Ernest Hemingway. A Moveable Feast. Scribner’s, 1964.

A Moveable Feast tells in vignettes about Hemingway’s life in Paris and France (mostly) from 1921 to 1926 when he lived among and associated with English and American expatriates. He focuses on his interactions with other writers and artists, but we also learn a lot about him and his work.

It sounds like he and his first wife Hadley were really in love, and for the most part describes this time as a happy time in his life in spite of some of the financial pressures. In his case, it may have been better for him to be away from the United States because of various family problems including his father’s suicide.

He describes Gertrude Stein in humorous and respectful detail. They were friends, and Hemingway apparently helped her get some things published and did some proofreading for her. Though she was known even at the time for her female lovers, she complained that most homosexuals were perverts. She and Hemingway had some frank discussions about this. He credits her, as others have, for coining the term une génération perdue (a lost generation) for the aimless postwar artists.

Hemingway admired Ezra Pound. He called Pound a saint. He was selfless in helping people financially and in their artistic and literary careers. Now Hemingway finished writing this in 1960, so there is an undertone that Pound should have been more respected by other writers and even the U. S. government. Hemingway spends virtually no time on anyone’s political views, except a bit on one Austrian fascist. Pound’s views were a non-issue in the twenties.

Ezra was the most generous writer I have ever known and the most disinterested. He helped poets, painters, sculptors, and prose writers that he believed in and would help anyone whether he believed in them or not if they were in trouble. (110)

For example, Hemingway describes an effort led by Pound to subsidize T. S. Eliot so he could quit his banking job and write full time.

He speaks of meeting Ford Madox Ford, who for some unclear reason made Hemingway uncomfortable. It may have been his disdain for Americans. Hemingway speaks highly of James Joyce (he influenced everyone), but other than casually mentioning seeing him in restaurants and taverns, does provide any detailed observatioins though other sources say they would sometimes go drinking together.

Hemingway’s account of F. Scott Fitzgerald is very moving. He could observe even back then Fitzgerald’s tendency toward alcoholism. He first read The Great Gatsby when Fitzgerald told him it had been published. He called it a work of genius. He said that Fitzgerald had written four novels, two of which were really good. Besides Gatsby, we are left to guess what the other one was. (This reviewer prefers The Beautiful and Damned.) He believes The Last Tycoon would have been great if Fitzgerald had been able to complete it.

He disagreed with Fitzgerald about writing short stories. Fitzgerald told him that often he would write a story and then revise it the way that The Saturday Evening Post or another magazine that paid well would like it. Hemingway called this a sellout (he used a stronger term), but he understood Fitzgerald’s need for money. He mentions that he did like his story “The Rich Boy.” That is the story by “Julian” in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” that says “the rich are different.”

In “Snows of Kilimanjaro” we are told that Julian’s admiration of the rich was one of the things that “wrecked” him. In A Moveable Feast Hemingway believes that a certain rich woman, namely Scott’s wife Zelda, helped to wreck him. She taunted him about various things, and Hemingway believed she was jealous of his success.

Hemingway noted after he first became friendly with Fitzgerald:

He had many good, good friends, more than anyone I knew. But I enlisted as one more, whether I could be of any use to him or not. If he could write a book as fine as The Great Gatsby I was sure he could write an even better one. I did not know Zelda yet, and so I did not know the terrible odds that were against him. (176)

He noted that she would smile when Scott was drunk or distracted because then he would not be able to write. He shared with Hemingway one of Zelda’s most pointed and cruel insults to him. Hemingway tried to convince him it was not true. “You’re perfectly fine,” he told him.

“But why would she say it?” [Fitzgerald asked]
“To put you out of business. That is the oldest way in the world to put you out of business.” (190)

We noted in a review of a book about the Fitzgeralds that one of Scott’s friends wrote that all Scott’s women are based on Zelda. Fitzgerald himself noted that at least one of his female characters was inspired by Keats’ “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”—the beautiful lady without pity. Hemingway makes it sound like Zelda falls into that category.

Zelda told Hemingway that she really liked Henry James. James wrote of the upper classes, e.g. the Sloper family in Washington Square. She could probably identify with his books because of who they were about. Of course, we could say the same thing about most of Fitzgerald’s work as well, though his perspective would be a little different from James’.

While the book is set nearly entirely in Paris and other parts of France, the last chapter takes place in Austria. Hemingway describes two winters he, his wife, and son spent skiing there. He tells us that he met some former ski troopers from the war and would play poker once or twice a week. This is echoed in one of the flashbacks in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”

In A Moveable Feast we learn of Hemingway’s interest in various sports besides the bull fighting, hunting, and fishing that he frequently wrote about. He learned some of the tricks about betting on horses and became a fan, and apologized for only writing one good story about that, “My Old Man.” He apologized for never writing about cycling, though he picked up an interest in that while in France.

We know from a couple stories that Hemingway liked boxing. He tells us that Pound insisted Hemingway teach him how to box. They practiced a number of times, but Hemingway said he did not learn too well. Once when he was sparring with Pound, Wyndham Lewis showed up. Hemingway had to pull some punches so that Pound did not look too bad.

As can be seen even from the quotations in this review, Hemingway’s style did not change much when he was writing nonfiction. A Moveable Feast gives us a distinctive and inside view of the Lost Generation in Europe in the twenties. It certainly gives us a sense of the tragedy of the Fitzgeralds and maybe even a hint of what would tear Europe apart again in less than twenty years.