A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemmingway

I thought there would have been more feasting.

These notes were created during my reading process to capture insights for my own reference and were not compiled for the purpose of instruction or summarization. With that said, I get super excited to discuss ideas contained within, but rarely (read never) do I encounter anyone reading the same stuff. I’ve decided to share these unedited notes on the off chance they attract a shared excitement to discuss or perhaps are helpful to others. Feel free to ask questions, challenge my thinking, and interact.

After reading Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, I continued my food-related reading tilt. I picked up a used copy of Hemmingway’s A Moveable Feast. I found the title misleading as I anticipated tales of Hemmingway devouring his way through roaring 20’s Paris. Instead, I was plunged into an almost diary-like series of sketches recounting his borderline mundane existence struggling to “make it” as a writer while living in Paris at the start of his writing career. There are smatterings of cameos from other legendary writers, including Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, and a hilarious road trip with Scott Fitzgerald. Overall, I loved it, but for reasons entirely different than anticipated. The tone of the writing is reflective and conveys a longing and appreciation for the simple joys and beauty of Paris and the cafe lifestyle. Hemmingway’s reputation as a swashbuckling womanizer was seldom on display, and I was surprised by how sweet and wholesome some of the sentiments toward his wife and son were. This sentiment immediately transported me back to the time Rachael and I spent traveling Europe together.

We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together.

My favorite aspect of this read was the lovely trip down memory lane it triggered. In 2017 Rachael (Wife), Melissa, Billy (Sis/Bro-in-law), and I spent a magical seven days eating our way through Paris, feasting at over forty different eateries. The pictures above capture my favorite meal from our trip. We plopped down on a bench in the Lawn Avenue Breteuil just outside The Musée Rodin for a picnic. Like Hemmingway, we ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and basked in the joy of being a great distance from home but feeling like we belonged in that exact place, with the exact people, at the precise moment in time.

Below are additional highlights that struck my fancy:

…they all tasted like the fruits they came from, converted into a controlled fire on your tongue that warmed and loosened it.

When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest.

People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.

There was always an almost iridescent shiny cast about the considerably reconstructed face, rather like that of a well packed ski run, …

mot juste - the one and only correct word to use

… a man who almost never used the mot juste and yet had made his people come alive at times, as almost no one else did. (referring to Dostoyevsky)

There were no baby-sitters then and Bumby would stay happy in his tall cage bed with his big loving cat named F. Puss. There were people who said that is was dangerous to leave a cat with a baby.

There were no ski patrols. Anything you ran down from you had to climb up. That gave you the legs that were fit to run down with.

But climbing was fun and no one minded it in those days. You set a certain pace well under the speed at which you could climb, and it was easy and your heart felt good and you were proud of the weight of your rucksack