Customer Reviews

A Moveable Feast

5 star:		(73)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Book was in prime condition, and arrived in my mailbox promptly. The book itself is an excellent journey through Paris, France in the eyes of Ernest Hemingway. While going through the steps it takes to be a good writing, Hemingway introduces the reader to Gertrude Stien.

This book is Hemingway's recollection of living in Paris as a young writer, including the period when he wrote "The Sun Also Rises". Don't expect this to be a nonfictional version of the aforementioned masterpiece, but rather approach this book as an insight into the beautiful life Hemingway lived while he was younger. Like any book which is set in Paris, expect plenty descriptions of walking through the various quarters, written with such style that Hemingway's laid-back and gratified approach to life feels like more than mere words on a page. For me the best part of the book was Hemingway's section on F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is interesting seeing one great writer's (humorous) perspective of another. The only negative thing I have to say about this book is that Hemingway alludes to many other interesting situations that he does not expand on, but still, the book is a very enjoyable recollection.

I appreciated this memoir of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley and their son Bumby, as they experienced Paris (and the occasional excursion to Austria and Spain) in the late 20s. In typical Hemingway fashion, he can make you feel as though you are right there in Paris, seeing what he saw, all the while describing it with sparse and plain prose.

There are many honest and unflattering sketches of other ex-pats Hemingway either knew or befriended whilst there, including Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others, and a shining description of the goodness Hemingway attributed to Ezra Pound.

This seems like the best time in Hemingway's life, when he and his truest love were poor and happy and in love, and they shared their little lives with their young son. But it ends with foreboding and tragedy, when Hemingway regretfully and painfully describes the lead up to his love affair with what was to become his second wife, and looking back, wishes the thing that he and Hadley had in Paris could have lasted forever. It could have, Hem.

For this reader, knowing already what was to come, even the joys of Paris Hemingway describes are flavoured with melancholy. While I can appreciate this work, it would be a stretch to say I really enjoyed it to any great extent. However, anyone with an ounce of imagination can learn a good deal about Paris in the years between the wars, and anyone with an ounce of humility can glean a good deal from Hemingway's character strengths and weaknesses.

By the end of his life, Hemingway and his narratives had become so intertwined in so many ways that it was often impossible to know where the fiction ended and the real life began. Hemingway was a master at incorporating elements of his own life and experience into his fiction, and acting out elements of his stories in his own life, that by the time of this text, 'A Moveable Feast', written near the end of his life (and published posthumously) the boundary between fact and fiction was a very permeable boundary.

Of course, for Hemingway, truth was about as fascinating as fiction could ever be. With this particular text, the reader learns much about Hemingway and the particular time of the artists and post-World War I community in Paris. The inscription shows the influence that this time and experience had on Hemingway:

'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.'

Hemingway wrote this to a friend in 1950, several years before working on this text. Of course, the Moveable Feast that was Paris for Hemingway was not simply Paris, but a particular Paris - the Paris of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, of Ford Madox Ford and Ezra Pound, of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda. Hemingway has a no-holds-barred sense of writing, both for those he liked and those he didn't. His description of Zelda, for example, in both physical and personality aspects, is a rather scathing critique - F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway were competitive friends, but Zelda Fitzgerald and Hemingway were rivals in many more ways. Hemingway's recollections of his wife, Hadley, are equally intimate, often romantic while remaining realistic.

The Paris that was the post-war-to-end-all-wars bastion of moderns and artistry is no longer present, yet still remains an iconic paradise of sorts given the work that was produced from this hot-house of talent, reaching half a century later into the work of Hemingway for one last, grand proclamation.

This is an important book, to be read by those who appreciate Hemingway, American authors, international influences in literature, and culture. Published after his death, this was perhaps Hemingway's way of having the final word in many then-unfinished conversations.

I read this book while living in Paris. From reading other works by Hemingway, I realized that A Moveable Feast isn't as sophisticated as his novels. He writes as if in a stream of thought rather than being descriptive and evoking, so it was disappointing in that respect. Also, the novel, somewhat, lacks flow, but this could be so because of its posthumous publication. This doesn't hamper the ability to understand the novel in anyway, so it's a take it or leave it situation.

