A Moveable Feast: An Impression

            Hemingway was a complicated man with a simple writing style. Those who have read The Sun Also Rises, or any other book by Hemingway, will likely agree with this statement. Living in a post-war era of abandoned tradition, forgotten values, and a lost generation, Ernest Hemingway was one among many who felt adrift. His interaction amidst a society of exiles in foreign countries (in Hemingway’s case, Paris) fed both his problems and his inspiration. Within A Moveable Feast, the conflict and satisfaction that Hemingway experienced in his early writing career become apparent. The reader is afforded a glimpse of an integral part of Hemingway’s life, a blurry and streaked vision of the civility, hostility, and humanity of Hemingway’s Paris.

            The narrative within A Moveable Feast is difficult for me to form an opinion on. But perhaps such difficulty is a mark of the text’s success. For despite the direct, declarative nature of Hemingway’s writing (which eschews adjectives in favor of conjunctions), his A Moveable Feast remains rather confusing. This quality is not due to the construction of the content; rather, it is a quality created by the delivery of the content. All of Hemingway’s life-changing, disastrous, or mundane memories of Paris are not meant to be provided in his memoir. Instead, A Moveable Feast appears to be designed as a rush of memories with an express purpose of creating an impression. Surely Hemingway himself could not vividly recount every major detail of his Paris era. Yet he was able to isolate certain choice experiences and throw them together.

            In weaving such a fragmented tapestry of life in Paris, Hemingway creates meaning without even writing a word. The sentences are there, yes, but they represent something greater. The passages of A Moveable Feast coalesce into a fireside chat, echoing the sensation of one’s grandfather telling a story. The room is darkly lit, the cold air is being warmed by the cozy heat of the burning logs, and you are receiving a long, calm tale of some long-gone age. At least, such a notion is what I receive. Throughout Hemingway’s simple, subtle text, I experience a vague feeling of nostalgia, as well as an indistinct passage of time.

            Admittedly, I was rather perplexed when I first started reading A Moveable Feast, as I could not really connect the text to current studies in AP Lang. Hemingway is all well and good, but I was unable to connect his work to studies of articles, arguments, and use of language. Then I realized that A Moveable Feast is rooted deeply in concepts of language use and how words affect meaning. The book is not “1920s Paris as it was” but rather “1920s Paris as portrayed by Ernest Hemingway”. Hemingway is very controlling in his portrayals of his friends, acquaintances, and undesirables. For instance, Ford Madox Ford is presented in a very particular light, as his presence is described as “heavy, wheezing, ignoble” (Hemingway 86). In a subsequent chapter, “The Birth of a New School”, Hemingway relates an entire conversation with an unknown critic. The description of the critic speaks unfavorably against the unfortunate man. Hemingway’s closing remarks, that “It would be interesting and instructive if the young man had turned out to be a famous critic but it did out turn out that way” (Hemingway 96) leaves the unnamed critic as an embarrassed footnote in the broad scope of Hemingway’s memoir, almost as an insult.

            Truly, given Hemingway’s reign over his own memory, any recounted conversation or event is bound to have partiality, prejudice, or plain error. By studying the ways in which Hemingway creates definitive tones and impressions, we study use of language in affecting and influencing the reader. Given the nature of A Moveable Feast, separating fact from fictionalized truth is a very difficult task to take up (impossible without consulting outside sources). If I were to describe the work as any one genre, I would likely declare it autobiographical. However, as I wrote earlier, A Moveable Feast is more a sensation than anything. It is a blurry and nostalgic story of another time and place.