[ book tip by Ann Morgan ] Books like this generally terrify me. The memoirs of some giant of the twentieth century literary scene, taking in the landscape of his early forays into greatness with tales aplenty of drunkenness and misdemeanours so that the reader is left with the impression that the sacred flame of literary brilliance ignited, almost uninvited, in the heart of the lucky subject, imbuing his every sentence with its brightness and heat. 

Except that Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast is not a typical autobiography. In fact its subject, if anything, is Paris, the city in which he spent much of his early writing career and where he met many of the leading figures of the day. 

‘If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man,’ Hemingway wrote to a friend in 1950, ‘Then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.’   

Through the prism of post World War I Paris, Hemingway brings us the thoughts and feelings of his younger self, alongside sketches of such movers and shakers as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein. If the anecdotes of seamless hours spent writing in cafes have led more than the odd aspiring wordsmith to throw up his or her hands in despair, it is doubtless Paris rather than Hemingway which is to blame.

[ book info ] Hemingway, Ernest: A Moveable Feast. (Book language: English) ISBN: 068482499.