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valparaiso 's review for:
A Moveable Feast
by Ernest Hemingway
“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.” —Ernest Hemingway
I had the good fortune of being a young man in Paris on multiple occasions, including living in the 16th arrondissement during the summer before 9/11 while I was at university. Whereas Hemingway was young and married with a child, figuring out how to become a writer, I was young and unmarried, working at the American Embassy in Paris, as the intern to the US ambassador to France, figuring out whether to become a diplomat. (I didn’t.)
And as Hemingway here suggests, Paris sunk into my bones. A Moveable Feast is Hemingway‘s account of his quotidian interactions with his wife and the city and its people—including some famous writers, and some not so famous ones. Reading about all this, through the changing seasons, was eminently enjoyable for me because I have my own stories that forever connect me with that majestic, historic city. And, like Hemingway, I have taken them with me throughout my life.
Hemingway is funny in this book. For example he recounts with self-deprecation how much time and money he spent at the horse races, something I never experienced. He also gently mocks the highs and lows of some of his literary friends, who found endless ways to annoy him in the cafés where they convened.
This book was a great pleasure to read. It’s strange to me how I could enjoy a book where nothing terrific happens, for it’s just a series of small anecdotes about his comings and goings in that season of his life.
I really enjoyed him talking about his friendships with Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and others. They called him “Hem”. He gave them an immediacy that brought them to life; I could picture running into them myself and chewing the fat with them, how Fitzgerald was shy, for example, but proud of his book “The Great Gatsby”.
In my mind, I picture Hemingway as a bearded old man. The fisherman. The outdoorsman. The rotund, wizened face. But here Hemingway is just 25. I was also about 25 when I lived in Paris. And while there are a great many differences between me and Ernest Hemingway, I felt I was reading snippets of my own life from that time.
While I interned at the embassy, I lived with a host of fellow interns from all over America who became my friends—as quirky a set of characters, myself included, as could be found in a Hemingway novel. We worked, we attended social events, we explored. I found myself at a party once, hosted by Australians, where a B grade movie star danced away in the dining room while I spoke to a Belgian on the balcony about Jesus and His gospel and my testimony of those two things, and why I wasn’t drinking. Quirky.
I did not explore Paris the way that I should have, but it was still a massive cultural experience for me, notwithstanding the fact that, four years earlier, I had spent two years serving a mission for my Church in the north of France.
But what did I know of Paris? Very little, if anything but the vistas I saw from the Eiffel Tower while transferring trains between Lille and Nancy once on my mission.
That summer at the embassy, I should’ve known that to miss the Musée d’Orsay would be blasphemous. Especially because I would later find myself such appreciator of art. Yet I never set foot inside until years later. In a certain way, I truly lived in Paris. Not the way a tourist does by visiting all of the top sites. But as one who lives in Paris does.
My roommates and friends were not of my faith and so drinking was a central theme of virtually all their activities. I would show up at dinners occasionally, which was fun, but I would not go out drinking with them.
On Sunday nights, I would sit in the lobby of the military barracks that we called home and talk to my friend Matthew about a book he was reading about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, about Joseph Smith and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We had many memorable conversations. I also took a train to Switzerland to see my friend Ben marry his wife in an LDS Temple, another unforgettable experience. It was a wonderful time for me.
I also had typically Parisian experiences. I walked down the Champs Élysées and into the FNAC record store, where I browsed and listen to artists like Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel, and Francis Cabrel.
Like Hemingway, and untold numbers since, I also visited Shakespeare and Company, the famous bookstore across the Seine from the Notre Dame.
I thought I would find love in Paris. Who moves there at my age thinking otherwise? But that was a bit of a pipe dream, knowing that there was such a wide gap between my commitments to the Lord and the French secular culture. So my romantic efforts in Paris ended with a French girl rejecting me for a date. I decided to stick to my internship, and some history and culture.
In the 16th, I lived on the top floor of a building, owned by the embassy, in a tiny room with a padlock on it. My flatmates and I, all 20 of us, shared a common kitchen, living room, and bathrooms. We ate together a handful of times at the massive dining room table. The “tragedy of the commons” struck, and the rot from the sink of undone dishes was nearly always more than any of us could bear. Underneath the rug under the table was a World War II era escape hatch to the floor below. Did we make use of it? Yes we did.
None of us had cell phones. We read and talked to each other and wrote in our journals. I often wonder what life would be like now without our current addiction to phones.
I remember climbing onto the roof of our building a few times and seeing the Eiffel Tower lit up from a distance. It inspired awe, and ambition, and wanderlust. It still does.
I saw Lance Armstrong cheat his way to his third Tour de France title from the balcony of the embassy, overlooking the obelisk Napoleon stole from Egypt and plunked onto the Place de la Concorde. For another few years, I really looked up to Lance. Until I news broke of his doping scandal—Lance, not Napoleon. Although he probably also had doping scandals. It’s still all a great memory.
One day, while hosting a US Senator’s wife, whose husband was in town for official meetings, she took me to the top of the Sacré Coeur, and with her quirky personality made me count the steps to the top. That was a strange, random day.
Kind of like Hemingway‘s book—a fun, quirky look back to a place I know well, about 50 years before I lived there myself.
