According to my Amazon order history I bought this little paperback edition of Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast back in November 2017. I’ve no idea what prompted me to buy it. There’s no mention of it in my diary. It’s sat on the bookshelf in the living room next to The Old Man and The Sea, which I read with Yuna around May 2017, so maybe that inspired the purchase? It’s sat there for the last nine years waiting patiently, finally finding a slot in my interwar reading list, and at last making it to the top of the pile. Ernest Hemingway needs little introduction, he’s one of the giants of 20th C. American literature. He was involved in WWI as a volunteer ambulance driver in northern Italy and then returned to Europe and lived in Paris through much of the 1920s. It’s these Paris years, before the publication of his first successful novel, The Sun Also Rises, that are the subject of this book. Hemingway wrote it in the 1950s, thirty years after the events it described. The story goes that he was staying at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris in the 1950s, when the Ritz’s owner, Charles Ritz, reminded him that he had a couple of old trunks in their storeroom. They dated back to the 1920s and contained his notebooks from that time. He had the notebooks transcribed and then edited them into this book. It’s partly a first hand record written at the time, and partly an old man remembering his youth. This is probably what gives the book its slightly schizophrenic character, between the immediate first hand reporting of a young writer, and other passages that are clearly the regrets of an old man. The book was published posthumously by his last wife, who was later of accused of tampering with the manuscript.

Paris in the 1920s, less than a decade after the slaughter of millions on the Western Front had taken place just a short distance away. Strange to think that it soon became the home of so many of the leading artists and authors of the age. Perhaps enough young men, especially Americans, had passed through on the way to war that it made a lasting impression. Surprising that the impression should be a positive one. One can’t imagine Seigfried Sassoon or Robert Graves living there, they had come away from the war hating the French. The advantageous exchange rate must have helped. France would have been in a parlous economic state after the war. What’s also surprising is how little the war features in this book, although it does emerge in two key scenes. The first is via Gertrude Stein, Hemingway’s friend and mentor, who describes his contemporaries as “the lost generation”; apparently the description given of a young mechanic by his manger at a garage where Stein’s car was being repaired. A generation disillusioned, cynical, robbed of their youth. It’s now become common parlance for that cohort alongside the more familiar “Greatest Generation”, and “Baby Boomers”. The second key reference to the war is when a waiter at one of Hemingway’s favourite cafes, an ex-soldier who had fought in the war, was told to shave off his magnificent moustache. The owner wanted to turn his establishment into an “American cafe” and insisted that his staff be clean shaven. The humiliation of the poor man is palpable.

In the twenties Hemingway was married to Hadley Richardson. His memories of her are very affectionate. Their household also included his son “Mr Bumby”, and a maid, although the maid is hardly mentioned. Reading various articles about their relationship, it seems that Hemingway is less than honest about their finances. He describes them as living in poverty, and that hunger helped him write. He says what little income they had was from his journalism for a Canadian newspaper. In reality he was supported by Richardson who had a sizable inheritance. The simple fact that they could afford to employ a maid and take skiing holidays in Austria belies the plea of poverty. Hemingway obviously prefers the image of a struggling poor writer to that of a kept man. He writes about his enthusiasm for betting on horse racing. He’s almost admitting to having a gambling addiction, and it’s clear, reading between the lines, that he lost a lot of money. Again not the behaviour of a man going hungry for lack of money for food. Or maybe it is?

Hemingway is famous for his writing style; short declarative sentences, shorn of decoration or adjectives. I love its immediacy and impact. Strange that omitting so much is so powerful. There are some excellent passages in the book about his creative process. He strives for the “one true sentence”; to state one true clear fact as the foundation of any writing. He says that sometimes the words drive him; he is merely their instrument, the conduit through which they reach the page. At other times he writes the words. I’ve read elsewhere of Paul McCartney describing how a melody would simply appear to him as if by magic, unprompted on waking. Of course I can’t compare myself to these geniuses, but I’ve often found how ideas and insights for my computer programming appear fully formed as if from nowhere, often after a good night’s sleep, or perhaps a lunchtime walk. Hemingway insists that when he finishes writing for the day he refuses to think about it further. He walks the streets, or meets friends, he writes about seeing a pretty girl in a cafe, all so that his subconscious can mull over the story without interference. It’s clear he thinks creativity is an unconscious process that must be nursed and cultivated rather than a conscious act of will.

The city of Paris is a leading character in the book. Paris in the rain, Paris in the snow, Paris in the summer heat. One can almost smell it. Hemingway describes his endless walks street by street. It’s reminiscent of T E Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom in this regard, just substitute streets for waddis. I was half tempted to break open Google Maps and follow his footsteps. It must make the book very familiar if you know that area of Paris. I especially enjoyed his walks along the Seine, the fishermen patiently hopeful along the banks and under the bridges. The Seine must have been a lot cleaner than the Thames at the same time. I can’t imagine one would catch anything in the London of the 1920s, at least not anything edible.

The largest part of the book is dedicated to his friends, mostly fellow writers and critics. There is Gertrude Stein of course. He was an almost daily caller at her apartment until they fell out. She was his main introduction into the literary scene. Very entertaining descriptions of Ford Maddox Ford and Ezra Pound. I went down mini rabbit-holes reading up about both of them in Wikipedia. Hemingway writes about his love of Russian novelists, Chekhov and Turgenev. There is a wonderful reported conversation of him discussing the Russians with Ezra Pound, who says that he’s never read them. He also mentions Henri Belloc, the famous Sussex writer. There is a little known poet named Ernest Walsh, who is “marked for death”, whatever that means. Walsh did die young, but is Hemingway claiming that he could prophesy it? Or is Walsh just look ill? He has a long chapter on F Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby. Hemingway was a great admirer of his work, and there’s no doubt he is a giant of 20th Century American literature, but the character portrait Hemingway paints is of a semi-alcoholic, wingeing, hypochondriac with a vicious and controlling wife, Zelda, who jealously tries to sabotage his writing. There’s a pathetic episode when he and Fitzgerald take a train out of Paris to pick up Fitzgerald’s broken down car. Fitzgerald insists on stopping at a hotel halfway back and remains complaining of an imaginary sickness overnight. The writers congregate around Shakespeare and Company, the famous (because of Hemingway?) English language bookshop run by Sylvia Beach, who was active in supporting and promoting up and coming writers. It was Hemingway’s library, all the books he describes reading were borrowed from there.

The last chapter describes the skiing holidays they took in Austria once Hemingway had started to make money after the publication of The Sun Also Rises. He describes in quite bitter terms how he and Hadley met Pauline Pfeiffer, a rich young American woman, and how he and Pfeiffer started an affair which eventually led to the breakdown of his marriage. He blames Pfeiffer for it, but of course it takes two to tango. One can’t help be a little cynical about his point of view here. He says fame attracts the rich, who poison and buy everything of value - including him it seems.

I very much enjoyed this book. It goes without saying that it’s very well written. I’m a fan of Hemingway’s style, although it has a density about it and requires more concentration than some other authors. The book oozes atmosphere. One walks the streets of 1920s Paris with Hemingway and join in his conversations with Scott Fitzgerald or Ezra Pound in a comfortable cafe over a cafe creme or a glass of wine. So much wine in fact that it would be slow going indeed if one tried to match Hemingway glass for glass!