway invented a new way of writing based on this simple premise: "All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."
Hemingway beautifully captures the fragile magic of a special time and place, and he manages to be nostalgic without hitting any false notes of sentimentality. "This is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy," he concludes. Originally published in 1964, three years after his suicide, A Moveable Feast was the first of his posthumous books and remains the best. --David Laskin

Book Description

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works. It is his classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, filled with irreverent portraits of other expatriate luminaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein; tender memories of his first wife, Hadley; and insightful recollections of his own early experiments with his craft. It is a literary feast, brilliantly evoking the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the youthful spirit, unbridled creativity, and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized.

 

*****   Hemingway's Final Masterpiece
Reviewer: J. Mullin (Plantation, FL USA) - See all my reviews

Hemingway's writing was always very auto-biographical, but in A Moveable Feast, published after his lifetime and written late in Hem's life, he actually uses real character names in recreating Paris of the 1920's. For any Hemingway fan, or for those interested in first hand accounts of life with Gertrude Stein, Alice Toklas, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce and others, this is truly a must read.
The book is everything that most late fiction by Hemingway is not. It is lean, romantic, and genuine, without the blustery heroes and stilted dialogue of missed efforts like the dreadful Across the River and Into the Trees.

Here Hemingway looks back fondly on his days with Hadley in Paris, slipping into cafes to sit all day and attempt to write over a cup of coffee. He remembers trips to the racetrack, a hysterical road trip adventure with Fitzgerald to retrieve a car, and other memorable details from the lives of the Lost Generation living abroad. He also takes shots at some so-called friends who turned on him, not passing up on an opportunity to get in the last word. There is some doubt as to whether Hemingway ever wanted this book published, but I am very glad that they did. It is a book to cherish and come back to every couple of years, and it had aged better than anything else Hemingway had written.