A Moveable Feast The Restored Edition by Ernest Hemingway

I didn't read boks written by people who killed themselves.

It was a strong guidelines that I followed per decades. It was as if, in their books, somewhere I would have found some traces of what they would have done later and I had heard when too little too much  and when you can't metabolize what happened or the meaning of horrible situations like the one of listening what adults said of people who killed themselves I simply closed doors. Emotively. 

Speaking with people of culture they said me that it was an irrational  behavior this one. "Who cares how a writer died?" they said me but to me this one was a fundamental point. All the story made me fear.

It made me fear to read words expressed by someone who, later would have decided to leave the world in this way.

Per decades I avoided, strongly avoided also Ernest Hemingway.

Not only: I bought most of his books but scared, as I did also with a beautiful book by Van Gogh, (painters were included in the list of course) I presented them to libraries or just renstituted.

Then, maybe, I simply mentally grew up and these obsessions over.

In the case of Ernest Hemingway, Woody Allen made the miracle with Midnight in Paris, breaking all my resistances and restituting the image of a man with which everyone would have fallen in love with, because with strong opinions, great observer, in love for life and people, common ones, cafès, food and wine, sociality; someone not snob but a decent man with everyone, helpful; at the end a good, surely troubled man. No one write if there are not demons in his/her souls.

Thanks to the book I read and reviewed involving Shakespeare and Company, I thought that it was time for him.

I read James Joyce at 15 years, oh The Doubliners, it was an adventure! I will tell you in another occasion; I read Francis Scott Fitzgerald a lot of time ago.

I picked up A Moveable Feast

the posthoumus book published by Scribner after three years from the departure of the writer; this edition has been restored if compared at the previous one and it is amazing. I read it today in few hours. Hemingway knows how to capture the attention of the reader. It's like a long conversation with the reader although this one is alsoaan intimistic tale and a vivid portrait of what experienced by Ernest Hemingway and his wife when in Paris and when there was still uncertainty about his future.

Oh, it is an enxchanting book, of an enchanting Paris and enchanting and supportive people. 

Hemingway remembers that "Many are stronger at the broken places. ...This is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and  very happy."

Hemingway remembers the years of Paris with great joy defining also his financial problems. No: he and his wife refused to think, psychologically that they were poor. They anyway, tried all their best for saving and not spend a lot of money. At first Hemingway worked for a Toronto magazine and other important european magazines and it meant to afford in various european places with a good dress, a good hair cut, good shoes. Social life means also spending more money, it is known.

Hemingway remembers in this book how difficult it was to be starved in Paris. Wherever you went you saw a good patisserie, or a bakery store and not being in grade of buying that heavinly good  food was a real devastation.

Ernest Hemingway wasn't a guy who loved to write isolated by the rest of the world, alienated by everything and everyone.

All the opposite, our man was an addicted social guy! He searched for people, for moods, for conversations, for beauty, expressions. 

He searched for the reality, for real people, for describing people, for reporting a face, a dialogue, a special moment. Hemingway remembered all people touched his existencee He knew too well that life is in motion, in fact once,  when he went to Lyon for following a strained Scott Fitzgerald he remarked the lost of time, spent in a sort of nonsense considering what happened. He would have preferred to stayin in a café chatting with someone or just writing down a new story while drinking a beer and tasting some delicious food.

If you are a writer I would suggest this book also to you because if you search for  tips or suggestions, it is precious.

Substantially what I honestly think is that Hemingway hasn't never lost his touch as a reporter.

Detailed but essential, his writing-style is engaging and funny, and most important, honest with himself and with other ones.

He felt anthypaty for someone and he wrote it without too many compliments.

You won't find a truth modified just because there are a lot of writers and known people involved. Clear and honest, his truth and perception of reality result vivid, healthy, clear. I found him cryptic in the final chapters and he sounded as "broken."

When installed to Paris, money were not sufficient for buying new books. How to do that?

One day Hemingway discovered Shakespeare and Company and mainly Sylvia Beach a lady in grade to be helpful with everyone. Ernest couldn't buy new books because too poor and Sylvia with trust and pleasure lent him wagons of books. Bookstalls were another favorite place where Ernest loved to buying used books, as you will read. And it is interesting what he will tell about these bookstalls although it is with Sylvia Beach that Hemingway established an exclusive friendship and, as always, Sylvia like a guardian angel will be supportive, helping him in many different encouraging ways. 

Another special friend by Hemingway per years was Gertrude Stein, remembered by the beloved author as someone who wouldn't never read a book written by an author  who did not speak well of her writings. In a way or in another, this friendship ended. Stein puts in discussion all the authors young Ernest reads; for respect, she was much more old then him he was frank but kept for himself his most private considerations about the opinions of his friend.

Per years, Ernest Hemingway was a great friend of Francis Scott Fitzgerald. Scott Fitzgerald became a heavy drunker pretty soon and when he fell sick because of alcohol, he reports Hemingway he had like the face of a dead person.

Later, situation became heaviest. Scott Fitzgerald became unsober starting from the early morning while Zelda became mentally sick, but surely this one has been one of the most important friends of Ernest Hemingway at long.

Beautiful book, written with heart and with a powerful prose the title A Moveable Feast was an expression used by Hemingway for describing these immensely joyous years of his youth to Paris.

I want to close with this quote by Hemingway: "There is never ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived 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."

Anna Maria Polidori