All words: Morgan Day
Book Title: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Book type:Â Memoir
You may enjoy this if you liked: Anything Hemingway, The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
You’re infatuated with Hemingway because of his writing, his death, or his balls. Hemingway equals short sentences and Hemingway equals suicide. His balls are of importance because he’s the epitome of manhood and with that misogyny, in which you have your own opinion. He spent the last years of his life in a crazed state of writing but unable to bring multiple works to a close. When he died these manuscripts were left unfinished, unpublished, and in the hands of his fourth wife Mary Hemingway.
One of those manuscripts is A Moveable Feast, a memoir on his early years writing in Paris, the time he decided to begin writing novels. In retrospect this could’ve been the guide to every aspiring writer’s pipe dream: craft your own prose style, publish x amount of books, and win The Nobel Prize. In actuality his path was exactly what every cliche, aspiring writer is already doing: writing at cafes, starving and drinking, and destroying a relationship that’s the only source of hope.
It’s a memoir but Hemingway calls it fiction most likely so he can get away with his trashy representations of famous writers like Fitzgerald. The book focuses on his relationship with his first wife Hadley. You’ll become invested in their relationship and forget about his balls. You’ll see a Hemingway in love. Eventually and inevitably you’ll feel the heartbreak. Because:
“I wished I had died before I had loved anyone but her.”
Reasons you NEED to read this book:
1. Buy this book for the chapter “The Pilot and The Fish”—a vicious depiction of loving two women.
2. ARTISTS if you have an ember of inspiration in you this book will make that a flame.
3. Hemingway walked in on Gertrude Stein and her female lover. They were screaming “pussy.”