The two things that I enjoyed most about A Moveable Feast was its adherence to places and people found in Paris during the twenties and, if you are fascinated by such writers as Gertrude Stein or F. Scott Fitzgerald or just writers in general, this is definitely a key text to learning more about the personalities of these writers...through Hemingway's eyes, of course, but always interested, insightful, and sometimes hilarious in a quirky way. What also impressed me about this book is the personal insight into Hemingway's own life--how he lived, how he felt, what kind of person he was. He describes several scenarios involving his wife and other writers that portray who Hemingway was as a person. Also, since this was written shortly before his suicide, it is possible to see a sort of descent in Hemingway's mood as he closes the novel, which adds a moving and sorrowful end to the novel. Considering these elements, I think A Moveable Feast is definitely worth reading, particularly if one is staying in Paris. (Hemingway mentions the adresses--most of which are still intact in Paris--of other famous writers as well as places, such as the Closerie de Lilas, where he ate, drank, and "shopped.") It can serve as a mini-guidebook for those interested in expatriate writers.

After returning from a trip to Paris I decided to read this memoir by Hemmingway because I heard he loved Paris as much as I. I have to say I imagined a beautifully descriptive book filled with telling prose and wonderful scenes of Paris. I love the way Hemmingway writes but this book disappointed me. It may be that it was published after his death and slapped together without his perfectionistic control.

"A Moveable Feast" is an interesting read, simple even. If you know Paris you can even walk with Hemmingway along the Rues and conjure up a few old cafes that are still in business. If you are a writer it is nice to imagine yourself as the poor and struggling Hemmingway bent on a dream. But the stories are really nothing more than gossip about other writers and reknown figures such as, Fitzgerald, Stein, James, Pound and others flocking through Paris in the 1920's. I was hoping for more. The only paragraph I paid much attention to because of its "Hemmingway" quality read like this, "They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure." Gems like this can be found but unfortuneately not often. Paris and Hemmingway are both such profound enigmas that I expected a gourmet feast not just a trip to Denny's!

I used this book for my English practice to prepare to the GMAT and get better at writing essays. I know it is bizarre, but it is a gerat book for international students looking for style. Not a hard one, and a pleasant read. Especially good for RC and SC. Hemingway has good grammar.

I borrowed one from a friend and i really wish I owned a copy... I even wanted to buy it right now from Amazon for $0.85. I love the many moments of Hemingway's student life in Paris. His encounters with many prominent writers, and struggles to have meals regularly. Eventually, as he got broke, he was forced to go to Austria to a ski resourt... I guess that's exactly what I will do when I run out of my loan money. By the way, when you get to the Bschool, make sure to get as much money as you can...it is easier to return than to get.

Great for pensive melancholy evenings after a ding letter ;)

well as a Hemingway fan,this was one of the reasons why I choose to read it. I enjoy Hemingway's attention to detail which is why I love reading his works, but I must confess I did not see what all the hype was about this book. I was quite frankly bored with it. I finished it, but if you want know Hemingway read any other of his novels and then read this one.

This is my 100th review and when I realized I was approaching number 100, I puzzled over what book to make my list as my 100th review. Hemingway immediately came to mind, but then the question was, which one? I finally decided on this, which may well be my favorite Hemingway work.

Even though it was published posthumously, this book does not reek of other hands having been all over it as have some other posthumous Hemingway publications. It has been questioned as to how much of this book is fact and how much fiction. Even Hemingway raised the issue at the beginning of the book. It doesn't really matter. In this book Hemingway is recollecting events that occurred over roughly a five year period which were over thirty years past when he started on the book. So, no doubt of it may well be fiction, given the passage of time.

But the book is monumental in that it is perhaps the quietest and most elegant of Hemingway's books. It is broken into chapters that recount various episodes in his life during that period he dwelled largely in Paris. It is sometimes funny, occasionally sad, but always intriguing. As I write this, I'm slowly convincing myself that it is my favorite work by him.

We are introduced to Hemingway's circle of friends and acquaintances from that period: Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, and the always interesting F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. It's amazing how many other literary figures Hemingway came in contact with during his life and he gives interesting tales of all of them.

Even if you normally dislike Hemingway, I truly believe you will love reading this memoir. A true literary triumph and recounting of a time like none we will ever see again.

This was the second book I read by Ernest Hemingway, but it was the book that I most wanted to read. I have always heard how beautiful this novel was, and it was underestimated. This novel is like poetry in prose. The descriptions of Paris are enough to make anyone romaticize about this city and his descriptions of his friends, family, and colleagues will make them seem almost more than human. There is a mixture of happiness, that he obviously felt during these years, and of melancoly of a man remembering a better time in his life. His love for his first wife is so obvious here that it seems so sad when, in the end, it fails. But most of all I loved the idea that Paris was a moveable feast, meaning that no matter where he goes in life he can take the experiences, feelings, and innocence of this time in his life with him to keep him warm. No matter how cold and rainy the winter may be, there will always be a spring.