Thursday, May 19, 2011

Book #59: A Moveable Feast

A Moveable Feast: The Restored EditionTitle: A Moveable Feast
Author: Ernest Hemingway

When I was reading The Paris Wife, Ernest Hemingway's character starts out writing a novel about his Michigan boyhood. Although he's in Paris, he says he can't write about Paris, because he hasn't had time to digest the place yet (interesting, because his first "big" novel takes place in Spain, and was written just after a trip there ended). In fact, it took Hemingway several decades to come back to writing about Paris. He wrote A Moveable Feast in the last few months and years before his suicide. In the book he looks back at his time in Paris, his friends (his relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald is particularly illuminating). 

A Moveable Feast is much more essayistic than The Paris Wife, which makes it less illuminating in many ways. With several decades of remove, it's interesting to see Hemingway's remorse for the events that took place with Hadley in Paris. I probably enjoyed The Paris Wife more, but I recognize that A Moveable Feast will likely be considered the more important book, and I was happy to read them both together.

1 comment:

joolee said...

i just finished The Paris Wife as well - i'll have to read this one too. unlike you who read a bit about Hadley beforehand, i got attached to her and ernest's antics had me fuming. i knew he'd had a few wives, but wow...