"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."
In 1956, the Ritz Hotel in Paris finally convinced Hemingway to repossess two small steamer trunks that he had stored there in 1928. Inside the trunks, were forgotten remnants of his first years in Paris; from the time that he had left being a 'newspaper' columnist and reporter, and dedicated himself to writing fiction. He wrote all the time, and had character sketches of his friends and semi-friends in Paris, in addition to his notes from while he was working on his first novel, The Sun Also Rises.
He never named the book himself. Multiple chapters have been re-written, left out, added in... whatever combination that you want to call it.
The version that I read is called "The Restored Edition." This is all taken from a typed manuscript with original notations in Hemingway's handwriting; the actual manuscript is in the JFK Library in Boston.
His character sketches and comments on his friends and companions are interesting. He was very close with F Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Andre Masson, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Sylvia Beach... It is an interesting list!
One of the things that takes time to get used to is his writing style. I have described it as 'pugilist.' His friend Gertrude Stein was a big influence on his style, especially his use of repetition. He was always in search of the 'one true word, one true sentence' to write, to describe. Here is an example from the first chapter in the book:
"The leaves lay sodden in the rain and the wind drove the rain against the big green autobus at the terminal and the Cafe des Amateurs was crowded and the windows misted over from the heat and the smoke inside."
He describes how he would write in the morning, and then walk to a particular park, because in that park he wouldn't smell the Cafes around the city and therefore he'd be less hungry. He would then go home to his wife, and describe in loving detail the beautiful lunch that he had, so that she would not think that he was skipping out on eating. They were really poor at the time, and part of the reason the ex-pat scene was so big in Paris, was due to the cost of living there.. basically, pennies on the dollar.
I particularly love his description of Scott Fitzgerald;
"His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred."
Here are some of the other selections that I highlighted---
"I was getting tired of the literary life, if this was the literary life that I was leading, and already I missed not working and I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life."
"There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lives in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were nor how it was changed nor with what difficulties nor what ease it could be reached. It was always worth it and we received a return for whatever we brought to it."
"The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself."
"In Dostoyevsky there were things believable and not to be believed, but some so true they changed you as you read them; frailty and madness, wickedness and saintliness..."
"... the man who believed in the mot juste - the one and only correct word to use - the man who had taught me to distrust adjectives as I would later learn to distrust certain people in certain given situations..."
That last quote was regarding Ezra Pound, who he described as "... I wanted his opinion on 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."
The book is a fascinating read.
Scott
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Coming up.... book #9!! - Insomnia - by Stephen King!!
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