Redheaded Reviews: A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Monday, July 1, 2019

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway talks about many topics in his atrocious book A Moveable Feast. He covers his dislike of F. Scott Fitzgerald as a person. Skiing in Austria with his young son Bumby and his wife Hadley. His friendship with Ezra Pound. His acquaintanceship with Miss Gertrude Stein and her wife Alice P. Tolkas. It talks about his writing and how hard it can be sometimes to get time to write. This book includes unfinished sketches he had written and placed them in the back of the book.

His friendship with Fitzgerald was a rocky one in that Fitzgerald was friendlier to him then he was to Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was an alcoholic. Not that Hemingway likely was one too. They were just different kinds of alcoholics. Fitzgerald was bright and brassy until everything wasn't type of alcoholic. Hemingway was the calm and quiet drink your troubles away type of alcoholic. Hemingway liked The Great Gatsby and saw talent in Fitzgerald if only he could get his act together. But he hated his short stories. Which I can't believe because I've read Fitzgerald's short stories and they're brilliant. Yes. Confession time. I'm more of a Fitzgerald person than a Hemingway person. I've never liked Hemingway and only read this book for my book club.

His relationship with Miss Gertrude Stein was an interesting one considering Hemingway's machoness wouldn't allow for gays to exist. He even says so in a conversation they have that he keeps a knife on him for the purpose of killing any gay man that comes on to him. What surprised me was Stein's response in that "the act male homosexuals commit is ugly and repugnant and afterwards they are disgusted with themselves. They drink, take drugs, to palliate this, but they are disgusted with the act and they are always changing partners and cannot be really happy." But that women do nothing disgusting between themselves and therefore happy and healthy. It's hard to believe that a gay person would believe this of another gay person.

I honestly hated this book. Though it was interesting to read about how they went skiing back then. There were no ski lifts so you had to walk up the mountain to the top to ski down it which was dangerous. It was mostly filled with Hemingway's usual style of macho bullshit which I cannot abide. This wasn't so much a book about his time in Paris in the twenties as a "look at how great I am" vignettes. And the last one was the worst because he blames the breakup of his marriage on his third wife when it was likely his fault. I give this book one star out of five.

Quotes

“Is Ezra a gentleman?” I asked. “Of course not,” Ford said. “He’s an American.”

-Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast p 78)

They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes.in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a lighter grade of manure.