I had the good fortune of being a young man in Paris on multiple occasions, including living in the 16th arrondissement during the summer before 9/11 while I was at university. Whereas Hemingway was young and married with a child, figuring out how to become a writer, I was young and unmarried, working at the American Embassy in Paris, as the intern to the US ambassador to France, figuring out whether to become a diplomat. (I didn’t.)
And as Hemingway here suggests, Paris sunk into my bones. A Moveable Feast is Hemingway‘s account of his quotidian interactions with his wife and the city and its people—including some famous writers, and some not so famous ones. Reading about all this, through the changing seasons, was eminently enjoyable for me because I have my own stories that forever connect me with that majestic, historic city. And, like Hemingway, I have taken them with me throughout my life.
Hemingway is funny in this book. For example he recounts with self-deprecation how much time and money he spent at the horse races, something I never experienced. He also gently mocks the highs and lows of some of his literary friends, who found endless ways to annoy him in the cafés where they convened.
This book was a great pleasure to read. It’s strange to me how I could enjoy a book where nothing terrific happens, for it’s just a series of small anecdotes about his comings and goings in that season of his life.
I really enjoyed him talking about his friendships with Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and others. They called him “Hem”. He gave them an immediacy that brought them to life; I could picture running into them myself and chewing the fat with them, how Fitzgerald was shy, for example, but proud of his book “The Great Gatsby”.
In my mind, I picture Hemingway as a bearded old man. The fisherman. The outdoorsman. The rotund, wizened face. But here Hemingway is just 25. I was also about 25 when I lived in Paris. And while there are a great many differences between me and Ernest Hemingway, I felt I was reading snippets of my own life from that time.
While I interned at the embassy, I lived with a host of fellow interns from all over America who became my friends—as quirky a set of characters, myself included, as could be found in a Hemingway novel. We worked, we attended social events, we explored. I found myself at a party once, hosted by Australians, where a B grade movie star danced away in the dining room while I spoke to a Belgian on the balcony about Jesus and His gospel and my testimony of those two things, and why I wasn’t drinking. Quirky.
I did not explore Paris the way that I should have, but it was still a massive cultural experience for me, notwithstanding the fact that, four years earlier, I had spent two years serving a mission for my Church in the north of France.
But what did I know of Paris? Very little, if anything but the vistas I saw from the Eiffel Tower while transferring trains between Lille and Nancy once on my mission.
That summer at the embassy, I should’ve known that to miss the Musée d’Orsay would be blasphemous. Especially because I would later find myself such appreciator of art. Yet I never set foot inside until years later. In a certain way, I truly lived in Paris. Not the way a tourist does by visiting all of the top sites. But as one who lives in Paris does.
My roommates and friends were not of my faith and so drinking was a central theme of virtually all their activities. I would show up at dinners occasionally, which was fun, but I would not go out drinking with them.
On Sunday nights, I would sit in the lobby of the military barracks that we called home and talk to my friend Matthew about a book he was reading about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, about Joseph Smith and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We had many memorable conversations. I also took a train to Switzerland to see my friend Ben marry his wife in an LDS Temple, another unforgettable experience. It was a wonderful time for me.
I also had typically Parisian experiences. I walked down the Champs Élysées and into the FNAC record store, where I browsed and listen to artists like Charles Aznavour, Jacques Brel, and Francis Cabrel.
Like Hemingway, and untold numbers since, I also visited Shakespeare and Company, the famous bookstore across the Seine from the Notre Dame.
I thought I would find love in Paris. Who moves there at my age thinking otherwise? But that was a bit of a pipe dream, knowing that there was such a wide gap between my commitments to the Lord and the French secular culture. So my romantic efforts in Paris ended with a French girl rejecting me for a date. I decided to stick to my internship, and some history and culture.
In the 16th, I lived on the top floor of a building, owned by the embassy, in a tiny room with a padlock on it. My flatmates and I, all 20 of us, shared a common kitchen, living room, and bathrooms. We ate together a handful of times at the massive dining room table. The “tragedy of the commons” struck, and the rot from the sink of undone dishes was nearly always more than any of us could bear. Underneath the rug under the table was a World War II era escape hatch to the floor below. Did we make use of it? Yes we did.
None of us had cell phones. We read and talked to each other and wrote in our journals. I often wonder what life would be like now without our current addiction to phones.
I remember climbing onto the roof of our building a few times and seeing the Eiffel Tower lit up from a distance. It inspired awe, and ambition, and wanderlust. It still does.
I saw Lance Armstrong cheat his way to his third Tour de France title from the balcony of the embassy, overlooking the obelisk Napoleon stole from Egypt and plunked onto the Place de la Concorde. For another few years, I really looked up to Lance. Until I news broke of his doping scandal—Lance, not Napoleon. Although he probably also had doping scandals. It’s still all a great memory.
One day, while hosting a US Senator’s wife, whose husband was in town for official meetings, she took me to the top of the Sacré Coeur, and with her quirky personality made me count the steps to the top. That was a strange, random day.
Kind of like Hemingway‘s book—a fun, quirky look back to a place I know well, about 50 years before I lived there myself.