The book review of 《A Movable Feast》
In 1950, Hemingway told a friend, "If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast."
For Ernest Hemingway, Paris was just that, a movable feast that he took with him every place he went. Like many other writers and artists, Paris became his adopted home.
Paris is no wonder not a strange city to everyone. Referred by millions of people at different tones, Paris has won extreme flatters as well as abuses. However, Paris ignores all the comments, but shapes a composed and elegant figure as she was and she always is.
What will appear when it comes to your mind? The high Eiffel Tower, the colorful streets, the beautiful river Seine, the glorious palaces, the romantic people, the old history …Among all the comments on Paris, the most proper one may be the words: ?If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast?, which quoted from Ernest Hemingway?s A Moveable Feast. For him, Paris was just that, a moveable feast that he took with him every place he went. Like many other writers and artists, Paris became his adopted home.
A Moveable Feast account of Hemingway's early years as a struggling writer in Paris in the 1920s may well have undergone further revision had Hemingway not taken his own life. Yet it was the best and most heartfelt work he had done for years, a return to the form of the early stories and the first novels. It tells the story of the sweet innocence of his first years in the Rue Moufftard with his wife, the literary friendships, the cafes and the delight which he enjoyed: both in the city and in discovering his own voice. “I can write Paris only when I leave her, as I wrote Michigan while I was in Paris.” Ernest Hemingway finally decided to record his youth life in Paris when he was in Cuba. In the end of 1921, young writer Ernest Hemingway came to Paris with a overseas reporter identity together with his newlywed wife, and spent more than five years in the city mingled with elegant and noise, youth and hunger, struggle and inferiority, passion and the art of writing. Thirty years later when he started writing about their past, some memories had become fuzzy and distorted, but that keen to Paris affection has been deeply sculpted into words, shining everywhere.
To some degree, A Moveable Feast is a memoirs, but is much more vivid than a simple record. It is like a collection of short essays and documentary fictions with pleasant words and funny stories which provide an unbeknown real world of the “sweet-bitter Paris youth” of the greatest American writers as well as a unique city show to readers. The cafes, bookstores, long and narrow roads, wet and simple apartments, old and shabby wooden stairs, grand and spacious salons----they all have been labeled with stories and historical and literary meanings. Yes, they might be the most ordinary facilities at that time. But they witnessed the infancy of the 20th century France art and American literature. Hemingway mentioned many friends, peers and works at different tones, such as Scott Fitzgerald, the writer of The Great Gatsby, and James Joyce, the writer of Ulysses. Now they are all big names with distinguished achievements, but who can receive a big fame without any struggling and frustration? Hemingway recorded many details of their gatherings and talks that demonstrated the real beings when the masters were young. The scenes were incredible----when they were drunk, when they faced the lure of drug, when they envied others, maybe the figures are not that honorable, but they contributed a lot to the birth of classics.
As an unknown journalist, Hemingway kept observing and asking towards every corner of his surrounding, and then wrote down what he saw and heard in his aspect and made every effort to abstract comfort and nutrient from art. However, besides art and writing, besides insistence and self-honor, there
were so many other emotions and existences that were beyond words, just like the ubiquity of hunger and the plain and even poor life. However, everything reflected in memories are always followed by a happy shadow, even the hunger and bitterness.
The sincerity of the book came from the sense of safety of an old man who has achieved success and richness. So he could recall his Paris life at such a natural tone. When he was a dead-end kid, he was just one of the millions of young men who rushed to Paris to pursue dreams and passion, love and wealth. He is extremely self-discipline that he wouldn?t allow himself with meal or rest unless he finished his tasks on hand. He understood how to treasure and manage his genius that he never exhausted his inspiration, but reserved a bit to be watered by time and life to every another tomorrow. He experienced and observed life at peak efficiency but never burdened with them. Drinking, racing, or social intercourse, all of them must happen on condition that his work would not be bothered. Just owing to his clear idea of life and future as well as adherence to pursuit of ambitious targets, Hemingway successfully protected himself from the dust and pitfalls of wide but confused communities in such a bewildering Paris, and finally achieved his primary dream, even having achieved much more than he had expected before. Hemingway is arrogant and self-contained. That is one of the reasons why we always feel a gust of sarcasm while reading A Moveable Feast. Maybe it is because of his strict world outlook so that he easily recognized the flaws of people and world. Of course we can?t regard it as a merit, but we can?t deny that it was just the character led him to judge the surroundings in an objective----maybe extreme sometimes---- angle, and his thorough scan and profound deliberation pooled in classic works, which guide us to some significant issues and help us strengthen them out.
Hemingway is a writer in whose spirit intend temperament overweighed realistic skills. In the cold late autumn when he was in Paris, the figures of deadwoods could be a hinge which gently opened his memory, inspiring him to write about his faraway hometown with sweet recollection. And for this time, memory launched again. He was in the familiar seashore where he was born and bred, eating the delicious sturgeon and hearing the typical sounds of American tides. Only when a person is away from the place can he return to the original state appropriately. Therefore, the best record of Ernest Hemingway is A Moveable Feast, which was written in an small island in Cuba.
"Paris is a very old city, and we are very young, nothing here is simple, even poverty, accidents from the money, moonlight, and that with non-sleep in the moonlight the people around you breathe in, are not simple ." It is the most impressive paragraph for me which described Paris life. Hemingway wrote it to his youth, to the city, and also to the whole world which could be lessened and seen in Paris. After Hemingway, it is of no meaning to definite Paris, because we all know, Paris is a moveable feast. I haven?t read the whole book already,but i think it is well worth reading.And if you are attracted by Paris as well,read this book with me.
100214202 陈瑾 Nikita