10 Books of Summer 2017: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemmingway

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway’s most beloved works.

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A Moveable Feast is a memoir by American author Ernest Hemingway about his years as a struggling young expatriate journalist and writer in Paris in the 1920s. The book describes the author’s apprenticeship as a young writer while he was married to his first wife, Hadley Richardson.

My thoughts and review

Covering the years 1921 – 1926 Hemingway shares time spent with other ex pat writers, poets, artists whilst he is establishing himself as a (great) writer. Set in Paris we can savour a little of the life of the struggling author. How he lived and worked. Who he met, who he knew. From Gertrude Stein to James Joyce to F Scott Fitzgerald and others it is fascinating.
This however is a snippet and, as he writes in the preface, ‘sufficient for the writer, many places, people, observations have been left out of this book.’ Also, he says it may be considered fiction. ‘But there is always the chance that such a book of fiction may throw some light on what has been written as fact.’
It is a book which lovers of Hemingway will particularly enjoy and all will appreciate.  The way he writes about this period of his life, about Paris and beyond and about the people, the famous and not famous, puts you right there.  It is a fascinating look, a peek, at Post-war Paris and into the life of a would be writer. Whether it is written to set records straight, or not, it does evoke a longing in his writing which captivates.

Rating: 3*

Biography
Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899. His father was a doctor and he was the second of six children. Their home was at Oak Park, a Chicago suburb.

In 1917, Hemingway joined the Kansas City Star as a cub reporter. The following year, he volunteered as an ambulance driver on the Italian front, where he was badly wounded but decorated for his services. He returned to America in 1919, and married in 1921. In 1922, he reported on the Greco-Turkish war before resigning from journalism to devote himself to fiction. He settled in Paris where he renewed his earlier friendships with such fellow-American expatriates as Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. Their encouragement and criticism were to play a valuable part in the formation of his style.

Hemingway’s first two published works were Three Stories and Ten Poems and In Our Time but it was the satirical novel, The Torrents of Spring, that established his name more widely. His international reputation was firmly secured by his next three books; Fiesta, Men Without Women and A Farewell to Arms.

He was passionately involved with bullfighting, big-game hunting and deep-sea fishing and his writing reflected this. He visited Spain during the Civil War and described his experiences in the bestseller, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

His direct and deceptively simple style of writing spawned generations of imitators but no equals. Recognition of his position in contemporary literature came in 1954 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, following the publication of The Old Man and the Sea. He died in 1961.

Information
Publisher: Arrow; 01 edition (2 Jun. 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0099557029
ISBN-13: 978-0099557029