PDF Summary:A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway

In A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway tells the story of his interactions with some of the most famous artists of his generation while living in Paris between 1921 and 1926. Amid vivid descriptions of going hungry and walking the streets of a city in flux during the interwar period, Hemingway describes literary greats like Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and James Joyce, as well as famous places like bookstore Shakespeare and Company and its proprietor Sylvia Beach, all of whom influenced his development as a writer.

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Sometimes, Hemingway wrote so intently that he’d feel himself inside the scene he was creating. Then, someone would find him at whatever café he was writing in and interrupt the trance. Hemingway often got angry, cursing at whoever happened to recognize him and say hello.

Hemingway honed his craft amid an ex-pat community that included many modernist writers with whom he was friends, including Ezra Pound. Pound and his wife Dorothy had a studio on Notre-Dame-des-Champs where they displayed art from Pound’s friends. While Hemingway didn’t like the art, he admired Pound for supporting his friends’ work. One day, Pound asked Hemingway to teach him to box, and Hemingway tried his best, as English writer Wyndham Lewis looked on. Afterward, they had a drink; to Hemingway, Lewis looked like a nasty man with eyes of an “unsuccessful rapist.”

Pound, though, was extremely kind and helpful. He had friends in all kinds of art-related fields, whom he tried to help along. He was particularly concerned that since the poet T.S. Eliot was working at a bank, he didn’t have enough time to write.

Pound had a charitable initiative, which he called Bel Esprit, that aimed to raise enough money for Eliot to become a full-time writer. Natalie Barney, a rich American, became the patron. Hemingway was also enthusiastic about the plan and helped to find money. After Eliot published The Waste Land, he became better known and was able to give up his bank job, thanks to the Bel Esprit campaign and to the fact that he found his own patrons.

Hemingway met poet Ernest Walsh at Ezra Pound’s studio. Intense and very Irish, Walsh arrived at the studio with two American women he’d met on a ship returning from the U.S. The women were boasting about how much Walsh was paid for his poetry. Hemingway noticed that Walsh looked visibly ill, or “marked for death” (doomed like a character in a movie).

Walsh took Hemingway out to a very expensive lunch, where they discussed a rumored $1,000 prize to be given by The Dial, a literary magazine that Walsh helped edit. After they had a few drinks, Walsh said Hemingway was going to receive the prize. The more Walsh talked, though, the more convinced Hemingway became that he was being conned. Their conversation drifted from the talents of James Joyce to Hemingway himself. In discussing Joyce’s poor eyesight, Hemingway noted that everyone had some sort of health problem. Walsh responded that Hemingway didn’t seem to have any health issues. Rather than being “marked for death,” Walsh said, Hemingway appeared to be “marked for life.”

Walsh became increasingly sick; eventually, he had hemorrhages and had to leave Paris. Before leaving, he asked Hemingway to take charge of The Dial’s printing in Paris, which Hemingway did happily. He had enjoyed Walsh’s company and respected Walsh’s co-editor despite feeling conned.

Years later, Hemingway was discussing Walsh with James Joyce, who asked if Walsh had promised Hemingway the award. Hemingway said yes, and Joyce said Walsh had promised it to him as well. Hemingway told Joyce about the women in Pound’s studio bragging about Walsh’s money, which Joyce found amusing.

Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

Hemingway first met F. Scott Fitzgerald in a cafe. Fitzgerald was accompanied by Dunc Chaplin, who was a pitcher for the Princeton Baseball Team. Fitzgerald had a boyish face with wavy hair and a high forehead. His eyes were friendly and his mouth looked like a woman’s. Fitzgerald praised Hemingway’s work to Chaplin.

As they drank, Fitzgerald began asking Hemingway questions about his personal life, like whether he had sex with his wife before they were married. Hemingway said he didn’t remember, but Fitzgerald continued to press him. Suddenly, Fitzgerald’s face started to tighten, and he looked very ill. Hemingway was alarmed and said they should get him to a doctor, but Chaplin said Fitzgerald always looked this way when he drank. The next time Hemingway saw him, Fitzgerald acted as though everything were normal and alcohol didn’t affect him strangely, although he appeared to be remembering a different night than the one he had spent with Hemingway.

Fitzgerald discussed the faults of his earlier books with Hemingway—his insistence that they were no good led Hemingway to believe that his latest book, The Great Gatsby, was very good. Fitzgerald said the book wasn’t selling, but he had heard that there were good reviews. He was happy with the book but upset that it wasn’t selling well. To make his stories commercially viable, Fitzgerald often revised them. Hemingway was horrified by this and called it whoring. He wanted Fitzgerald to simply focus on writing the best stories that he could.

Soon after, Fitzgerald asked Hemingway to accompany him to Lyon to pick up a car he’d left there. On this trip, Hemingway realized that Fitzgerald couldn’t handle his liquor. When they returned, Hemingway and Hadley went to lunch with Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda, and it was clear to Hemingway that their relationship was destructive. Zelda and Scott argued about drinking—Zelda was hungover and was annoyed that Scott was abstaining from alcohol to focus on his writing. She was outwardly pleasant but seemed bothered at the lunch, which was not very tasty. But heir daughter was cute and spoke in a cockney English accent because she had a nanny who did so.

Hemingway realized that Zelda was jealous of Scott’s writing—she tried to get him to drink so he couldn’t write; he tried to abstain so that he could. Scott was also jealous of Zelda, especially her past relationships and the parties that she went to. They both got drunk so often that Scott sometimes barely wrote at all.

Fitzgerald blamed Paris for his struggles to write and wanted Hemingway and Hadley to go out to the Riviera with them in the summer, as he thought this could fix his writing funk. Fitzgerald was still frustrated that Gatsby wasn’t selling well, so he concentrated on writing marketable stories, while Hemingway tried to persuade him to write more novels like Gatsby. Fitzgerald remained mostly cheerful though, and even when he wasn’t, he could poke some fun at himself.

Over the summer, Hemingway traveled to Spain with Hadley, and he started a novel there. (Shortform note: The novel was The Sun Also Rises, published in 1926.)

When he returned to Paris, he found that Fitzgerald had gone with his family to Cap d’Antibes on the Riviera (a peninsula in the South of France near Nice) and had only become more of a drunk. Fitzgerald stopped caring that he wasn’t working and started getting drunk during the day. He occasionally was sober and writing, but when he was drunk, he found Hemingway and tried to get him to stop his own writing. However, Fitzgerald remained an intensely loyal friend when he was sober.

While Hemingway was working in Austria, Fitzgerald invited Hemingway and Hadley to stay with them in the Pyrenees, where Fitzgerald promised there wouldn’t be too much drinking and they could all write. Hemingway agreed and actually found it to be a nice place to write. Fitzgerald and Zelda both looked healthy—he had some money coming in, and they didn’t drink too heavily.

Nonetheless, Fitzgerald didn’t write anything good again until he learned from doctors that Zelda was mentally ill. (Shortform note: Zelda was diagnosed with schizophrenia in April of 1930 and institutionalized.)

Paris Endures

Hemingway eventually moved from Paris to Austria in the winters because he and Hadley had a child who couldn’t take the cold. On one of these visits, he met a woman, Pauline Pfeiffer, with whom he began an affair. He went to New York to deal with publishing The Sun Also Rises, then returned to Paris and stayed with her. When he went back to Hadley in Schruns, he thought he still loved only her, but when they returned to Paris, he started the affair again.

For Hemingway, Paris was an important anchor—it changed while he changed, but it was and would always be Paris. He believed it lived in different forms in the memories of people who spent time there. A Moveable Feast reflects Hemingway’s memories of Paris when he was young, poor, and happy.